The fourth episode of S11 has several great things in it, like the final sequence where the fam make the conscious choice to keep traveling with The Doc for their own individual reasons, and Yaz’ family are fun to meet (love The Doctor’s reaction to “are you two seeing each other?”). I also like the DW trope of monsters who are not really monsters at all, but victims of the human villains, invariably morally bankrupt capitalists, as here.

My criticism with this episode (apart from the title being, I guess, some sort of weird pun on “Anarchy In The UK”) is the character of Jack Robertson, who I just find a little bit perplexing. He’s explicitly not Trump, as stated in dialogue, but he is nonetheless clearly a kind of Trump analog for the purposes of the episode’s satirical points. I find that weird, muddy. Why have him be both Trump and not Trump? He’s also not particularly consequential here, again I do like the running theme of this series that the villains are often small men with delusions of importance, but without him being a little bit more threatening this episode falls a little flat in that element.

But again, the effects are pretty great here, the spiders are very well-rendered, the sound is great too. The things I like are all the fam dynamics, the Graham thread really touches me as somebody on their own grief journey, Yaz is really good, Jodie especially good in the fam moments. Not a favorite story but better than I remembered, even though I’m not sure they really solved the wider Sheffield spider problem before scooting off?? 3.25/5