Doctor Who: Arachnids in the UK (Election Day)

Today in the USA, a lot of people are going to be voting, and a lot of people’s opinions are going to be based on what an evil, callous, selfish, entitled, petty, hotel mogul with a bad haircut has been doing recently.

That’s right, Jack Robertson.

We’ve all seen his hotels popping up everywhere, and that callous--

Okay I’ll quit playing around, we all know Jack Robertson is a Trump stand in. The choice to make him a stand in (even mentioning Trump exists as well) rather than an explicit rendition of Trump is a smart one here for a lot of reasons, but first of all it gives Chris North the opportunity to do more than an imitation or a caricature. Jack Robinson is the essence of Donald Trump, without needing to do the entire shtick, and that essence is a clearer view. It removes the inessential distractions: the taped on ties and strange hair that moves in such a strange manner that people have spent more time than is humanly necessary tracking down exactly what technique was used to put it there.

But these things are aesthetics, they’re not the character of a man.

Which we’ll get back to after the spiders.

* * *

Arachnids in the UK finally returns us to the excellent format of making a music related pun as the episode title, which I still wish had been for every episode, and also returns us to the same patterns we’ve had in every episode so far.
-Something has been put into a living being without it’s consent (the spiders).
-The villain of the story gets away at the end (Jack Robertson).

And new this this list, we’re also 4 for 4 on having an artificially created or modified life form in the episode. So the themes here are getting layered on thick here. It’s fairly clear we’re heading towards something with all this, but I’ll save that speculation for the next essay.

But noted, right?

* * *

Despite the cool title, the spiders are sort of a distraction. They aren’t the villains, they’re just the consequences of the villain’s actions. Jack Robertson has casually saved money by dumping waste below his hotel, and that toxic brew caused genetically modified spiders to mutate and grow super huge. The spiders kill people, but not maliciously. They’re just big dumb confused spiders. The real villain is the business mogul.

Chris North makes Jack Robertson have all the self-concern and self-obsession of Trump, the obsession with power that tumbles into horrific actions (like shooting the spider), and the sheer disregard for anyone else’s well being that leads to many people around him, like his niece's wife and his bodyguard dying. He also fires Yaz’s mum, which is an action that rightly should disqualify anyone from higher office.

All of this is awful, and along with Graham seeing Grace everywhere in his home, unable to escape from her memory, and Yaz’s family being simply a lot for her to deal with and manage, the entire gang decides to leave the Earth behind and go off with the Doctor. After all, things suck here right now, that’s fair. But we can’t all leave, can we? Still, one can’t blame them. They’re going to have wonderful adventures. Can’t wait to see those!

That Jack Robertson gets away with no consequences feels particularly rough right now, but also very realistic. After all, what consequences have their been for all sorts of awful things?

I mean, can you imagine if Jack Robertson was elected president? And put children in cages, removed an entire group of people as existing according to the government, bragged about how he could put millions of people into camps, admitted on tape to sexually assaulting women, made fun of a disabled journalist on camera, was credibly accused of rape by a former wife, ignored the biggest threat to the world’s ecosystems, blamed people who weren’t white for all sorts of horrible things, lumped an entire group of people together as criminals, cheated on all of his wives, called neo-nazis “Fine people”, put in policies that are destroying manufacturing jobs he claimed he’d bring back, and tons tons more extremely well documented things that only a fool could deny as it was all there right in front of their eyes.

Can you imagine if people who claimed they loved good morals just stood by and let him walk away and get away with it? Or even tried to make excuses for him because they liked his power?

If you live in the United States, just imagine there was a whole party of people who’d been claiming for years to love good morals who’d suddenly sidled up to that kind of horrible man because he had power? Wouldn’t you want to do what you could to show them you wouldn’t tolerate that hypocrisy and depravity? If there was an election, wouldn’t you vote in anyway you could to keep Jack Robertson from being able to do more evil?

Then go vote today, if you can.

Because Trump is not as nice as Jack Robertson, and real people will be hurt if he gains more power, or keeps it.

So vote. Because we can’t just let him walk away.

We can’t let our story end like Arachnids in the UK.
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