The best part of this week's Doctor Who was the Banksy jokes.

Do you know how hard it is to explain Legends of Tomorrow to someone who comes in in the middle of an episode?

The best part of this week's Doctor Who was the Banksy jokes.

I did like the Banksy jokes. For me they tie with the Doctor's expression when Graham puts his arm around her. It's the little things, you know?

One of the earliest goes that Doctor Who took at racism was a Third Doctor adventure called the Mutants. In the future, Earth has colonised a planet whose oppressed native peoples have started turning into insectile monsters. The colonial oppression is ridiculously oversignified, taking in markers of the British Raj, South African apartheid, Southern segregation and Nazi genocide.

At this point in the show's history, the Doctor is exiled on Earth and can't get the TARDIS to work. But the Time Lords send him on occasional missions, and this is one of them. But it is the strangest mission. The Doctor is basically carrying a message from the Time Lords to someone on the planet, but doesn't know who. When he finds the right person (a leader of the native people), we find that the parrcel just contains interesting tidbits about the planet's history. The show's resolution is wen this leader evolves past the insectile form into some sort of rainbow angel superhero and destroys the evil Marshal. I mean, great, but just why the Time Lords decided that (a) they should interfere, and (b) then do so in the most ineffectual way possible, is beyond me.

Anyway, it's an interesting foray, and for 1972, does surprisingly well in spite of itself. The White Saviour trope runs deep in Doctor Who, at least from the Second Doctor on, and the Third Doctor is pretty much peak White Saviour. But in this adventure, although he keeps himself quite busy, it's hard to see how the resolution was at all reliant on him. For an adventure so heavily laden with markers of racism, they did well to leave it up to the local people to win their own freedom. It also contains a very early example (for Doctor Who) of truly colour-blind casting. There's a pair of everyman soldiers who have reasonably beefy roles, and one of them is played by a black actor, for apparently no reason other than that there's no reason not to. (It's undercut by said actor being atrocious in the role, but marks for trying.)

Anyway, Rosa put me very much in mind of this past adventure. In both cases, there are things it gets right, and manages more deftly than one might have expected given the production limitations. In both cases, the resolution is left up to the oppressed people, with the Doctor at best providing space for them to do so. In both cases the villains are cartoonish and the plot seems ever more bonkers the longer you think about it.

In one area at least, The Mutants outdoes Rosa. Being set in the future on another planet, and with a regime that seems to encompass Racism's Greatest Hits, we actually can and do end the ep by burning it all down. That feels rather more satisfying and triumphant than "They named an asteroid after her! She changed the universe!"

I'd advise everyone who isn't a fan of the Jillifonts to take the title of this week's Who extremely seriously.

Yeaugggggghhhhhhh

I would be so much more into this episode if it were about giant killer mutated literally anything else.

I don't even generally have an issue and I was squicked.

Yeah, that was a whole lot of Jillifonts, both in numbers and volume. I was hoping to see the Trump analog get eaten by one or more of them, but alas, I was disappointed. Pity.

Black Lightning: I'm glad Henderson figured out Jefferson is Black Lightning. I'm hoping Lena figures things out soon on Supergirl too. She's really too smart not to.

Legends of Tomorrow: I love all the tiny BeeBo references.

I loved Nate saying, "And then we formed a Beebo Voltron..." because it's so incomprehensible. It's barely comprehensible within the show.

I'm fine with Constantine joining the team, not necessarily thrilled, but I look forward to the inevitable showdown with Mick.

So, Arachnids in the UK. I... kind of hated it. Just didn't work for me at all. I think it's my least favourite ep this season so far.

There were good things. On the plus side:

• Yaz got some screentime! And a (very annoying) family! Big plus. Some nice character beats for Graham and Ryan too, with imaginary Grace and the letter from Deadbeat Dad. Also the Doctor jumping at a dinner invitation, which draws a pretty strong delineation with her previous incarnations.
• The spider CGI was pretty good. When there was a bunch crawling along the ceiling, it did look to me like there was a lack of variety/individuation in the animation, but generally it wasn't embarrassing. (I grew up on Classic Who, THIS IS MY BENCHMARK.)
• Funniest ep so far this season, I think:

"Why don't you do what normal people do, get a gun, shoot things like a civilized person?"

"Dude, I have all the authorization I ever need. [to Yaz] I call people 'dude' now."

"My husband's right. It's a conspiracy! Do you have any idea how annoying it is when my husband's right?"

"Are you two seeing each other?"
"[considers] I don't think so... Are we?"

"Are you Ed Sheeran?!"

But it just ultimately all fell flat for me. Start with the resolution:

• Attracting the spiders with grime was pretty neat, but. There are spiders all over Sheffield (all over the UK by now?), I don't see how clearing the hotel does that much. The toxic waste is still down there, and it appears Robertson's getting away with that. The solution was kind of cruel. Far as I can make out, all the spiders are either going to starve or suffocate (or start feeding on each other). All in all, the ep felt unfinished somehow.
• Robertson didn't shoot the queen spider out of mercy, but he wasn't wrong. A slow death from suffocation isn't better. I'm not sure what moral principle the Doctor was working from there, which is a problem for a show such as Doctor Who.
• That also leaves the Doctor's "No guns" policy feeling like it's just an aesthetic choice. Like the Doctor doesn't like guns in the same way that I don't like mushrooms.
• It feels like every ep this season so far has left matters unresolved. The Stenza (and Tim Shaw) are still out there. Krasko is still out there. And now Robertson toddles off, apparently to run for President unimpeded. I don't mind that every now and again (one assumes the Stenza at least will be back for their comeuppance), but it's starting to make this Doctor look ineffectual. Just treating the symptoms, never the cause.

Some other things:

• Chris Noth was too hammy. If he'd had a moustache he'd have been twirling it. (Plus, "I'm compromised!" [Anguish!] I wonder if there's an earlier draft where that idea went somewhere?) Doctor Who is at its best when the actors treat it seriously and not like they can panto it up because it's for kids. Noth's was by no means the most scenery-chewing performance that DW has ever seen, but it was a strange turn given his past performances. (He wouldn't need to step too far beyond Peter Florrick to make this work very well.)
• The Trump references... Hated them. There was no substance. It was woefully inadequate to just how screwed up things really are, which just comes off as trivialising it. (It could have provided some catharsis if the Trumpstitute had at least gotten punched in the face, but no, not even that.)
• I don't know if this is just me, but... giant spiders should have been scarier. I found this footage creepier than anything in the episode (spider warning, of course): [link] Or this: [link] I wonder if they toned it down deliberately.