Who Review: Kerblam!

The Doctor receives a parcel in the TARDIS courtesy of galaxy-wide online shopping store “Kerblam!” It seems she ordered something from them and forgot about it. But the package comes with a cry for help on the packing slip. It doesn’t take much persuasion from the TARDIS crew to go and investigate. They find themselves at Kerblam!’s sprawling warehouse that takes up most of a moon. Going undercover as new employees, the Doctor and her friends immediately sense things are not right. While the facility is mostly automated and run by artificial intelligence, there are ten thousand humanoid “organic” employees. The company prides itself on the fact it has employed so many given the current galactic unemployment situation. But employees are disappearing. Then one of Yaz’s co-workers goes missing, raising fears as to who will be next. They need to find the person who sent the distress message before the robots take over and there’s no-one left to help…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

The seventh story of Season 11 was written by Pete McTigue, a British writer whose has been writing primarily for Australia. His writing credits to date include the popular soap, “Neighbours,” as well as the series “Wentworth” and “Glitch.” This is his first Doctor Who.

“Kerblam!” is a mystery adventure set in a dystopian version of the mega-retailer Amazon. Comparisons with the popular online store are too easy. At first I thought the story was going to be a critique of Amazon, but if anything it’s a warning about excessive automation. That kind of message would apply to many distribution warehouses these days. In fact, as the story progresses, we see Kerblam! as much a victim of events as the humans being killed. I have no doubt McTigue based Kerblam! on Amazon, but any targeted criticisms of Amazon are, I think, very subtle. So subtle I didn’t catch them. The fact the bad guy turns out to be a disgruntled organic employee, and not something corrupt in the system, demonstrates this.

“Kerblam!” is also about the dangers of bubble wrap. A lesson I thought we learned back in 1974 with “Ark in Space”… 🙂

There were a couple of interesting plot twists. One of these was the critique-of-Amazon-that-didn’t-happen. The deaths of two characters are also among those twists. One wasn’t so much of a surprise. When the nice guy offers to go somewhere dangerous on behalf of one of the main characters, you know it’s not going to end well. The other, however, was part of an awkward budding romance between co-workers, the kind you expect to see resolved at the end. This character’s death was not only a surprise, but also turned out out to be an important plot point.

Overall, the story felt to me like a story from the Russell T. Davies era of Who. “The Long Game,” perhaps. Speaking of which, did you catch the nod to the Tenth Doctor story, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”? And the Eleventh Doctor reference near the beginning? After all the references to the Classic Series we’ve had so far, these no doubt brought smiles to some of the newer Whovians.

There are some questions that remain unanswered. For example, how was “Kerblam!” able to trace the TARDIS through space and time? Would alien cultures be using cardboard boxes and bubble wrap? If they could teleport the robots to deliver the packages, why not just teleport the ordered item? All of these are minor points–the kinds of things we can gloss over for the sake of enjoying the story.

And it is an enjoyable story. Not a classic, but fun, creepy (hints of “Robots of Death”), and entertaining. I continue to be impressed with Jodie Whittaker’s performance, as well as that of her co-stars, though Graham does remind me a little too much of Charlie Slater from EastEnders–the jovial grandfatherly nice guy. It is a little disappointing we haven’t had a “must-see” story yet this season. But all of the episodes so far have been good, and I would gladly re-watch them.

What did you think? Add your thoughts to mine below!