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While I definitely felt this episode was a step up from last week’s “Arachnids in the UK,” I didn’t find it all that great, either. It has some funny bits and some good character moments, but the Pting was ridiculous (it reminded me unfavorably of the Adipose, those cutesy little “fat babies” in the season four episode “Partners in Crime”), and the spaceship-under-attack-by-an-alien plot felt worn. Yaz punting the Pting down the hallway with a reference to Siobhan Chamberlain made me roll my eyes so hard I thought I would go blind.

There were things I enjoyed about the episode, though. Yoss, the pregnant male Gifftan, had me chuckling in his every scene. Everything Graham does and says pleases me, in particular this time his stated love for Call the Midwife; he’s quickly becoming my favorite character this season. The strained relationship between Eve Cicero and her brother Durkas was both touching and well acted. As a writer, Chris Chibnall knows to take a moment to let characters talk to each other, and as a result the character development works well, as with the Cicero siblings or whenever Ryan is talking about his father. But the problem is that Chibnall doesn’t always let the right characters talk.

In particular, it seems to me that he’s not letting the Doctor talk to the other characters much except to explain things or make the occasional joke. Believe it or not, we’re halfway through the season now, and yet I still don’t have a clear idea of who this Doctor is. The reason for that, as I see it, is that Chibnall isn’t letting her open up to her companions, which in turn means she’s not opening up to us, the audience. One thing both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat were very good at was forging a strong, personal bond between the Doctor and the companions. I don’t feel that here, and I miss it. I think Graham, Ryan, and Yaz are good characters who make for interesting companions, but I don’t feel the connection. That shouldn’t be the case halfway through the season. By now, we should have a much better sense of where everyone stands and what they mean to each other.

And now for a little bit of Doctor Who neepery. When the Doctor wakes up aboard the hospital ship, Mabil asks for her detailed medical information, worried about accidentally botching her treatment by not knowing the Doctor’s biology. This kind of information definitely could have helped the Doctor in the 1996 TV movie, in which the Seventh Doctor is shot, but when Dr. Grace Holloway attempts to save his life in surgery she doesn’t understand his alien biology and only makes matters worse, forcing him to regenerate into the Eighth Doctor. When the Doctor and Eve Cicero say the same thing at the same time, the Doctor exclaims, “Snap!” This is something the Doctor also does upon meeting previous incarnations, such as when the Sixth Doctor met the Second Doctor in the 1985 serial “The Two Doctors,” and when the Tenth Doctor met the Fifth Doctor in the 2007 Children in Need special “Time Crash.” Lastly, according to the Internet, images of a Cyberman, an Ood, a Weeping Angel, a Raxacoricofallapatorian, a Sontaran, a Silent, a Silurian, and a Zygon appear on a console screen before Mabli selects a briefing on the Pting, but if they did they went by too quickly for me to notice.

Next episode, we have another chance to learn more about Yaz, who remains the most underdeveloped of the companions. (Frankly, I’m surprised the writers haven’t made more use of her police skills. Also, unrelatedly, is it just me or has Ryan’s dyspraxia pretty much been forgotten now?) Anyway, here’s hoping the next episode is a better one that offers more insight into her character.

***MILD SPOILERS AHEAD***

“Arachnids in the UK” is the first episode of the 11th season so far to leave me feeling meh. The story was very blah, in my opinion. I enjoyed meeting Yaz’s family (although to be honest I don’t feel like I know Yaz any better for it) and learning a little more of Ryan’s story through his receiving a letter from his dad, and I really loved all the scenes where Graham was seeing Grace in their old home, but that’s pretty much it.

The CGI used for the giant spiders is not great. There are a few scenes that will give you the creepy-crawlies if you, like me, are no fan of spiders, but overall they look kind of silly. Jack Roberston, played by Chris Noth, is more a caricature than a character. I get that there are people like that in real life, but he feels over the top, and just in terms of narrative I would have liked to see him either reveal some hidden depths in the face of danger or get killed off. As it was, he just kind of skates through the story as a jerk and a loudmouth but with no real impact.

The story is filled with plot holes that had me wondering how the episode could be ending already. What about the spiders in the safe room? There’s six months’ worth of food in there and ostensibly some kind of oxygen supply. What’s the plan? We don’t know. The spiders are herded into the safe room, the door is closed, and they’re left there. And what about the spiders that have escaped from the hotel into the surrounding city, like the one they found in Yaz’s neighbor’s apartment? They’re still out there, quite possibly suffocating more people in their webs, but after the mother spider dies the Doctor and her companions are act like everything is over and take off.

I’m also confused as to how the baby spiders got out of the toxic waste dump under the hotel in the first place, how some of the waste itself got out for Yaz’s dad to collect all over town, and why the toxicity of that waste seemed to be no big deal when piled up in Yaz’s family’s apartment. No one was sick from it. The Doctor apparently couldn’t tell it was toxic and didn’t warn them to get rid of it. It was just commented on as a nuisance and ignored. And one bit that really got under my skin: At the end, Yaz tells her family she’s going out to get more bread for their meal, but instead goes to the TARDIS and takes off with the Doctor. You don’t tell people you’re going to do something like that and then just leave them waiting! That’s very rude! It’s played off as no big deal, but it annoyed me so much.

There were plenty of opportunities for Doctor Who neepery this episode. After all, the Doctor has met giant spiders before, such as the Great One in the 1974 Third Doctor serial “Planet of the Spiders,” and of course there was the Racnoss in the 2006 Tenth Doctor Christmas special “The Runaway Bride,” as well as the spiders on the moon in the 2014 Twelfth Doctor episode “Kill the Moon.” But none of these are referenced or mentioned, which I thought was a missed opportunity.

Ultimately, I found “Arachnids in the UK” to be pretty dumb and forgettable. I hope the next episode will be a return to form, as I thought the first three episodes of the season were very good.

Most seasons of the new Doctor Who feature one episode where the Doctor meets an important historical or cultural figure, whether it’s Shakespeare or Dickens or Agatha Christie. Season 11’s historical-figure episode arrives early with “Rosa,” which takes a different tack from previous episodes of its ilk. Where those other episodes focus on the Doctor teaming up with the historical figure to stop a science-fictional threat, here the Doctor must work behind the scenes to ensure history takes its proper shape. It’s a very good episode, but it’s got one big problem keeping it from being great.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

My sole issue with “Rosa” is the villain, a human (I think) man from the far future named Krasko. (And let me just say that because Joshua Bowman as Krasko is so conventionally TV handsome, I was worried for a moment that he would become a recurring love interest for the Doctor. Thankfully, it didn’t work out that way, presumably because this is no longer the Steven Moffat era.) But what was Krasko’s ultimate goal? What was his motivation? The “you people need to know your place” line wasn’t enough for me. We never learn his backstory, beyond being a criminal, or why all this is worth the effort for him, before he’s booted from the story by Ryan and the time displacement weapon. Where did he go? Will he be back? Is he changing history wherever he wound up? Krasko is a loose thread in an otherwise tightly plotted historical adventure.

Similarly, if Krasko is prevented from simply killing Rosa Parks because of his neural restricter, but he has a time displacement weapon, why doesn’t he just zap her to another time period so she can’t make history? Why have the ability to displace people in time and not use it? I was also intrigued that Krasko is aware of what a TARDIS is, but nothing more comes of that. Does he know about the Time Lords? Does he know about the Doctor? It’s never explored.

While the science-fictional aspects of the plot are thin, the character work continues to be extraordinary. The cast is coming together really well, and no one feels extraneous. Back in the day, when the Doctor had three companions at once, one of them would usually have to be captured or knocked unconscious so that there would be enough for the others to do. That’s not the case here at all. At first, I was worried the TARDIS would be too crowded with three companions, but it’s working for me. I loved watching them work behind the scenes to make sure Rosa Parks is on the bus when she’s supposed to be. And Vinette Robinson as Rosa Parks does an outstanding job.

I though Graham was going to have to fill in for James Blake as the bus driver, which would harken back to Grace telling him on their first date that he better not be like “Blake the snake.” But they did it one better by placing Graham smack in the middle of Rosa Parks’ famous bus protest. I found it very emotionally affecting, especially the look on the Doctor’s face where she realizes the only way to protect history is to just sit there and let this play out rather than jump in like she normally would.

Other things I really liked about the episode: the iPhone/Steve Jobs joke, the Banksy joke, Ryan meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. at Rosa Parks’ house, and particularly every time Ryan or Graham mention how much Grace would have loved meeting both Parks and King. I like how the characters are keeping Grace alive in their memories. I also enjoyed every time Graham calls the Doctor “Doc,” and every time the Doctor talks about having to get used to being in female form now. (The previous episode’s line “Come to Daddy…er, Mummy” is my favorite so far.)

And now for some Doctor Who neepery! There still isn’t a lot to be found, but there’s more than last time. In this episode, we have a mention of artron energy, which is found in the time vortex and which also powers the TARDIS, and was first mentioned back in the 1976 Fourth Doctor serial “The Deadly Assassin.” We see another vortex manipulator wristband of the kind that both Captain Jack Harkness and Missy wore. I think River Song may have had one, too. And speaking of, we learn that Krasko’s prison was the Stormcage Containment Facility, which is the same place River Song was imprisoned in season six.

Ultimately I thought “Rosa” was a very good episode, hamstrung only by Krasko, a villain we learn very little about and who is dispatched much too easily. Of course, you could say that society is the true villain of this episode and Krasko only incidental, and I wouldn’t argue with you, but I do think they could have done more with him. Anyway, next week’s episode introduces us to Yaz’s family, which should help round her out as a character, as I think she’s the one with the least amount of development so far. It also looks like a more traditional monsters-on-Earth episode, which should be fun.

*** MILD SPOILERS AHEAD***

I don’t have much to say about this episode. I enjoyed it. Plotwise it’s okay, and features a good callback to the Stenza, which makes me think we haven’t seen the last of them, but what’s really working for me are the characters, in particular the companions. Graham, Ryan, and Yaz continue to act like real, well-rounded human beings instead of walking bundles of charming quirks, and it’s working for me big time. Jodie Whittaker, in only two episodes, has completely won me over as the Doctor, and I suspect I’m going to have to reevaluate my Top 5 list soon. I’m not used to Doctor Who having a budget and doing so much location shooting, and so far I’m very impressed with this season’s large-scale, cinematic feel.

I have a few quibbles, as I always do. Epzo’s ship crash landing in exactly the spot where Angstrom and the others happen to be, on what is presumably a large, Earth-sized planet, is a stretch. Having the Remnants, those creepy, bioengineered threats that come out night, be able to speak was a mistake, as it made them much less scary. I suspect they were only made to speak so they could mention the Timeless Child, the mystery of which will probably be this season’s arc. (Could the name be a reference to the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan? I wonder, but I think probably not.)

And now for some Doctor Who neepery! There isn’t a lot, but I spotted three things. First, the return of Venusian aikido, the martial arts form used frequently by Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor. Second, the Doctor mentions that her companions wouldn’t need the implanted universal translators if she had her TARDIS with her, a reference to the TARDIS’s ability to telepathically translate alien languages for its passengers, a fact that was first mentioned by Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor in the 1976 serial “The Masque of Mandragora.” And third, the shooting range target that pops out of the dark and startles the characters is reminiscent of, although perhaps not a direct callback to, a similar thing happening in the 1967 Second Doctor serial “The Tomb of the Cybermen,” in which a fake Cyberman target pops out of nowhere to startle everyone.

There’s a new title sequence and a new TARDIS interior, both of which are beautifully rendered if overly busy, and both of which will take me some time to get used to. Still loving the new music, though. Anyway, onward to the next episode!