Doctor Who (2005) 11-07: Kerblam! (Quick Review)

Episode:

847

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Serial:

283

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Writer:

Pete McTighe

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Air Date:

18-Nov-2018

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm reviewing the episode of Doctor Who known as Kerblam!

It's not the only episode in the series history to use punctuation in the title (there's The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe for one) but it is the very first to feature an exclamation mark. There's still exactly zero episodes with a question mark in the title though, so that's still up for grabs. Incidentally Star Trek has two exclamation mark titles and six question mark titles, so Doctor Who has some catching up to do. Fun fact: your life wasn't improved by knowing any of this.

This was the second episode directed by Jennifer Perrott (after The Tsuranga Conundrum, a title I can now spell correctly without looking it up), but the first to be written by Pete McTighe, a screenwriter I know nothing about. It's interesting how they went with entirely new writers for this season, like they were trying to make absolutely sure the episodes had no resemblance to anything that'd come before. That probably wasn't the worst idea actually, but I'm still hoping they give Jamie Mathieson another episode in series 12, considering how well Mummy on the Orient Express and Flatline worked out. Or let him take over as showrunner, either's good.

There will be SPOILERS below, so this would be a good place to stop reading if you don't already know what happens. I might also mention a few things from earlier episodes too, but I couldn't spoil anything later if I tried because they haven't aired yet.

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This episode helped me to understand that I'm an idiot. It's literally called Kerblam! and I didn't call that a: the threat would be from explosives in the packages and b: the threat would ultimately be resolved by blowing them all up. Came as a total surprise to me.

Though I'm still not entirely sure why the Doctor needed to have the robots blow themselves up as it's not like the robots were going to deliver the same packages twice and I'm sure those boxes didn't contain the only exploding bubble wrap in the building anyway. Still, nothing important was lost aside from thousands of expensive machines. Despite the Doctor admonishing her companions for their robophobia there was no hint that anything in the warehouse aside of the Kerblam computer had developed intelligence, so the only person harmed was the dumbass who let himself get blown up. Though if they'd all looked like K-9 I would've been in tears afterwards.

The bigger tragedy was all those thousands of people getting their identically-sized packages delayed by a month. Though if the Doctor had failed the biggest tragedy would've been thousands of families blowing up, one explosion for each of those pairs of glowing eyes in that screencap up there. The biggest tragedy of the season I mean, as for once this episode had some actual stakes. I've never been keen on episodes putting the whole world or universe in danger, but so far this season Team Tardis have been saving 2-4 people an episode, aside from themselves, and it's nice to have a bigger win occasionally. Especially as they did nothing at all last time in Demons of the Punjab.

Another thing I was totally blindsided by was Charlie the cleaner being the villain, despite the limited number of suspects. I guess I subconsciously expected it to be Dan, seeing as he got so much screen time before being killed off. Plus they focused on the pendant enough to make me wonder how it would feature into his evil plans (or the Doctor's ultimate victory). Turns out that it did eventually come back... but only as a dog tag to be returned to his family after his death. Poor Dan.

The episode was pretty good with its clues, foreshadowing and misdirection I thought, as there was plenty of set up and things generally made sense once the truth was revealed. Though I've seen enough science fiction now that I predicted the computer itself was the one calling for help approximately 3 minutes into the episode without any clues (according to my notes). Well, either it or a robot.

That'd place my epiphany right about this point in the story, during the scene where the Doctor demonstrates her usual subtly with the sonic screwdriver by practically shoving it into Julie Hesmondhalgh's face and turning it up to 'loud' while hacking her glowing clipboard. It was subtle enough though I guess, as she apparently had no idea the hack had happened. I guess when you work with robots all day a loud mysterious buzzing sound isn't suspicious or unusual in the slightest.

Though the scene's packed full of other things that aren't quite so obvious on a first watch. Like Charlie the cleaner polishing the display case for Twirly the delivery bot. Plus the evolution chart showing several generations of delivery bots, leading to their current horrific design that makes them look somewhere between the murderous Art Deco robots from The Robots of Death and the sinister robot bus conductor in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

One more observation: the logo on the box shows that the company's actually called 'Kerb!am', so they got the episode title wrong. Incidentally, Dan wasn't the only person to get his face on a poster, as that image in the background apparently features cameos from director Jennifer Perrott and Director of Photography Simon Chapman.

The biggest surprise in the story for me was probably Ryan accidentally pushing Charlie off the conveyor belt. He really should've been more careful seeing as he'd reminded us about his coordination problems as he was psyching himself to jump down there. I'm glad his disability is way down the list of things that define his character, but I'm also glad they remember it from time to time when it's appropriate. And it could've saved Kira's life here if Charlie hadn't landed on another conveyor belt!

One thing I knew about this season from early on was that one of the episodes was going to be using a ton of VFX to put the characters into an alien world like we'd never seen before on Doctor Who, and that the art department were particularly proud of the work they'd done for it. And then the episode turned out to be set in a warehouse. A giant, virtually abandoned warehouse. I guess I was expecting something a little more Avatar.

Though I can't deny that everyone involved did great work, as it features the best looking Attack of the Clones conveyor belt action sequence I've seen produced on a TV budget. Plus the design work for the robots, logos, packaging etc. was spot on. I could really believe that Kerblam was a real brand if I didn't already know it was actually Amazon.

All those beautiful logos.

I didn't crop this screencap by the way. It was a panning shot so I couldn't resist making a single image out of it to include that Greatest Show in the Galaxy-looking moon up there in that Time and the Rani-style purple sky. I wonder if they were deliberately calling back to the Seventh Doctor run with the visuals, seeing as the episode started with a creepy looking robot appearing in the Tardis to deliver mail and the Doctor travelling here deliberately on a mission to sort a situation out. I mean it's all very familiar and I'm not just talking about the fez.

The episode kind of felt like a step backwards to an earlier era of the series in general, as it was a more childish adventure with broader characters and zero time spent on Ryan's relationship with his dad or Graham dealing with his grief etc. It felt like it would've been more at home during the goofy Russell T Davies years, or even the Steven Moffat run with the way it tries to make kids scared of bubble wrap. Though sinister corporations in dystopian futures was more the Third Doctor's thing, and the Fourth Doctor took on a plot to turn robot workers into killers in The Robots of Death. Though if anyone was hoping this would go the same route as The Sun Makers and end with the workers throwing the execs off the roof they were likely disappointed.

This is a pretty blatant satire on Amazon, with Ryan even pointing out that what they've got him doing isn't much different to his old job. It focuses pretty hard on how miserable it is to work there, performing repetitive menial tasks with supervisors watching you all the time to make sure you don't do anything unproductive like act like a human for a few minutes, and managers on hand to make even the best employees feel like crap. Plus the grey walls, ankle bracelets and interrogation room in the basement don't exactly make it a fun workplace, and I wouldn't be entirely reassured by the way they apparently rule the planet either. Even at the end of the episode when they're explaining how they're going to improve things, they casually mention that they're shutting down for a month and giving the employees two weeks paid leave.

The episode spends a lot of time setting up Kerblam as the enemy that needs to be defeated... but then it turns out to be a red herring and the story switches to talking about automation instead! Even worse, it has people (and propaganda posters) saying 'this is pretty bad, but at least we have a job so we're actually the lucky ones', then instead of things getting less terrible by the end, all that happens is that more people get to be lucky enough to suffer there! Viewers were given a box labelled 'Doctor Who takes on Amazon' and opened it up to find a message saying "soul crushing work that could be done by robots is better than no work at all". It's obviously not praising Amazon, but it has a 'oh well, that's life' attitude about it and blows up the only person trying to change things. So I can understand why so many people came away with such a negative opinion on the episode.

The thing is, the writer didn't have to make Kerblam a terrible place to work! He could've written it to seem too good to be true, with all the employees suspiciously happy, and that would've been equally creepy. It seems to me that they should've either just made it a story about Space Amazon or made it a story about a company people are desperate to work at, as doing both at once was never going to lead to a satisfying ending unless the company was reformed at the end. And it's not.

Plus it's a bit weird that the Doctor's not more bothered by the fact that Kerblam's computer murdered Kira to make a point. Sure it was doing it to save thousands of lives, but I feel like more should've been said about it. Especially as it was also trying to save thousands of customers and avoid a lot of bad PR, so it seems like wishful thinking to assume it had developed a conscience.

It's weird that the message got so mangled at the end because I thought the episode had been fairly well constructed up to that point. I guess part of the problem is that it's so keen on keeping the audience guessing that it keeps leading us down dead ends. Like the relationship between Charlie and Kira that's there to make us root for both of them and keep us from thinking of Charlie as a suspect, even as all the clues build up. The promise of a love story also makes us think that Kira's going to make it through to the end, but nope! The writer deliberately made her a loveable tortured puppy of a character just so he could twist the knife with her cruel unnecessary death.

Anyway, my opinion on the episode is that... I really liked it! Well, I thought it was a higher level of 'alright' than the other episodes so far this season, which have all been alright themselves. It's lost some of the more modern and realistic style that the Chris Chibnall era has introduced and the flaws become obvious the more you think about it, but I found that was I more engaged by it. I cared about all the people involved, which puts it a step above Tsuranga Conundrum, the characters were able to stop a disaster so it appeals to me more than Demons of the Punjab, and I guess I'm biased towards it because it better fits my notions of what a Doctor Who story is. Plus it had the Doctor actually taking on authority figures and dominating conversations for a change, which I appreciated. Anything that makes Jodie Whittaker's Doctor feel more like the genuine article I wholeheartedly approve of.

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COMING SOON

Doctor Who will return with The Witchfinders.

Once, many years ago, I made the decision to turn the comments on underneath my posts and to my surprise I never once regretted it. Well, aside from all the times I've had to delete the spam. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that comments are great and you should leave me one.