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| The Doctor and company check in as workers at Kerb!am. ("Kerblam!") ©BBC |
This is an odd episode in some respects. The overt influence here is Amazon, with its "ship everything" philosophy and its somewhat notoriously intense working conditions in the warehouses, and while we do get some of that ("Great conversation, guys," one of the robots tells Yaz and fellow warehouse worker Dan, "but unnecessary talking can lead to efficiency reductions. Why not pick up the pace a little?"), this doesn't draw the overt parallels that one might expect. In fact, the people we see working generally seem pretty pleased to be there, doing their jobs happily. Part of the reason is that writer Pete McTighe has also chosen to add in conversations about automation into the mix. "What I don't understand is, why does Kerblam need people as a workforce?" the Doctor wonders. "These are automated and repetitive tasks. Why not get the robots to do it?" "Kandokan labour laws," packing station worker Kira replies. "Ever since the People Power protests, companies have to make sure a minimum ten percent of the workforce are actual people, at all levels. Like the slogan says, real people need real jobs. Work gives us purpose, right?" Maybe this was just so there would be a reason for people to be around instead of just robots, but it leads to an uneasy tension between the automation aspect and the unexplored "exploited employees" aspect.
That's not to say that it isn't fun -- this is definitely a fun episode, with small bits like the Doctor getting a fez ("Still me?" she wonders after putting it on) or the stuff with Graham being sent to Premium Maintenance (after he swaps assignments with the Doctor, which means that originally she was going to be the one doing maintenance work). And I quite adore all the stuff with Twirly, the original delivery bot, even though by rights that should be cringe-worthy -- but somehow they pull it off. Plus those little references to Ryan having worked at a shipping warehouse leads to the payoff here, with his knowing how these places work. The mystery of what's going on is also handled pretty well, with the tension slowly ratcheting up as people are shown to have been inexplicably disappearing. Some of it isn't handled quite as elegantly, however; the scenes of Ryan, Yaz, and maintenance worker Charlie riding the conveyor belts at high speed, jumping from belt to belt, and then dodging anti-contamination laser blasts, feel like pure kids TV, rather than the exciting action set piece they were presumably going for.
But it sometimes feels like McTighe is concerned about people guessing where the story is going, so he's constantly throwing in bits of misdirection to distract us. But occasionally this leads to just weird moments; Warehouse Executive Jarva Slade is shown to be a rude, unpleasant man who keeps a locking filing cabinet full of details of the missing personnel, and he's packing a gun, but it turns out that he's not a villain, he just thinks the Doctor is -- except he's convinced otherwise really quickly. Or the really bizarre idea that the Kerblam system kidnaps Kira -- a completely innocent bystander -- and kills her in order to convince Charlie not to go through with his plan. (Even stranger, the thirteenth Doctor -- a woman who even criticized Karl for pushing Tim Shaw off a crane after Tim Shaw a) tried to kill Karl and b) was dying of DNA bombs he'd detonated himself -- doesn't see fit to take the computer system to task for this, or even mention it in any way, really.) And so the big twist is that it's not an evil computer, it's an evil maintenance worker who wants to convince Kerblam to hire more people by... sending out a bunch of packages that will kill anyone who pops the bubble wrap packaging inside. (Clearly, people named Charlie really are the worst.287) Is the idea to try to frame the computer system? Because it looks like the result of this plan would be to completely shut down Kerblam such that the ten percent of the company that aren't robots won't have a job anymore. And if the computer is the one who sent the initial "Help Me" message to the Doctor, why didn't it put more details on it, like "Help Me Charlie Is Going To Mail Bombs"? And so the actual consequences of Charlie's failed plan, other than shutting Kerblam down for two weeks for repairs, is to give in to Charlie's demands and try and hire more workers, even though they've just seen that it was an "organic" who caused the problems and murdered a bunch of people in the first place? (Oh, and as long as we're complaining, this is our first real look at how the pillars surrounding the TARDIS console move up and down in time with the time rotor, as if they were constantly bowing to it like Wayne and Garth chanting "We're not worthy" to Alice Cooper. It's a pretty stupid look, honestly.)
So it's an episode with some fairly big logical flaws. But that still doesn't take away from the fact that "Kerblam!" is still a pretty fun episode, with generally pleasant characters and lots of fun interactions and moments. It does mean that this is kind of the Doctor Who equivalent of candy, though; enjoyable while it lasts, but ultimately nothing of real substance. Now I know I took "Empress of Mars" to task last series for being basically just candy, but this episode doesn't bother me as much as that one did -- perhaps because here the characters are better realized, rather than just broad caricatures. So maybe the lesson is, if you're going to give us a lightweight Doctor Who episode, give us something to focus on besides the details of the storyline -- and that's something that "Kerblam!" does very well.
287 Shout-out to my best friend Charlie Wallace!