Doctor Who Series 11: Ranking Every Episode From Worst To Best
6. Arachnids In The UK
It was great to see the team back on their home territory in Sheffield. Choosing the North over London is a welcome part of the drive for greater inclusivity, especially as the North of England has been so poorly served by the show over the years.
Yaz’s family are a delight and the scenes of the Doctor having tea with the Khans are among Jodie Whittaker’s finest. Graham’s vision of Grace is also deeply moving if a little overstated. This is the story of three individuals who are looking for new direction. Yaz is craving for a life of adventures that matter, with that same spirit as her grandmother, Graham is looking for both solace and distractions, lost and bereaved as he is, and Ryan needs to belong and make up for his worries about underachieving and failing to honour the memory of his nan. That coming together in the TARDIS at the end is possibly the defining moment of the entire series.
Behind all this we have a traditional monster-fest, only this time the Earth is under siege from monsters of its own making. The presidential candidate might be an unsubtle dig at Trump, but in fact he is presented as a monster our society has created (the celebrity politician). He breeds his own monsters, quite accidentally, in the form of the mutant spiders, but we made the likes of him in the first place.
The biggest downside of this episode is that it tries to do too much in the space of fifty minutes.