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Dec. 13th, 2018 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
giddyantI finally watched Arachnids In The UK!
I feel like I can't be a fair judge of this due to the fact I actually couldn't look at the screen for any part where there were spiders. How can I give it its fair consideration if I had my hands over my eyes for a good 50% of the episode? Well, I'll give it a go. It seemed to me that it needed a more subtle touch when it came to the Story Of The Week, but the character work for Team TARDIS was great. Yaz, Ryan and Graham all had nice little moments which showed what was going on with them. I appreciated that we followed Yaz out to the TARDIS at the end. Out of all of them, I feel like she seemed to be most tied to her 'mundane' life and it was her choice to go that was the most impactful.
I loved how the Doctor managed to find a massive conspiracy within 10 minutes of being in Yaz's flat.
I remember that there were mixed feelings about how the Doctor dealt with the spiders and that ties up with my feelings that there could have been more subtlety in how the conflict was set up. She's not going to just go along with Angry Capitalist With Gun just shooting the spider in a display of machismo. However, if Nice Academic Jade had suggested a quicker death as more merciful, then that couldn't have been dismissed as patly and with such disgust. It's not a nice discussion to have or a nice choice to make, but, as a previous incarnation once said, sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones and you still have to choose. As it is, yeah, I am left wondering how much more merciful it is to lock creatures in to a confined area and leave them to starve.
I followed it up with two episodes of James May: The Reassembler. After having my nerves shredded by giant spiders, I needed something extremely calming and comfortable. Watching a middle-aged Englishman methodically reassemble a kitchen mixer was exactly the tonic I required.
I feel like I can't be a fair judge of this due to the fact I actually couldn't look at the screen for any part where there were spiders. How can I give it its fair consideration if I had my hands over my eyes for a good 50% of the episode? Well, I'll give it a go. It seemed to me that it needed a more subtle touch when it came to the Story Of The Week, but the character work for Team TARDIS was great. Yaz, Ryan and Graham all had nice little moments which showed what was going on with them. I appreciated that we followed Yaz out to the TARDIS at the end. Out of all of them, I feel like she seemed to be most tied to her 'mundane' life and it was her choice to go that was the most impactful.
I loved how the Doctor managed to find a massive conspiracy within 10 minutes of being in Yaz's flat.
I remember that there were mixed feelings about how the Doctor dealt with the spiders and that ties up with my feelings that there could have been more subtlety in how the conflict was set up. She's not going to just go along with Angry Capitalist With Gun just shooting the spider in a display of machismo. However, if Nice Academic Jade had suggested a quicker death as more merciful, then that couldn't have been dismissed as patly and with such disgust. It's not a nice discussion to have or a nice choice to make, but, as a previous incarnation once said, sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones and you still have to choose. As it is, yeah, I am left wondering how much more merciful it is to lock creatures in to a confined area and leave them to starve.
I followed it up with two episodes of James May: The Reassembler. After having my nerves shredded by giant spiders, I needed something extremely calming and comfortable. Watching a middle-aged Englishman methodically reassemble a kitchen mixer was exactly the tonic I required.
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Date: 2018-12-13 09:20 pm (UTC)A lot of the Chibnall scripts in this series could have used more editing, and I feel like in this one they just forgot a scene or something that would explain what actually happens to the spiders once they're trapped in the room. I think I headcanoned it as the spider researchers will take care of them in some humane way, but it wasn't said in the script.
Though someone in some review made the point that gun deaths are rarely the quick, painless way to go that they're often thought to be, because unless you hit just the right spot, it's actually a slow and painful death. (Like when a human is shot in the gut instead of in the heart or brain.) But that wasn't properly explained in the script either. I feel like Chibnall could generally work on the way he expresses the Doctor's pacifism, because those parts have always stood out to me in a bad way from the scripts. But I love the character stuff and the way the Doctor interacts with her companions, and there were lots of nice things about that in this episode.
Sending soothing, unspidery vibes your way! I feel like I've written about spiders enough for tonight... *shudders*
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Date: 2018-12-13 10:00 pm (UTC)It did feel like the script needed another run through! I feel that about Chibnall's scripts a lot, actually. It rarely feels like he sticks the landing. The unfortunate implications of what happened the spiders could have been sorted in a line of dialogue so easily. His grasp of the characters is excellent though, I'm really enjoying how Graham, Yaz and Ryan are slowly coming in to focus as the episodes go by.
Yeah, I get what you mean about needing to work on how the Doctor is shown to be a pacifist. Now, I don't mean that the Doctor can't be a hypocrite about it, but it feels like the show is saying one thing while showing another. In both this and The Woman Who Fell To Earth, it jolted me a bit and not in a 'oh, here is the Doctor showing her steel' way, more of a 'wow, this is clumsy' way.
Thank you for the vibes! I really hope that it'll be another 12 years at least before they bring back giant spiders...