Review of Kerblam!
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
I found Kerblam! kind of confusing. I don’t mean that I couldn’t follow the plot; rather, I came out of it not knowing how to feel about the whole thing.
At first I thought it seemed too obviously derivative (scary robots—never seen those before! and could Kerblam be any more obvious an analogue for Amazon?), but then there were some elements that kept me engaged (most especially the Companions; I felt they were all great in this episode, and each got a chance to shine).
But more than anything, it was the overall message of the episode that left me scratching my head. Was I supposed to think that massive, faceless corporations are (or at least can be) the real “good guys”? And that enthusiastic young people who are fighting for rights for themselves and their peers are misguided murderers?
Or was the point that no system is perfect and those who misuse a system to further their own causes without considering the impact on others are fundamentally wrong? And that dudebros who act on their persecution complexes should always be stopped?
None of those possibilities quite seem to fit what came across on screen, though I suspect the latter set was closer to the production team’s goal. After all, the entire series has been fully of heavy social justice messaging and the Doctor did get to speechify about something that could definitely be read as a warning against letting anyone “erode people’s trust in” democracy/voting (rather than in “automation,” which was her literal statement).
It’s a real shame that all this bewilderment formed my final impression of the episode, because for most of it I quite enjoyed the ride. The Doctor did plenty of recognizably Doctor-ish things, like getting upset with herself for missing “obvious” things because she was thinking about too much at once or giving the antagonist every opportunity to change their ways and get out alive.
And the plot had—for me, anyway—just the right blend of predictability and expectation subversion to keep me engaged. The robots were far enough outside the Uncanny Valley to be either charming or creepy, depending on how they were presented (compare, for example, the Doctor’s glee at seeing “the Kerblam Man” in her TARDIS to Yaz’s experience with the silent delivery bots back in section 99955/7). And, of course, we had the return to Moffat’s classic formula of finding a familiar object and making it terrifying. (Though, let’s be honest—there were so many times, places, and ways in which that bubble wrap could, or even should, have burst and nothing happened. Ryan clearly popped a cell of it right at the beginning; there’s no reason Graham should’ve had cause for concern about the stuff in the Doctor’s package.)
All the Companions had the chance to connect with a guest character and show off their own strengths, too. (Mind you, every one of those new friends ended up dead…) It was actually one of the most skillful employments of a large TARDIS team I’ve ever seen.
So why, when you put all these good elements together, did I feel like a kid who’d just opened a holiday package and discovered it was full of tube socks and underwear? That muddy message at the end of it all really did overshadow everything else. What does it matter that all the setup worked beautifully to lead us to a surprising conclusion if the conclusion itself is ambiguous?
I mean I get it—at the surface level it’s perfectly logical. It just felt weird that the Doctor and her friends would simply fly off at the end as if the broader problems of the galactic workforce were none of their concern. I couldn’t quite believe that the Doctor could see the kind of desperation that hatched this despicable plan and not want to address the root problem.
I hope that a little distance will help me get past that disconnect, because I liked this episode up until the last five minutes. I really wanted to keep liking it. It’s too bad this isn’t a case where I can simply apply “if you want it, Kerblam it.”
I had no issues with the twist that the “baddie” wasn’t the faceless corporation. I would have felt it was somewhat lazy scripting if the company had been the baddie.
However, I was, on first viewing, more uncomfortable with the Doctor blowing up the Kerblam Man Army with Charlie in their midst, I am still asking myself “Did the Doctor give him enough of a chance to get out?”
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to see Ryan pop the bubblewrap while Graham was warned off. Maybe this is one of those examples where the actor was doing something in the background, like the shadow puppets in Arachnids?
A good episode – enjoyable and fun
I think the Doctor didn’t have a choice on the timing. She had to act quickly to stop the bots from delivering to all those customers, and after that, she had no control of the countdown. What she did at the end was not to detonate, but to teleport everyone out. So that was all on Charlie; it was up to him to get out and accept the Doctor’s metaphorical outstretched hand, and he didn’t.
Potatoes potartoes! 🙂
Next questions: where did the system get hold of the explosive bubblwrap and if it knew it existed what was it doing to prevent it being used? Also, what were the consequences of the system murdering Kira?
Considering I liked the episode I’m not sure why I’m digging too deeply.
Happy Thanksgiving btw!
Wasn’t Charlie manipulating the system into packing orders with the explosive bubble wrap in the first place? It should’ve been easy enough for it to take some for its own purposes. Then the system did something about it by asking the Doctor for help! 🙂 (No idea what the consequences re: Kira would be. The only ones left who know about it are the HR lady and the admin dude; they don’t seem likely to do something to punish the system for defending itself…)
And thank you—I did have a happy Thanksgiving. Now I’m home from my travels, and ready to watch another episode!