Review by RCR contributing editor, Hayden Black, follow him on Twitter @HaydenBlack!
Kerblam! was, at its heart, a very simple story about a whodunit in an Amazon fulfillment center. Who needs the Doctor’s help? Who’s behind the disappearance of employees? Kerblam! went through the motions and by the end we had our culprit – and that was, sadly, that.
The Doctor and Team TARDIS get a delivery from Kerblam!, the future’s version of Amazon. Their delivery capabilities, however, are beyond shit because a parcel that Matt Smith’s Doctor had ordered however many thousands of years prior is only now, two reincarnations and a lot of Daleks later, finally arriving. The first sign that this episode wasn’t going to be all that is the appearance of the robot deliveryman; I get that it was designed to look anodyne but they went so overboard that there wasn’t an ounce of menace to its countenance left. Anyway, there’s a moment of fun with a fez and then they notice that the back of the packing slip has the ominous message “Help Me.” It’s enough for Ryan to stop bursting the bubble wrap that came with the hat and look up in surprise.
They take an immediate detour to the Kerblam fulfillment center to help whoever’s in trouble and pass themselves off as new employees to better explore. But Kerblam!’s facilities cover an entire moon and their human employees number in the tens of thousands. Needle and haystack right? Well because we need to solve this in 45 minutes we only meet about five humans that immediately whittles our “whodunit?” down to “whowrotethis?”
A few red herrings are thrown our way but they came in the form of a pantomime-esque bad guy who wore black and had a beard (because, you know, villains), a seemingly kind-hearted VP of People (because, seriously, who in HR is ever really a hero???), and the computer running the Kerblam! system (because Robots of Death). But everyone can calm down, okay, because it turns out the computer was the one who sent the “Help!” message and it’s Charlie the disgruntled janitor – and person Number 5 – who’s so hell-bent on making a statement about Kerblam!’s business practices that he’s willing to kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent people with rigged, explosive bubble wrap.
Yes. The same explosive bubble wrap that Ryan popped earlier where nothing happened because they needed to establish bubble wrap as a thing as early as they could so it wasn’t completely out of the blue when it was later revealed to be the murder weapon. Oops. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen because that’s what the Doctor Who production team chose to do.
Anyway, nerdy janitor accidentally kills the girl of his dreams by exposing her to the bubble wrap but even that doesn’t prick his conscious because he’s lost his soul. All in all, it seemed a wasted moment – she’s dead but everyone seems to shrug and move on. I sure hope Charlie isn’t ultimately trapped with all his explosive bubble wrap and someone pops one and….oh. Too late. They did.
So, a very ho-hum episode overall but there were a couple of nice nods to the past with the reference to Doctor 11’s Fez along with a reference to Doctor 4’s K-9 (“some of my best friends are robots), Doctor 10’s Unicorn and Wasp episode (“Did I ever tell you about me and Agatha Christie?”), and Doctor 3’s Venusian Aikido.
Next week it’s off to historical Northern England for some witchcraft. Hopefully, there’ll be more magic than in this week’s episode.
About Dr. Who
A mysterious message arrives in a package addressed to the Doctor, leading her, Graham, Yaz and Ryan to investigate the warehouse moon orbiting Kandoka, and the home of the galaxy’s largest retailer, Kerblam.
The further adventures in time and space of the alien adventurer known as the Doctor, a Time Lord/Lady who can change appearance and gender by regenerating when near death, and his/her human companions.
Next episode: the Witchfinders
WATCH MORE
The Thirteenth Doctor: http://bit.ly/TheThirteenthDoctor
Regenerations: http://bit.ly/DWRegeneration
Title Sequences: http://bit.ly/DWTitleSequences
Review by Hayden Black
Hayden Black is the award-winning British star/writer/producer behind Goodnight Burbank (“Better than 99% of the stuff on TV” – USA Today”), the first-ever scripted half-hour comedy series made for Hulu and then licensed – the day it premiered – by Mark Cuban for his cable channel HDNet. Goodnight Burbank and his other original online work – including Abigail’s Teen Diary & The Occulterers – have won Webby, iTunes and Yahoo awards, been viewed in the multi-millions, and taught in college courses.
Photos Courtesy BBC: Doctor Who
