​ "Kerblam!" – Doctor Who S11E07 Review

So it's old-school Doctor Who. Sort of. Maybe. Kinda.

I've read several reviews, and everyone describes "Kerblam!" as more of an old-school Doctor Who episode. Creepy robots, dark corridors, mysterious and ugly deaths. Seven people get (off-screen) liquidated, another guy is also killed (off-screen) with a terrified scream, and a woman blows herself up. Good times.

But it's got the more post-modern sensibility of a lot of Doctor Who. How? Good question. The Doctor receives a delivery of a fez from Kerblam, the universe's largest retailer. The packing slip has "Help Me" written on it, so the Doctor goes investigating. Kerblam's plant is on the moon of Kandoka, continuing this season's tradition of large unseen civilizations represented by a few people.

The Doctor, Ryan, Graham, and Yasmin infiltrate the plant claiming to be new staff sent by the First Lady, with some help from the Doctor's psychic paper. They're split up: the Doctor and Ryan do Dispatch, Yasmin gets Processing, and Graham ends up as a maintenance man. Although he gets the job the Doctor was originally assigned. Kerblam is 90% automated by creepy-looking TeamMates, and (post-modern alert!) has only 10% human staff because of union regulations.

Yasmin teams up with a co-worker, Dan Cooper (Lee Mack). He has a daughter and they're very close, and he's saving up money to send her to college. Dan dies off-screen with a terrifying scream after a couple of the TeamMates approach him.

The Doctor and Ryan befriend fellow Dispatch worker Kira Arlo (Claudia Jessie). She's never received a gift except once. Meanwhile, Graham meets maintenance man Charlie Duffy (Leo Flanagan), who has a crush on Kira. Along for the ride is the Human Representative, Judy Maddox (Julie Hesmondhaigh) and the supervisor, Jarva Slade (Callum Dixon).

Looking around, the Doctor eventually figure out Jarva knows something about the seven employees that have gone missing. It turns out, Jarva noticed the disappearances but had no one to report them to and didn't know who to trust. The Doctor uses and old delivery bot, Twirly, to analyze the base code of the system and determines the system is the one who asked for help. It turns out Charlie is the bad guy, and plans to teleport out thousands of the delivery bots with packages... all wrapped in explosive bubble wrap. The system takes Kira to a locked room and arranges it so Charlie gets to watch her blow up so he'll understand the pain and suffering he's going to inflict on the friends and family of all of his victims.

That doesn't work, and Charlie plans to go ahead with his plan to kill thousands of Kerblam customers so that they'll turn against the automated system. The Doctor catches on and rigs the delivery bots to deliver the packages to themselves and then pop the bubble wrap. Because no one can resist popping bubble wrap, doncha know? Charlie is down among the bots, and the Doctor teleports everyone else out so the resulting explosion only kills Charlie when he refuses to leave. The universe is safe for mass retailing, Judy and Jarva promise to make the company more human-oriented, and the Doctor and her companions go off to tell Dan's daughter that he loved her. The end.

"Kerblam!" is and isn't old-school Doctor Who. Yes, it doesn't have 1950s time travel and Donald Trump act-alikes. But like those episodes and others, it turns out that humans (or at least a human-looking guy) is the villain. The TeamMates are creepy but ultimately just pawns of either Charlie or the system.

We never "see" the system, and it only talks to the Doctor briefly through Twirly. It doesn't come across as particularly nice: it blows up the innocent Kira just to try and make an emotional point with Charlie. One that doesn't work.

We get several mentions of Ryan's background as a company drone, and his dyspraxia. However, his dyspraxia doesn't affect his actions, even if he says that it will. he jumps and slides in true companion style.

Yasmin doesn't have much to do except bond with Dan. Graham gets the lion's share of the minor stuff, whether it's his disgust at getting stuck in maintenance, the tail end of his receiving a briefing on his new position, his joking at Ryan's expense, or his bonding with Charlie.

Jodie Whittaker gets to be a bit more Doctorish, even if it's kind of wasted. She gets all angry and "if I ever find out you're lying"-ish with Judy and Jarva. However, they're actually helpful if powerless pawns in the whole automated system. As we're beat over the head with a bit later, the "bad guys" are the people who used the automated system to dehumanize humans. Or Kandovans, or whatever. Which are equated into people like Charlie. Which seems a bit harsh: we don't get the impression the unseen Kerblam CEOS would kill thousands of people, but the Doctor says Charlie is just like them.

"Kerblam!" is basically the business-oriented BBC airing a criticism on automation and business. It doesn't provide any answers, easy or otherwise. It's unlikely that Judy and Jarva are somehow going to turn the company around and make it human-centric. As anyone who has seen Star Trek: The Next Generation can tell you: automation is the wave of the future, provides humans with more free time to explore their international pursuits, and so on. Yes, there's a downside when society doesn't provide people with a way to live so they can pursue those... umm, pursuits.

But "Kerblam!" isn't concerned with dwelling on the questions it raises, and setting it in the future among another alien-but-humanlike race helps to divorce it from any concerns about automation versus employment. We recognize the setting, but the show doesn't provide any answers, easy or otherwise. That leaves it as an effective little horror story with creepy robots and mysterious deaths. Which is all very Doctor Who, sure. But it's nothing on old-school stories like "The Robots of Death" which gave the robots a little more personality and dug a little more into the issues.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?