Mrs SteveMB double-checked that we didn’t skip over a section of the episode when zipping through that commercial break.
The panic room was equipped with months of food. I assumed the Doctor planned to let the spiders live on that food until they died of natural causes; how long does a temperate-zone house spider live, after all? (Of course, that ignores the fact that spiders can’t open cans, or eat preserved food, or that they trap and eat their prey live…)
Giant spiders don’t freak me out – they’re easy to see and avoid. It’s the thousands of teeny little bastards that skitter around where you can’t see ‘em that give me a whole body cringe.
Fun episode, but some weak writing – as has Teuton pointed out above, the “toxic waste leads to mutant monsters” is a pretty dated cliché. And the resolution was choppy; I was expecting the Trump clone to get eaten, at least.
Speaking of which, on one hand, I’m tired of the British stereotype of “asshole American solves problem with gun”. On the other, Robertson’s behavior was exactly what I would expect of that particular asshole of whom he was a clear expy.
Fun Fact. South Africa is a popular choice for British television companies (and other creative industries) - it’s a lot cheaper for many services, and they’re on the same time zone, which makes coordination simpler. And they speak English, so getting local staff is simple.
Much in the way Hollywood often uses Vancouver or Toronto.
Pretty weak and stupid ep all round.
Yeah the spiders trapped in the panic room will starve to death, even if they could open the cans and eat the food there … they just keep growing and would eventually eat each other until only one is left and that one starved, shooting them quickly would indeed be a mercy killing then. The Trump mockery was so bad it made, a diehard Trump detester as an evil upon this planet, cringe. The plot was dumb at best.
But even the end … Yaz loves her family but because they drive her crazy she is going to leave, to do something that she knows is possible to not come back from, is that dangerous, nearly died already, without a word to mum or dad goodbye?
Cultural question - is arachnophobia particularly strong in the U.K.?
It looked to me like the food was all stored in sealed heavy duty metal boxes.
The problem I had with the episode was that was the behavior I would expect from almost everyone! Were we, the audience, *supposed *to be agreeing with Not!Trump here or was that just terrible writing? It’s OK to let a creature starve to death, or die in misery, but choosing to kill it make you an evil evil person?
The hypocrisy of The Doctor around the topic has come up before, but it has been so strong so far this series that I don’t know if we are supposed to be aware of it or not.
Like 3’s Planet of the Spiders? 
I don’t have any doubt at all that the fate of the spiders is to be exterminated by the Trump expy’s bodyguards the next day, when he comes back to the large building he owns without the interference of the Tardis Team.
She didn’t solve the problem at all.
Yeah, as I said - sloppy writing.
Agreed. But I was talking about the Trump expy’s general assholishness - firing Najia, dick-waving at Kevin and Frankie, throwing Kevin to the (wolf) spider.
(My emphasis)
Yes, but she’s a police officer - she does that every day already.
I agree with the Doctor: guns are never the solution, if you happen to be a super-genius with a magic wand and a time machine. For us of the lumpen proliteriat, there are certain extreme situations in which guns, regrettably, are the best solution available.
BTW, do you know what I’d call being attacked by a horde of giant spiders? A bloody extreme circumstance.
Even if the smaller spiders survived, they would be doomed to death by suffocation as they grew larger. I wonder if the point of herding them into the panic room was to cut off life support systems to the room, allowing them to suffocate immediately?
I wonder if the toxic dump plotline will pop up again later…it seemed like there was more than enough evidence for several whistleblowers to come forward, and it would be quite nice to see the Trump clone face some consequences.
I’ve seen complaints online that the Trump clone"got away with it", and he certainly seemed to think he was ending the story in triumph, but on second thought I didn’t see it that way.
Consider his situation at the end of the episode: His private panic room is full of giant spiders. A REALLY giant spider is oozing spider juice all over the carpet in his luxury ballroom, creating at least an immense cleanup problem. His newest luxury hotel is covered in webbing. Most of the staff who might have helped clean up the situation are dead, covered in webbing, and probably soon to the the topics of a really interesting coroner’s inquest. Most of the witnesses to what happened have disappeared, except for a woman he just fired and a scientist who wasn’t working for him in the first place.
How exactly is he going to explain all this? How is he going to capitalize on heroically shooting a spider the size of an SUV if he has no good story to explain how an SUV-sized spider came to be in his hotel in the first place? “I hire criminally careless subcontractors and don’t supervise them” is really not a good story, and “It’s Obama’s fault” must have some limits.
The real Trump will gleefully point out that no one ever got killed by giant spiders on any of HIS properties. Debate opponents will demand to know how he can protect the American people when he can’t protect his own staff from killer giant spiders. KILLER. GIANT. SPIDERS. Is there any way a politician can benefit from having KILLER GIANT SPIDERS associated indelibly with his name?
There was no resolution. The viewer was left to make their own assumptions. Bad writing, or poor editing. Maybe they edited out a long winded explanation? We were told that the really large spider appeared to be suffocating (in a rather large room). I assumed that the smaller large spiders would be forced to suffocate in the closed, locked, and sealed panic room. Or not.
For spiders(or anything of that primitive branch of Animals), suffocating is not only a matter of presence of Oxygen necessarily. Every one of their cells requires Oxygen, but they can only respire through a patch of skin, not through any opening like into lungs. So there is a square-cube growth issue limiting size in spiders.
Basically as they grow in size( let’s says they double in length in every dimension), their number of cells needing Oxygen grows as a function of volume(or cubes) But their patch of skin only grows as a function of surface area (or squares). So every time they double in size they need 8 times more oxygen, but only get 4 times more. So if they keep growing, that will eventually suffocate.
But I guess they didn’t want to get all geeky* to explain it, and left it confusing.
*WTF writers, It’s Dr freakin Who. Geeks made your asses.
Note that spiders have book lungs which is different from how insects get O2.
But your point remains
Brian
My thoughts so far on the new Doctor:
Well, Jodie Whittaker is fine, but the show is disappointing. It isn’t her, it’s the writers and the decisions that have been made by the creative team.
- Did she really need three companions? If we are trying to put a new Doctor in a position to shine, was it really wise to overwhelm them with three other people we need to follow each episode? It does not help that I have not found any of the three companions interesting.
- One thing I often like is the relationship/bond the Doctor forms with his companion. I don’t feel that at all with this situation. Giving her three dull(so far) companions was a terrible choice.
-
Has she had one moment to shine? The Doctor usually enters situations, takes control, demonstrates that he is the smartest person in the room, and solves everything with intelligence and doing what is right. Has she had a single moment to shine at all?
-
She has been written generically. I can tell you about 9, 10, 11, and 12’s personalities. 13? She’s…the Doctor. Uh…that’s it. Not one unique trait other than being female, which is not enough to stand out as interseting. Besides, him being a her is not enough to make a great Doctor. Make her…grumpy? Fun? Outrageous or notable in some way? Jodie Whittaker could be as good as any Doctor, but she is just waiting for…something to happen.
Disappointed that they are wasting a great actress.
The producer and writer of this (eleventh) series is Chris Chibnall, who previously wrote and produced Broadchurch. Given that Broadchurch was, to some extent, all about grief, is that why a big part of this series is also about grief (particularly Graham’s)?
Mahaloth,
I think part of what is different about this Doctor than the usual one is that this one is a bit less sure of herself. When she says something like “I’m smart” she comes off like she is trying to convince herself of it rather than showing off and expecting admiration. The aspect of The Doctor that this one runs with with enjoying being the teacher.
Shine moments? She’s gone out of her way to not do them in front of others. Confronting Krasko with her deduction of his neural inhibitor and how he could not kill her no mater how much he wanted to, letting him try to choke her to death … that was a classic shine moment. She only mentioned to the gang that she had some suspicion she wanted to test and did it without them to see it.
Overall agreed though. They have the acting chops (I think, need to see some comedic timing which is always important too), in her and in the Companions, to make a great version … so far the writers and showrunner are not taking full advantage of it.
Back to giant spiders - how much a real world limitation is there to the ability of the exoskeleton to scale up to support the mass? Same dimensions would just crumple I’d think.
Thanks. I just realized what has been missing. It’s the science, the science fiction, the new planet exploration, the interesting new villians, the cowboy action, Victorian England, spaceships, witches, Michelle Gomez.
Episode 1 was an intro to the players. E3 and E4 were social commentary. E4 spent so much time attacking the Trump impersonator that they didn’t leave enough time to explain the spiders. And they were both U.S. based. Is it the producers intention to attract more non-science fiction viewers there? Will there be enough new soap opera-style fans to offset the loss of the fans who are looking for the next Weeping Angel, or Dalek?
Sheffield is in the US? The main (human) villain in E4 is American but the hotel and the spiders were in Yorkshire.
And E2 was chock-full of spaceships, new planet exploration, killer robots, holograms, teleportation, science fiction, and actual science, all in one episode. E1, 3 and 4 gave us new villains that are quite likely to appear again later. E1 and E3 were full of alien/future tech. I suspect you’re going to continue to be disappointed on the Michelle Gomez front and frankly I’ve had more than enough Victoriana anyway but otherwise you’re getting what you’re asking for.