Yeah, I was thinking that too - herding all the babies into a tiny locked room to die of starvation and/or cannibalism seems like a great way to make sure there's one massive VERY ANGRY spider left at the end of the season.

This reminds me of a comic strip: if the movie 300 were part of a D&D campaign. [link]

I'm not entirely surprised that pretty much no one had anything to say about last week's Doctor Who. My favourite web comment was that the episode was "if Stitch was an actual threat".

The Pting was awfully cute to be so dangerous.

The Pting was awfully cute to be so dangerous.

I have seen another comment suggesting the only other time Doctor Who has really gone in for a "cute but dangerous" monster design was the Daleks.

What, no love for the Toclafane?

What, no love for the Toclafane?

Probably not. I mean, how would that even work?

I liked Demons of the Punjab. Nicely personal.

My DVR is refusing to tape The Flash this season. So, I just watched the two most recent episodes on the app. The newest iteration of Wells must go.

Good episode of Doctor Who. Painful.

I liked Demons of the Punjab. Nicely personal.

Yes, I really quite liked that one. Probably my favourite of the season so far. (The other contender, for all that I don't think it's something Doctor Who can really do successfully, is Rosa. Which at this moment I mostly fault for not having Doug Judy serenading her. It would make as much sense as the time travelling Nazi, and be more enjoyable.) It's not perfect - in particular, apparently the Doctor missed Sadhu's freakin' GUN SHOT WOUND when autopsying him - but as an emotional dramatisation it worked well. (Not unrelated - one of the biggest emotional gut punches I've ever got from popular entertainment was the film Gandhi.) It may be a concern that my favourite eps are the ones not written by the showrunner.

We're now more than halfway through this season, and we've yet to have a single dead baddie. At this point I have to assume it's deliberate; not sure what the thinking is, but it's definitely a thing. Not that I'm baying for blood, but so far the Thirteenth Doctor may be the most ineffectual incarnation since the Fifth.

Final thing, about history. The aliens in this ep were almost entirely superfluous. Which I have no problem with, and (on the subject of things Doctor Who can do) I'd really like to see them lose the conviction that every ep has to have an alien or time traveller or such like. When Doctor Who began, it had twin mandates to educate kids about science and history. That didn't last long, but the pure historical adventure (where, like this, success for the crew is determined by whether they escape unscathed and without messing anything up) was a staple for the First Doctor - about a third of his adventures fit this bill. (One other was a historical but with a sci-fi villain thrown in as a plot twist - and it could be a plot twist because it hadn't been a thing in any of the previous historicals.)

The historical fell off the radar thereafter, and though there were occasional forays into Earth's past, they always had some alien menace to deal with. (The mission generally changed from escaping with their lives to protecting the past.) I think that's a shame - it's unnecessarily restrictive. (Plus, the Beeb can knock out good period drama in its sleep.) I'm thinking that's especially the case for Chibnall's tenure. A pure historical with some good emotional beats to explore feels like it's more in his wheelhouse.

Another observation concerning the historical. Doctor Who's fourth adventure, Marco Polo, went to China. Its sixth went to Mexico. In 1967 the Second Doctor had an adventure set in Tibet. That was the last time Doctor Who ever used a non-Western historical setting - until now. Eleven Doctors, 33 seasons, 51 years. One might suggest it's long overdue.

I would forgive a lot for Doug Judy

ETA thanks for providing the show-historical context - so interesting to this pretty casual fan