Behind the sofa? Please say you did.

SPOILERS

It was an odd one, really, so far the writing has been pretty good, and we’ve had some solid stories introducing the Doctor, the new companions and the TARDIS. The episode Rosa set a high bar. If they were all that good, or even approaching that level of goodness, we’re in for a treat.

Arachnids in the UK was, for me, a flop. There were a few things going on that felt off key. It started well, and the spiders were big and scary, but the resolutions of the problems were all too facile.

No resolution to the massive waste dump under the hotel. It’s just there, but given what was dumped there and how, you’d expect the Doctor to get UNIT (or similar) to cordon off the area and quarantine until it was cleared.

Spiders left in the safe room? I guess they’ll eat the food and then starve to death. Maybe the Doctor is getting a hard edge and doesn’t care that much, but then she shows empathy for the big spider that’s suffocating and is upset when it was shot dead. In my view, shooting it was preferable if it couldn’t be saved.

No mention of any kind of clean up elsewhere in Sheffield. There are at least two places where the spiders are being left. Do we expect a return to that, or will they just “go away”? Or have I missed something here? I don’t feel I’ll gain much from a re-watch.

Some nice scenes with Graham going home to an empty house, and his reasoning for continuing to travel at the end, but on the whole I felt it fell flat.

Doctor Who ‘isn’t getting a festive episode’ for the first time in 13 years

Hope you weren't looking forward to it

I was. So what’s this "11 episodes in 10 episode series” about then?

Apparently the now-no-more Christmas episode is going to be a New Year episode.
I'm waiting for some sort of official confirmation about the Christmas (or lack thereof) episode before I go off on one.

Mark

"team TARDIS", 'welcome on board'. this may get very interesting ...

I've got a floating magnetic TARDIS, and I must admit that I also said to Lady V that there were looking at more merch. And I also want one.

I find “team TARDIS” to be an annoyance. At least they haven’t said “we have to TARDIS out of here” yet.

And it's been confirmed. *sigh*
The new man in charge of the show, Chris Chibnall, says "I sort of think we might have mined, and possibly overmined, every single thing we could about Christmas in Doctor Who ..."
What an absolute load of bollocks.
For a show that can literally go anywhere in time and space, to claim you have run out ideas for a Christmas show is just ridiculous.
If one show thinks it has mined all that it could out of only doing a dozen Christmas episodes, they need to hire people with better imaginations, because clearly the people heading-up Doctor Who have none.
I'd rather they say they couldn't be bothered than pass off this [LIFTED] excuse.

Mark

Seems the Doctor is OK with people working in a mahoosive Amazon style work place after a few cursory reforms. This seems odd after the social previous justice stuff in the series.

So, Chris Chibnal and Jodie Whittaker are leaving the show?

According to the youtube rumour mill

Six episodes in 2019 according to NME.
https://www.nme.com/news/tv/doctor-who- ... 19-2411329

There's been other issues as well this season that haven't sat well with me.
In the opening episode The Doctor was seemingly okay with the big bad (T'zim-Sha) teleporting back to his home world, without any sort of repercussions concerning the hunting of humans for sport.
In the third episode The Doctor is seemingly okay with racist time traveller from the future, Krasko, being teleported back in time to an unspecified time/place.
In the fourth episode The Doctor seemingly lets the ruthless billionaire Robertson off without any sort of reprimand, despite building hotels literally on foundations of rubbish and waste.
The Kerblam! Episode mentioned above I don't really need to expand on.
And this most recent episode, The Doctor was perfectly content with shutting a whole bunch of aliens back into a prison located in a hill in Lancashire.

These all seem like very un-Doctorish behaviours, especially given how the character has been portrayed since the reinvention of the show.

Mark

Not to pick nits, but didn't Tennant's Doctor do something very similar with the alien/witches in the Shakespeare episode?

These were my thought on Rosa:

Last night was an improvement on the previous few weeks, but it does need to improve. Less morality, more alien monsters please! Typing that last sentence must made me realise what the problem is. They made a big song and dance about how they weren't going to have any "classic" monsters, but that's what we need. Facing off against the Daleks or Cybermen has, since the reboot, given us an insight into what kind of doctor we're getting. Racist Americans from the 1950's are great for TV dramas, but they don't scream "EXTERMINATE!" and that's what we want!

You're citing one episode out of multiple seasons, and that incarnation of The Doctor had displayed much in the way of empathy towards other races, even ones that had done terrible things.
The current Doctor seems to have lost any sense of justice towards any wrong doing.

Mark

I shall posit that this may be because it‘s not been run by someone who really cares that much about the series. People were cautious, if not downright wary about Chibnall taking it on, and I’d say that in part, their concerns have been met. He’s basically done what those who created The Librarians did - make a Dr Who like series but without it really being Dr Who (to avoid any copyright claims).