Note: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who series 11, episode 4 – ‘Arachnids In The UK’.
This week’s Doctor Who left us with more questions than there are legs on a bio-engineered mutant spider.
After ‘Arachnids In The UK’, we were left pondering the following nine puzzlers – from elusive family members to missing aviators, with a dash of early 20th-century American literature thrown in too.
1. What happened to the Doctor’s sisters?
You might have been distracted by the Doctor’s admission that she was once “a sister in an aqua hospital” which turned out to be a training camp for space assassins, but moments before, our Time Lord hero mentioned that she “used to have sisters”.
Assuming she’s not referring to her colleagues at the aqua hospital – and her intonation suggests not – this is a big reveal. It’s not the first time that the Doctor has referred to his/her family – as recently as ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’, she mentions how her family are lost, but “even though they’re gone from the world … they’re never gone from me.”
The tenth Doctor mentioned in the 2006 episode ‘Fear Her’ that he “used to be a dad once” and in 2008’s ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, states that his offspring died “a long time ago”. Going all the way back to the show’s origins, of course, the first Doctor was accompanied on his travels by his granddaughter Susan – and there’s no reason to suspect that their relationship wasn’t a biological one.
The Doctor, then, is established as having had children, at least one grandchild and, so, presumably a wife or lover (other than River Song, who we have no reason to believe ever bore any of her Doctors a child). In 2007’s ‘Smith and Jones’, he even mentions having had a brother. But sisters? That is brand-new information.
Presumably they, along with the rest of his family, are now “lost” – though what a turn-up it would be if one or more of the Doctor’s long-lost family were to resurface, eh?
2. Didn’t the Doctor battle giant spiders before?
Yup. Jon Pertwee’s final adventure, 1974’s ‘Planet of the Spiders’, saw the third Doctor go up against the Eight Legs – a race of enlarged alien arachnids from the planet Metebelis III.
If you thought this week’s giant-size creepy-crawlies were bad, the Eight Legs feasted on human flesh, could control human minds and teleport through time and space.
Though they made just a single appearance on television, they’ve appeared in a number of Doctor Who spin-off novels, comics and audio plays, facing off with Paul McGann’s eighth Doctor in the Big Finish releases ‘The Eight Truths’ and ‘Worldwide Web’.
The Eight Legs, though, were unrelated to the batch of mutated arthropods created in the toxic waste under Jack Robertson’s hotel. (Chris Chibnall even resists the fanboy urge to insert a knowing nod to the Doctor’s previous giant spider encounter, which we are sure must have killed him.)
3. Will Jack Robertson return?
It’s probably intended as a comment on current politics that unscrupulous US business tycoon Robertson (Chris Noth) escapes unscathed and unpunished, with no justice served for his various crimes.
But having the villain of ‘Arachnids In The UK’ get away with it entirely – possibly to become the next US president – does rather go against the grain. Maybe he’ll get his delayed comeuppance in a future episode? (We’d happily welcome Noth back for another scenery-chewing turn.)
4. What did the Doctor get up to with Amelia Earhart?
‘Arachnids In The UK’ reveals that the Doctor has, at some point in her travels, enjoyed the company of American aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. “She’s a right laugh,” the Time Lord insists.
In case you don’t know, Earhart became in 1932 the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, receiving the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for her accomplishment. She set many other early aviation records, but in 1937, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan both disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe by air.
Though she was declared dead in absentia in 1939, what exactly happened to Earheart has never been discovered.
The Doctor’s encounter with Amelia has never been documented – on television, or in any spin-off media, though the 1998 novel Seeing I does make brief reference to the pair having shared a “little encounter” and the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) is revealed to have Amelia’s flying jacket hanging in the TARDIS wardrobe in the 2003 audio play No Place Like Home.
The 2006 Torchwood episode ‘Out of Time’ also makes reference to Earhart – in that story, 1950s pilot Diane Holmes (Louise Delamere) lands in 21st century Cardiff after flying through a space-time rift. Diane speculates that the same fate might have befallen Amelia. You never know…
5. Who is Edith Wharton?
Educate yourselves, philistines! (We kid. As literary references in Doctor Who go, the Doctor’s tribute to Wharton is a little out of left field.)
Referring to “the spider mother in the ballroom”, the Doctor remarks that this sounds like “the best novel Edith Wharton never wrote” – a nod to the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who wrote 16 novels between 1902 and 1932, with a 17th going unfinished when she died in 1937.
Wharton was prolific as heck, also putting out dozens of novellas, short-story collections and non-fiction books, with 1920 novel The Age of Innocence (which won her the Pulitzer) being arguably her best-known work.
Other of her titles, which explored New York high society of the age, included The Valley of Decision (1902), The House of Mirth (1905) and The Glimpses of the Moon (1922), but sadly not, The Spider Mother in the Ballroom.
6. Is ‘RYaz’ totally going to happen?
Back in 1955 Alabama, Ryan (Tosin Cole) inadvertently paid Yaz (Mandip Gill) a compliment – suggesting, much to her delight, that her teenage boyfriend Danny Biswas “was punching well above his weight”. (He got all flustered when she called him on it, too.)
This week, Doctor Who continues to push the ‘Ryan and Yaz’ ship (RYaz?) real hard, with the pair having to repeatedly insist they’re “just mates”, as first Yaz’s sister (Bhavnisha Parmar) and later her mum (Shobna Gulati) suspect they might be dating.
Then again, Yaz’s mum also asks if she’s seeing the Doctor, so maybe she’s just super keen for her daughter to get out there.
7. Will we see Yaz’s family again?
We finally meet the Khan clan this week, Yaz reuniting with her father (played by Ravin J Ganatra – nice guy, bad cook), her sister (sarcastic and hot for Ryan) and her mum (quiet, but formidable).
Though she clearly loves her family and her domestic set-up’s pretty comfortable, Yaz decides to leave them again at the end of ‘Arachnids In The UK’ – leaving to go travelling with the Doctor under the guise of popping out for a loaf of bread.
Fingers crossed this charming bunch reappear and become a recurring feature, as in the Russell T Davies era. (Given that, thanks to the TARDIS, Yaz returned to Sheffield just half an hour after she left, it might be interesting to explore the consequences of a longer absence the next time she materialises back in 2018.)
8. Will we meet Ryan’s dad?
Speaking of family matters, is Doctor Who teeing up the introduction of Ryan’s absentee father?
Though we gather he’s never been the reliable sort, Ryan was still disappointed when his dad failed to attend his own mother Grace’s funeral in ‘The Woman Who Fell to Earth’ – but in ‘Arachnids…’, his father gets in touch by way of a letter, apologising and even inviting Ryan to live with him.
Ryan, though, resents the wording of the letter – his dad describing himself as “proper family”, and it’s clear there are unresolved issues there that go undiscussed amidst all the giant spider madness.
Is dear old Dad going to make an appearance, allowing Ryan to vent some of his feelings? We’d put money on it, with the encounter likely allowing Ryan to finally accept lovely Graham (Bradley Walsh) as a paternal figure in his life. D’aww.
9. What’s going to happen in episode five?
Next week’s adventure is ‘The Tsuranga Conundrum’ – written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Jennifer Perrott, and featuring guest stars Suzanne Packer as Eve Cicero, Ben Bailey Smith as Durkas Cicero, Brett Goldstein as Astos, Lois Chimimba as Mabli and David Shields as Ronan.
Here’s the synopsis: “Risk to life: absolute.” Injured and stranded in the wilds of a far-flung galaxy, The Doctor, Yaz, Graham and Ryan must band together with a group of strangers to survive against one of the universe’s most deadly – and unusual – creatures.
From the brief Next Time… teaser, it appears as though the Doctor and “team TARDIS” are transported to an intergalactic hospital after visiting a “sonic mine” – and soon, things start to go badly wrong.
Of course, as every Doctor Who fans knows, the biggest question of all is… will that hospital have “a little shop”?
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