I'm terrified of spiders, so I was very uncomfortable watching this episode, but that makes it a nifty horrific story. I liked the antagonist who parodies Trump, we finally have a good villain in this season. Otherwise, the whole spider story captivated me and even managed to move me, even though, as I said, I hate spiders.

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“ARACHNIDS IN THE UK: SPIDERS, SUFFOCATION AND SUBTLE-AS-A-BRICK SATIRE”

Arachnids in the UK marks Series 11’s return to contemporary Earth with an episode that combines old-school Doctor Who creature-feature vibes with a thinly veiled political allegory—and the result is… well, sticky. Giant spiders? Great. Commentary on environmental disaster and populist politics? Potentially rich. But somehow, Chris Chibnall’s script ends up as a clunky mix of intriguing ideas and missed opportunities, webbed together with some occasionally effective scares and a lot of uneven pacing.

JUST YOUR AVERAGE SPIDER APOCALYPSE

The premise is pleasingly straightforward: we're in Sheffield, and there are freakishly huge spiders turning your Airbnb into Eight-Legged Freaks. It’s a classic base under siege story grounded in an everyday setting—high-rise flats, a luxury hotel, and a very local vibe. It’s an obvious fear to tap into, and the visuals of spiderweb-covered corridors and creeping arachnids are effectively skin-crawling, especially for anyone with even a hint of arachnophobia.

The story’s twist is that the spiders aren’t alien monsters—they’re mutated Earth spiders, bloated and aggressive thanks to corporate negligence and toxic landfill. This makes Arachnids in the UK the first of many Chibnall-era stories to offer a strong environmental message: the monsters aren’t monsters, the villains are greedy humans, and there’s no alien interference. In theory, that’s refreshing. In practice, it’s oddly inert.

SCIENCE FACTS, SOCIAL AWKWARDNESS AND STUNT POLITICIANS

There's a valiant attempt to make the science feel grounded—think Doctor Who does Jurassic Park, complete with fun facts about spiders and a bit of techno-babble. But the delivery can be dense and dreary, and the pacing suffers under the weight of all the exposition. The Doctor and Fam spend much of the episode gathering information and wandering through increasingly webbed-up rooms, which means the middle stretch drags badly.

Still, there are some character-driven bright spots. Thirteen’s quirky charm gets a nice outing here—especially when she awkwardly meets Yaz’s family and insists on not overstaying her welcome (while very much doing exactly that). Her surprise and quiet sadness at having to say goodbye to her companions only to be immediately invited for tea is a lovely moment that highlights her social clumsiness and emotional depth. It’s a quieter, more personal take on the new Doctor’s bond with her companions, and it works.

Yaz’s family are introduced with warmth and potential—her mum Najia and dad Hakim are given just enough personality to intrigue, and their later return in Demons of the Punjab will expand on that foundation.

GRAHAM, GRIEF, AND ABANDONED CHARACTER THREADS

The episode also attempts to give Graham and Ryan some emotional development, though it fumbles the follow-through. Graham’s short scene in his empty house is quietly powerful, with Bradley Walsh once again nailing the role’s emotional core. But the moment is all too brief. Similarly, a conversation between Ryan and Graham about a letter from Ryan’s dad could have deepened their bond but is cut off just as it begins to get interesting. These fragments hint at something richer but never commit.

JACK ROBERTSON: TRUMPED-UP TROUBLE

Enter Chris Noth’s Jack Robertson, the cartoonishly awful American hotel magnate who couldn’t be more obviously based on Donald Trump if he tried (and he is very clearly trying). He’s all bluster, ego, and corporate callousness—utterly dislikable and played for broad satire. The Trump metaphor is about as subtle as a spider dropping from the ceiling onto your face, but Noth’s performance is entertaining in its smug awfulness, and he serves as a passable non-alien antagonist.

Unfortunately, the climax—or lack thereof—lets the entire plot down. There’s no real escalation or tension; the spiders are dealt with offhandedly, and the final resolution involves the Doctor deciding not to kill them... by trapping them in a room to slowly suffocate. It's a bizarre moral line to draw, and it leaves the Doctor looking, at best, ethically inconsistent and, at worst, vaguely monstrous.

STYLE OVER STAKES

Visually, the episode leans into muted tones and eerie stillness. The effects work on the spiders is surprisingly strong—especially considering the budget—and the use of cramped flats and under-construction corridors sells the creeping dread. However, the episode's horror elements are softened by a somewhat oddly sentimental score, with strings undercutting the tension where screeching violins might have amped it up.

The atmosphere is there, but the threat never fully takes shape, and by the time the credits roll, the whole thing feels more like a half-hearted fable than a fully spun tale of terror.

📝VERDICT: 6/10

Arachnids in the UK has all the ingredients of a strong Doctor Who episode—a simple horror premise, a grounded setting, a social message, and strong character beats—but it ends up entangled in its own web of clumsy pacing, underdeveloped ideas, and a moral conclusion that’s more confusing than comforting. It’s a story about spiders that can’t quite stick the landing, despite some standout moments for Thirteen, Graham, and Yaz’s family.

It's mostly just okay. Najia is fun (I particularly like when the Doctor tells her that she "raised an awesome human"), Graham's character moments are good, and for a straight-faced take on a creature feature, it does well enough. Only real complaints I have are 'Jack Robertson' for how basic of a caricature he is (with how prevalent piss-takes of that particular guy were between 2015 and 2020, these jokes were already old hat), and the dubious framing around the Doctor's endgame for the titular Arachnids. In an attempt to continue NuWho's pacifism and mock cultural obsessions with firearms, it ended up shooting itself in the foot and made Jack look like the reasonable one by comparison. Big yikes.

I don't even mind the Doctor being morally screwy (it's why Seventh is one of my favourites), but the blind handing-over of benefit of the doubt for that decision and the lack of self-awareness thereof doesn't sit well with me. It's not quite "Amazon is good, actually" from Kerblam!, but it's up there.

This is such a good episode for the Doctor being autistic! And for building the fam’s relationship! It’s generally sweet and wholesome and I really enjoyed it.

My only real issue is that there’s no wrap up about Robertson, either making a Thing about his escape or giving him some justice for what he did. They just kind of stop the spiders and move on.

Arachnids in the Uk

This is one of the 2 Thirteenth Doctor stories I don't like, This is because the fear of spiders is real.

I've watched this three times now and every time I do, I like it a bit more. Obviously the biggest issue is the whole "lets starve the spiders instead of shooting them" at the end, which makes absolutely no sense from a moral perspective. But otherwise its a really fun episode with some decent character work

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.

Easily one of the worst episodes of new Doctor Who, full stop. A low mark in the already low mark that is the Chibnall era. The issues with Arachnids in the UK are so numerous I would struggle to even list it all out.

The worst part of Arachnids in the UK is this is the exact sort of content that should be a fun and breezy time. I don't need my giant spider plot to be all that serious, thoughtful, or dramatic, I am open (and was even excited for on initial airing) a fun and goofy time. My standards are already pretty low going into a story like this, in other words. I don't want the next Heaven Sent, I want an entertaining bit of nonsense like the Husbands of River Song. There's a lot of room for content less serious in Doctor Who, and if anything, in a series with Rosa and the Demons of the Punjab, a bit of light-hearted fun felt very, very welcome to me.

But then we get to the actual episode and the Doctor is complaining about not being allowed to suffocate/starve/dehydrate these spiders in a slow, painful, and agonizing way instead of just shooting them dead in a few seconds. We have some examples of truly awful acting here, and a lot of that is around Chris Noth's character. Now, I've seen Noth in a dozen different other shows or other media, he is a fine performer, so I blame the direction and awful character writing here. Nonetheless, it results in a terrible performance even if I don't blame that on the actors. The stuff with Graham is somewhat interesting but I think the show really struggles to give it the justice and weight that sort of character work absolutely deserves, but definitely serves as a highlight in an otherwise really bleak watching experience for me.

How do these spiders look worse and more fake to the extent it is comparable to the Third Doctor's 70s era cheese effects with his spider episode? That episode is at least really creative in its design even if it also looks pretty terrible, and that was almost half a century ago now. This is a bad episode that really sticks out even in the land of bad 13th Doctor era episodes where such things are plentiful. It is such a miserable, dry script that is so slow paced and hardly worth anyone's time. In my eyes, there is little distinction between this and other remarkably bad content like Orphan 55 or Time and the Rani.