The TARDIS somewhat unexpectedly deposits the Doctor, Ryan, Yaz and Graham not just in the present day, but within a short walk of Yaz’s apartment, and the Doctor is crestfallen when her companions seem all too ready to part ways with her. An impromptu invitation to have dinner with Yaz’s family softens the blow. For Graham, however, nothing softens the blow of going home to an empty house filled with cobwebs.
Too many cobwebs, though – and it’s not isolated to Graham’s home. As Yaz goes to pick her mother up from work, the Doctor and Ryan are asked by a neighbor to help perform a welfare check on a woman who hasn’t been seen leaving her apartment for days… only to find that she’s dead, cocooned in a thick web woven by a frighteningly oversized spider. The neighbor – a research scientist studying spiders – admits that there have been similar incidents in and around Sheffield. All the activity points toward a hotel, owned by American business magnate (and presidential hopeful) Jack Robertson, mere days away from opening. Robertson has discovered that the rooms of his hotel are also infested with giant spiders…and his bodyguard has just been dragged away by the largest one. It turns out that his hotel business builds on toxic sites operated by his waste disposal business, which, while cheap, now threatens to turn Earth into a planet of the spiders… and threatens to turn the human race into dinner unless the Doctor can find a way to stop the spiders’ spread. But her ideas and Robertson’s are vastly different, since his solution is to go in shooting.
written by Chris Chibnall
directed by Sallie Aprahamian
music by Segun AkinolaCast: Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O’Brien), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Chris Noth (Robertson), Sharon D. Clarke (Grace O’Brien), Shobna Gulati (Najia Khan), Tanya Fear (Dr. Jade McIntyre), Ravin J. Ganatra (Hakim Khan), Bhavnisha Parmar (Sonya Khan), Jaleh Alp (Frankie Ellish), William Meredith (Kevin)
Notes: Actor Chris Noth is no stranger to American audiences, having been a regular on such series as Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Sex And The City, The Good Wife, Gone, and Tyrant. But alongside his mainstream successes, he’s also done some voice work, in Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths (as Lex Luthor, no less) and the English dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s big-screen anime From Up On Poppy Hill. Shobna Gulati has had two long-running stints on UK soap Coronation Street as Sunita Alahan, as well as Doctors, Casualty, and River City. Tanya Fear has appeared in the series Spotless and the movie Kick-Ass 2. Guest roles on Coronation Street and Doctors also appear on Ravin J. Ganatra’s resume, along with the movie Entrapment, and a prior appearance in the Doctor Who universe (as a different character) in the Torchwood episode Greeks Bearing Gifts. The episode’s other American character is played by American-born William Meredith, who has appeared in Band Of Brothers and Outlander, but has also done voice acting for the Battlefield video game franchise.
LogBook entry by Earl Green