Kerblam! - A Review

I rather liked this episode. It had more of an old school Doctor Who feel to it, and I think it could easily have fitted into some of the previous Doctor's eras. It was the sort of story which Russell T Davies might have commissioned - or written himself. I could also see this sitting in the Andrew Cartmel era.
For once we got some real TARDIS action at the beginning, finally seeing the new scanner in operation. As with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, something is able to materialise on board the ship - in this case a package from the retail company of the title. Series 11 has tended to shy away from references to the show's past, but the package the Doctor receives contains a new fez, so obviously ordered back in her 11th incarnation. However, there's also a call for help in the box - so I was reminded of the Doctor receiving messages in previous stories such as The Doctor's Wife and Night Terrors. A specific Series 4 story was also referenced, as the Doctor was about to tell her companions about her meeting with Agatha Christie after one of them mentioned wasps.
Writer Peter McTighe was able to get the Doctor and companions into the story very quickly by having them pretend to be new workers at the Kerb!am warehouse, on a moon orbiting the planet Kandoka. McTighe's other great strength was in being able to give the TARDIS crew equal weight in the story - including a much stronger role for the Doctor. She decides to investigate, and works out what is going on just as we, the audience, start to do the same. All three companions get something substantial to do - something which the writers this season have generally failed to manage. Yaz even gets to do something which a trained police officer would do. Those other writers, especially her creator, seem to have forgotten what her job is.

Robot servants going out of control and killing people is hardly an original concept. We've seen Voc Robots and Heavenly Host in the programme before. McTighe cleverly subverts expectations that the automated systems of the company are responsible. It's those systems which have actually called out for help. The real villain is a misguided anti-automation activist who has been working for the company as a maintenance man, Charlie. He is set up as a nice young man, who is in love with one of the other staff members, Kira, who works in the packing department. We are expected to see this pair united at the conclusion. Kira becomes trapped in a room with a box which contains deadly bubble-wrap. That's a sentence I never thought I would ever see myself writing. We expect the others to save her at the last minute - but this doesn't happen. Nice Kira gets killed. It transpires that Charlie has been sabotaging the robots to test his deadly bubble-wrap on some of his colleagues before he launches his master plan - sending thousands of despatch-bots out across the cosmos to deliver lethal packages. This will turn people against the company, and automation in general. It has earlier been stated that Kandoka has a 10% real people in real jobs policy, and this is what Charlie objects to. What about the other 90% who aren't guaranteed work, he wants to know.
The Doctor manages to get all the robots to deliver to where they are already standing, rather than disperse across space, and then open their boxes and pop a bubble. Charlie is standing amongst them when this happens. The Doctor and company did try to get him to move to safety, but they didn't do much more than that to save him.
There was quite a small guest list for this story. We've mentioned Charlie and Kira. There are only three others whom we get to meet. Lee Mack had more than the small cameo he claimed, playing Yaz's colleague Dan. You just knew when he started talking about his child back home that he was not long for this world. Then we had the management. The dodgy exec Jarva Slade (Callum Dixon) is clearly set up to make us think that he is going to be the bad guy. The Head of People, Judy (Julie Hesmondhalgh), is rather nice, so they could equally have had her the surprise villain.
Apparently people are claiming there is a mistake as Ryan is seen to pop some bubble-wrap at the start of the story, whereas they are all afraid to touch it at the conclusion. At no point was it ever stated that all of the bubble-wrap was deadly, so I don't see how this can be called a continuity error.
So, a better episode than some that have gone before this season. Once again there was an element of preachiness, but this didn't feel quite as intrusive this time.
We're off to 17th Century Lancashire next time, for another historical story - though not recent history for a change. The second half of this season has seen a slight upturn for me, mainly because other people are writing it. Let's hope it continues.