The Doctor Who Review | Season 11 Episode 7

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WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! Welcome back to the Doctor Who Review, where I recap the week’s episode and give some thoughts and opinions on it. Please do not read if you have not seen this week’s episode. There are major spoilers ahead. You have been warned. Check out the rest of the Doctor Who Reviews here.

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Title: Kerblam! 

Written by: Chris Chibnall

When the Doctor and Team TARDIS are doing what they do best – flying through space giving us glimpses into their adventures they’re having that we will likely never see – a Postman Pat-looking robot materialises in front of them. Thirteen gets suddenly very excited – she’s getting mail from the Kerblam man! Apparently she ordered it ages ago, and to the joy of what I can only guess is many viewers, what’s in the box is a fez. (Oh how I miss Matt Smith.) On the slip of paper tucked into the box is an almost smudged piece of text which reads ‘help me’ on it. Of course the team can’t NOT do something about this, so off they fly to a moon on which all the workers of Kerblam pack all the shopping of the planet below, Kandoka.

Working undercover as new Kerblam workers, the Doctor, Yas, Ryan and Graham try to figure out who on the moon sent the message and is in need of help. They meet a few characters along the way, including one the people who work on the warehouse floor (played by Lee Mack). But when he goes missing, Yas leaps into action and heads off to try and find him, with the help of Ryan. Graham meets a young man in maintenance called Charlie, and the Doctor is trying to find out why so many of the staff have gone missing.

The conclusion? It’s not the Head of Human Resources, or the person in charge of the warehouse. It’s not even the system, the AI, itself as one might expect in a Doctor Who episode. It’s Charlie, a young man with a grudge. And the weapon is the bubble wrap which encases every single item in every single package. Needless to say, things do not go well for poor (ridiculous) Charlie, and while he perishes in an explosion of his own bubble wrap making, none of the Kerblam posties get to their destination, which means the Doctor and the team have saved the again. Minus one. We won’t talk about him.

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My thoughts on Kerblam!

I really enjoyed this episode, despite the fact that it was a robot-themed 60-minutes, there was something about the story that was captivating. I think the fact that it was so indicative of large shopping companies like Amazon, it was not only an entertaining story but an interesting look at the ‘real world’. Much like many of the other episodes we’ve had in the last season, Chris Chibnall and his team of writers have taken something that’s so engrained, so a part of our every day lives and taken a step back to say ‘hey what are we doing? What is happening with our systems and our world wide companies?’

Once again we’re hit with the reoccurring ‘the villain isn’t a monster’ theme – Charlie, a young man (and a young man in love, at that!) has a gripe, and he’s taking it out in the only way he knows how: bubble wrap. A sentence which I’d never thought I’d ever write in my life, but such is the case with Doctor Who. However, there was something about this episode which was different from the others in Season 11 so far, and what that is I can’t quite put my finger on. I have a small inkling it might be the writing of the script, the way Thirteen wasn’t such a firey spewer of words like she has been. She does have several shining moments, with great thoughts on the automation of the Kerblam company, and putting people, real people, out of jobs, and on the whole Jodi does some superb acting.

I can’t express enough my dislike of three companions, yet again, none of them are getting the screen time they deserve because they have to share it with a squad of others. While this episode had them splitting up and finding out information on their own, the story woven together in this way, the same could have been done with fewer. I’m really hoping season 12 isn’t the same. I don’t care who you cull, Chibnall, but please cull someone.

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Overall

Probably one of my favourites from this season – the other being Rosa – and I sincerly hope the rest of the episodes will be as entertaining, quick paced and decent as this one. I feel I say this every week, but the season as a whole just isn’t quite doing it for me right now. I needs more episodes like Kerblam! to pick up the season a little. Here’s hoping next week’s episode, The Witchfinders, is a goodie. From what the trailer has shown us, it might just be!

What did you think of this week’s episode?