Alright,  I'm gonna be honest. For a while I was this episode's number one hater. When I was first entering my rankings for all of TARDIS Guide, putting this one as a 0.5 was a no-brainer. I had watched it twice - once when it aired and once when I was rewatching 13 in preparation for Flux back in 2021. And I hate hated it. I was very unwilling to engage with a lot of this era as an actual part of this show with its own merits and charm for the longest time, and that coloured my perceptions of a lot of alright episodes. Having seen a lot more classic who and seeing the inspirations a lot of Chibnall stuff took, I've been slowly but surely making my way through episodes that I'd maligned for a while.

This one wasn't one I couldn't imagine growing to like. Praxeus and LOTSD are one thing, but this was another entirely. That said, when I sat down tonight to rewatch this, I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lot more emotion than I remembered. Graham's arc of grieving was exceptional, Yaz's family was charming, and the mystery of the spiders was a lot more engaging than I remembered. 13 has slowly but surely been growing on me as a character for sure. Hell, even Jack Roberts, who is the SINGLE MOST ON THE NOSE STAND IN FOR ANY POLITICAL FIGURE EVER, has his own campy charm to him.

This doesn't mean the episode is perfect, by any means. Despite Roberts having his moments, the obvious Trumpisms get quite grating very quickly. Ryan is alright in this episode but again his arc feels like more an extension to Graham's. And the elephant (or spider) in the room here is the Doctor's handling of the moral quandry of the episode. It is ridiculous. Guns are bad, yet I'm happy to let these creatures suffocate to death underground - a far more humane method of killing them! And the thing is, I wouldn't even mind it as much if ANYONE came out and said "woah, wait a minute Doc, that's kinda cruel" instead of just nodding along as if it was perfectly reasonable. It's not as if the Doctor has never gone overboard in punishing villains before, but at least in episodes like Family of Blood it's called out as being wrong. Could there have been no way to just... take them to another planet or something? Argh!

It's because of this that I can't give this more than 3 stars. I enjoyed it, it was a fun romp, and I would encourage others who are turned off severely by the resolution to give it another go.