Kerblam!
(Series 11, Dr 13 with Graham Ryan and Yaz, 18/11/2018, showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writer: Peter McTighe, director: Jennifer Perrott)
Rank: 273
Dear reader, sorry for the delay in your parcel of Dr Who (e) books – I’ve been using an experimental new intergalactic shopping company ‘Kerblam!’ Hopefully by now you’ll have read the small print about us at Alonsy Alien Archives not being liable for any explosives in the packaging used (what do you mean you could only open the book to read this after handling the bubble-wrap? Oopsie, slight design flaw!) If yours hasn’t gone off yet then it’s probably on a timer and I suggest you run (in retrospect perhaps I should have signed up for the prime service…)
‘Kerblam!’ is an episode that does one of the single most obvious things new-Who hadn’t done yet: the mail order company in space. It’s the perfect subject matter for Dr Who, the rise of a corporation with a slightly dodgy background that suddenly seemed to be everywhere and where we don’t have a full picture for how it works (I mean, we know there must be several large warehouses full of stuff somewhere but where? It’s not like I’ve ever passed any in any of the towns I’ve lived in and no one else I know ever has too. For all we know they might as well be on another planet). Plus those strangers who turn up at our door everyday, generally unsmiling: they could potentially be robots right? I mean, we wouldn’t know unless we happen to be one of them. Plus in 2017-18 we had a run of programmes with whistleblowers exposing the realities of conditions at these places, conditions that seemed like a Dr Who morality tale in waiting what with poor suffering employees struggling to scratch out a living running around to a ticking timer gathering handfuls of indulgent products nobody really needs while being simultaneously denied of the essentials. These programmes have died out in the years since I notice, not because people didn’t get the message but because we did and it makes us feel guilty because there’s genuinely no alternative for buying half the products Amazon makes. You may have noticed for instance that, ahem, technically Amazon are my trading partners because as an independent freelance writer there’s simply no other way to get these books out to a big enough market to sell any of them: we’re stuck with them, even though we don’t quite trust them. And if something in real life makes you uneasy it’s crying out to be made into a Dr Who story, precisely the sort of regime Dr Who is meant to overthrow. The idea of a way of life that makes life easier for those who can afford it, while exploiting those who have no choice to live like this and would love to have some of the products they sell for their own but can’t risk their job because of a high turnover and ridiculous arbitrary sanctions (which, this being Dr Who, mostly result in death at the hands of a scary monster) is perfect for this series. While some stories are pure entertainment fluff the best of this series asks big questions indirectly that can’t be asked comfortably in any direct way and ‘Kerblam!’ is a prime example of some problem with modern society that’s occurred to most of the people watching at some point, then been shrugged off with the thought that ‘this is just how things are and we can’t change them’.
How did it come to this? I mean its an ending that’s
entirely out of keeping with the rest of the story, so much so that I have to
wonder if McTighe originally wrote an entirely different ending and showrunner
Chris Chibnall got cold feet and went ‘wait, Amazon still sell some of my
original ‘Broadchurch’ novels, I can’t risk pissing them off’. I stress I have
no evidence for that but this is such a colossal change from where the story
seems to be going and so in keeping with some of the other rather odd decisions
taken across series eleven especially that you have to ask the question. Not
since ‘The Dominators’ have we had a story that so actively took the
opposite viewpoint to where the pro-individual anti-corporation heart of this
series lies, where the people are always right even when the big massive
institutions they build and promote and elect often aren’t. Given the way the
story has been going too, as a metaphor for the poorly paid menial workers in
our society, who so often come from overseas and work a pittance to send wages
back to their country (beautifully written by McTighe in the scene where packer
and stacker Kira talks about her joy of getting her own parcel as a present
‘once’ in her life), it’s borderline racist: who are these people to insist on
their rights then eh? It’s so good of ‘Kerblam!’ to give them a job at all when
they could just have hired robots, they should put up with it and stopped
getting so angry, to know their place in the system. When did Dr Who become as
casually cruel as this? I mean the Doctor gets involved directly because of a
message saying ‘help me’ – it’s not often she’s asked for help. And that’s the
problem with this era right there: for all the moralising, for all the
lectures, for all the holier than thou attitude the 13th Doctor just
doesn’t care enough to put things right or even try: it’s hard to imagine any
previous Doctor acting this way (and the 15th seems almost like
Russell T over-compensating and making Ncuti’s Doctor care too much by
contrast). I mean, the 4th Doctor especially would have kerblammed
‘Kerblam!’ without even looking back and started a universe-wide strike
(possibly with K9 as union rep, despite being a robot himself). ‘You’re not an
activist you’re a cold-blooded murderer’ the Doctor says to Charlie, utterly
missing the nuance that the system is slowly murdering him and people like him
(and if the Doctor can’t see that then what hope the audience?) It’s ridiculous and comes out of nowhere, like
watching an episode of Blake’s 7 that randomly roots for the federation and
thinks all those freedom fighters are just nuisance terrorists getting in the
way of a corporation that’s giving people jobs after all (albeit in a choice
between jobs and starvation).
Not since ‘Bertha’, a children’s series of the
1980s, has there been such blatant brainwashing in a family show about how good
dangerous factories are as a place to work at less than minimum wage and how
fun robots are to work with (although at least they used to get up to fun in
their spare-time and had fun testing the merchandise, most of which were toys).
One of the single crassest lines in the entire series comes when Charlie
explains ‘we can’t let the systems take control’ and the Doctor replies not
with a sad smile or a hug but a lecture: ‘The systems aren’t the problem, it’s
how people use and exploit the system, that’s the system’. You know who
exploits the system? Not the whistleblowers who risk their livelihoods. Not the
occasional saboteur who secretly wants their company to fold. No, it’s the
villains at the top of the food chain who could make life better for the people
under them but would rather take the money and stick it in some off-world tax
haven (probably on Skaro, I bet lots of fishy financial dealings go on there.
All that money’s probably invested in Dalekanium). It feels so wrong. And even
if the series honestly did want to promote big business and capitalism –
despite all those Buddhist parables about the evils of money it used to do
every few years – then at the very least the people who work here should be
safe at work, not in fear of their lives, that’s just practical business sense.
Plus the solution is obvious: a co-ordinated intergalactic Etsy, a company that’s
been going as long as new-Who after launching in 2005, made up of independent sustainable
sellers who can work from their own planets and be their own bosses with less warehouses
and less fuss (and adjustable for every species rather than Kerblam’s ‘one size
fits all or get stuffed’ approach: Dalek eyestalk warmers, Skarasen fishtanks, Cybermen
accordion hot water bottles, saddles for pet Myrkas, Abzorbaloff walking canes,
Smiler ‘mood boards’, Kroton fridge magnets, Fish People land-snorkels, Kinda dream-catchers
and rubber Ergon toys a speciality). Everyone keeps their jobs but everyone has
a better life – and if the Doctor can overthrow complete societies then surely
she can co-ordinate all that with a sonic screwdriver?
The ending is what shatters ‘Kerblam!’ into a
quadzillion pieces but there are other problems with this story too, hints that
the ending is going to go spectacularly wrong. You don’t feel for any of the
supporting characters we meet. Had we actually liked Charlie (instead of
thinking he’s a proper, well, Charlie) then his defection would have been a
really surprising moment. Instead he’s a bit of a drip, painted out to not just
be a loser because of his social standing but a pathetic loser who doesn’t do
anything to turn his life around. His plan makes no sense either: Amazon messes
up my deliveries all the time but it just makes me chunter, ti doesn’t make me
want to blow people up with killer bubblewrap. Kira is no better: she talks the
talk of a good Kerblam employee (and there’s another big cringe moment when the
Doctor tells her she has a ‘good attitude’ for thinking her life can better
instead of, you know, helping to make it better or sympathising over her
problems) but it’s as if she’s parroting something she’s been told to say
rather than believing in it. What happened to the Dr Who characters of old who
were downtrodden and made to feel small but still thought big? It’s almost as
if Charlie and his robot army are punished for daring to think outside their
lot in life and if any message is the polar opposite to the heart of Dr Who
then that’s it. Supervisor Judy, played by Julie Hesmondhaigh who once starred
in Chibnall’s ‘Broadchurch’ series alongside Jodie (and David tenant and Arthur
Williams and Matthew Gravelle, the ‘Voice’ of Kerblam!), is portrayed in a much
more sympathetic way just to rub it in: she’s had her hands full keeping the
company afloat, she had no idea what was really going on, of course if she’s
known etc etc. And yet there’s no sense of
horror here that all this happened under her watch, no sense of guilt or
remorse or vow to do better. All those deaths that could have been avoided and
at the end of the episode she’s just chipper about setting it all up again,
lessons unlearnt. Jarva Slade is a little better because he’s meant to be
shifty and look like a suspect even though – in a lesson straight out of the
‘Robots Of Death’ handbook – it turns out that he’s the undercover
investigator. Even he’s not as shocked as he ought to be though. The only
likeable character in all of this is comedian Lee Mack as employee Dan who
gives what’s best described as an awkward performance: the character delivers
all the Northern cheeky charm and quick witted comebacks that are Mack’s
stock-in-trade but they feel clunky and awkward coming out of the mouth of a
comedian who rarely if ever speaks lines written by anyone else (and McTighe
isn’t as funny as Mack naturally is). There is at least, a sense of
the sadder reflective person you suspect lurks behind the smart aleck persona
in real life too though (like all the best comedians you sense he turned to
making people laugh because he knows that the awful alternative is crying). Interesting
sidenote: Lee grew up in Southport about the same time Chibnall was growing up
in Formby: the two are so close they’re in the same government borough and
often viewed as a pair. The joke, I think, is that the black
overseer is higher up the chain than the white employee, which might have made
a valuable political point about race in the future being less important when
all of humanity is looking for work, but then they blow it by making the
employees here decidedly Northern and if there’s one stereotypical view
Londoners have of people oop North (as most Dr Who staff are) it’s that we all
work in warehouses and don’t work hard. Just to rub it in black companion Ryan
reveals that not only did he use to work in a Sheffield warehouse but that he
got an official warning for mucking around on the ‘laundry chute’ at work.
Talking of which, the regulars don’t necessarily
fare better. Ryan raises his dyspraxia again – wrongly. I mean, it’s different
for every sufferer but he actually dismisses it as a ‘minor coordination issue’
in this story, which it very much isn’t and says that ‘things take longer to
learn physically’ which they very much don’t (it comes and goes so being able
to walk in a straight line yesterday is no guarantee you will today). There’s
also no reason for him to raise it, given that he takes a leap into a chute
(where gravity does the work for you regardless of co-ordination) yet then has
absolutely no worry falling onto a trolley perfectly (and actually better than
Yaz) and getting a patronising ‘well done’ from her as if it took a great deal
of concentration and effort (dyspraxia is something you’re born with and messes
with your perception of where things are consistently inconsistently; it
doesn’t get better if you concentrate or try really hard. Believe me, I’ve
tried. If anything the extra stress and running should have worn Ryan out to
the point where it’s harder to control and more likely to send him hurtling to
the floor). Ryan is the sort of person at work that ducks all the ok jobs and
then ends up being forced to do the really bad ones because nothing got done. Graham
ends up recruited as a cleaner, a job he openly hates – good for the comedy but
bad for the character and the Doctor stands around and laughs rather than, say,
waving her sonic and making him chief supervisor (if she needs someone to go
undercover in maintenance, because as she says later they can go everywhere and
nobody notices, then why do it herself instead of faffing around in the packing
department?) Graham’s the person at work whose the butt of all the jokes that
everyone secretly pours out their problems to, then orders around anyway
minutes later. The Doctor feels more Doctory this episode, perhaps because
she’s got something to actually do and run around being active, rather than
standing around while people talk about the plot to her and the writer nails
her babbling enthusiasm better than most. She’s the sort of person at work who
is always looking forward to the Christmas Party even in January. But she also
feels oddly rude: it speaks volumes, for instance, that it’s Yaz (the one
regular who has rather a good episode this week) who raises the question of
seeing Dan’s family and talking about how he died, rather than her. Yaz is the
one at work who does everything herself and won’t let anyone help because she
tuts about how everyone else always does it wrong, then moans that nobody tried
to help her. It also never seem to strike the Doctor that the note she gets
might just be a prank, yet neither does she try that hard to get to the bottom
of it (I mean, they could be in grave danger with time of the essence – every minute
might count but there she is faffing around with boxes and packaging).
There’s also another big problem that has nothing
whatsoever to do with character: Kerblam! Should be rolling in it. I mean, all
those parcels universe-wide, each one with a profit (I won’t mention the fact
that Amazon take a third of all my e-book royalties automatically despite not
having the first clue who I am if you don’t) they should be rolling in it and
it would be perfectly in keeping if this planet’s headquarters was the plushest
headquarters going (even whilst the workers lived in poverty). But it looks
like what it is: a big empty modern office, filled with a handful of futuristic
paintings on the walls and a couple of futuristic looking chairs plus an
outside ‘picnic area’ that’s all too clearly Dyffryn Gardens on a blustery day.
Nothing about this planet feels alien and nothing quite looks right, with the
action ‘chase’ scene through the packaging vaults particularly poor CGI. Not to
mention the bubblewrap ‘explosion’ which is corny in the extreme. You can just
imagine McTighe looking round room and going ‘what hasn’t been used on dr who
yet. Phone cords? Chairs? Both done. Dustbins? Too much like Daleks. Accordion?
That reminds me of someone. Birds? Big fish? Giant frogs? Creepy crawlies? All
covered already. Wait what’s that, a knock at the door? Ooh my parcel’s arrived,
featuring the latest ‘Kindred Spirits’ scifi novel (cheap at ten times the
price). Which gives me an idea…Nobody’s thought of killer bubblewrap before! Ironic, then, that a story that’s at least
partly about the dangers of austerity and letting families fall into difficulties
without s safety net to catch them looks cheaper than anything the show had
done in years (only to be beaten by ‘The Witchfinders’ and ‘Orphan 55’ soon
afterwards). Together with the Scooby Doo plot (‘I wouldn’t have gotten away
with it without you pesky timelord’!) and all the bright colours this makes ‘Kerblam!’
look more like children’s telly than usual. And not the good inventive sort
like ‘Press Gang’ ‘The Demon Headmaster’ or ‘Spatz’ either but the cheap kind,
full of larger-than-life characters gunging each other. Which admittedly is a
look that’s right for some episodes (I mean, so many of the 2nd
Doctor episodes used the foam machine, which is as close to a gunge machine as
you could get in the 1960s) but this tale of adult exploitation shouldn’t be
one of them.
That all sounds as if I hate this episode, but I
don’t. For a good three-quarters of it I actively loved it. Despite my issues
with the characterisation McTighe has a deft touch with dialogue and hits more
bullseyes with his one-liners that all the other Chibnall-era writers (‘Please
keep loose objects, hair and body parts away from the machinery’ and ‘I’m in
charge’ ‘Well, you’ve certainly got the clipboard for it!’) When this story is
laughing at all of us and the daftness of modern-day living it’s a winner and
the plot isn’t bad either, keeping moving without the longeurs and stop-offs
for exposition that blight so much of series eleven. This story can afford to
be more direct than any documentary or drama about Amazon would ever dare to be
because of that old safety net ‘well it’s just fiction set in space and in the
future innit?’ and yet, more than any other episode since Russell T Davies was
in charge, ‘Kerblam!’ doesn’t feel as if the future is all that far away, a
warning that we ought to be paying attention to now. There’s something deeply
unsettling about the robot workers even before we know quite what they are,
with shades of ‘ The Greatest Show In The Galaxy’
about them: the Doctor can tick me off all she likes but this lot aren’t K9-style
androids designed to look cute and with lots of in-built character but more
like Cybermen, faceless and unknowable. I love the subtle feeling of oppression
that runs through this episode, with everyone too scared to acknowledge the
problems out loud (it’s a neat twist, for instance, that the cry for help comes
in a simple note on a scrap of paper, even if annoyingly we never do get to the
bottom of who sent it). After all, it takes a lot of guts and courage to be a
whistleblower, to stand up as an individual against the might of a company with
the clout of ‘Kerblam!’. It makes total sense that people would be too scared
to say so out loud to the Doctor so she has to explore for herself. There’s a
whole atmosphere to this story that works, even when what it’s saying and how
it looks doesn’t. There are some really great individual scenes too, the best
one being the first where the Doctor gets her parcel out of sequence with when
she ordered it and she wonders which regeneration she was when she ordered it
(and in a very clever gag it’s a fez! We wondered why Matt Smith’s Doctor didn’t
simply get another one!) There wasn’t a Children In Need special that year but
this pre-credits clip was featured as a ‘teaser’ – and made us a lot more
excited for the episode than we probably should have been. The menace of the
robots lurking as Dan takes over from Yaz and walks to the creepy section is
also nicely handled: you feel the approaching terror but also his hope that he’s
going to get away with it. I love the
catch 22, identifiable by all workers everywhere in every era, that the best way
of making sure your children don’t suffer the way you did is to leave home and work
to make money which means you never get to see them grow up (but the
alternative is to be with them in absolute poverty and misery and possibly starvation).
There are lots of big issues being raised by this story that other Dr Who
episodes won’t go near and that’s all to this story’s favour. It’s just I wish
the ending had been one of them, instead of a contradiction of most of them.
There’s a lot to love about this episode then,
definitely – arguably more than any of
the other series eleven episodes outside ‘Rosa’ and while the story isn’t as
serious and original as that one it does feel like a very original episode, one
that couldn’t really be done in any earlier era (although it does feel a little
like the colourful cartoon style of season 24, which also had systems we would
recognise from today pushed that little bit further out of control: this is ‘Paradise
Towers’ if they had a warehouse round the back, for instance). There are lots
of little details that make this world come alive more than most despite the
low budget and questionable acting: the ‘Grouploop’ ankle monitors that spy on
where the employees walk and Dan giving all the impersonal robots random Human
names (exactly what a bored employee would do). This is also a story that feels like proper Dr
Who again, with a scifi twist on a contemporary concern and a good balance
between drama, comedy and fears about the future. It’s such a shame then that ‘Kerblam!’
kerblew all that good work with a story that starts off imaginative but quickly
ends up just another dull conveyor-belt manufactured runaround with another big
moral message stapled to it, like almost all the other stories ins series
eleven – the wrong message. I mean, somebody has to stand up to the big greedy
corporations on our behalf when we can’t. Not exactly prime and not quite what
I asked for but at least it delivered. Sort of. I guess we’re kind of stuck
with this system aren’t we? And on that note remember to buy the next exciting
volume of mad Dr Who reviews from Amazon right now – a passing Kerblamn man
will be at your door next day (intergalactic timings may vary) and I promise
not to use bubblewrap. Or, if you’re reading the e-book version, remember to
check out my other books people there are novels with lots of aliens and some
music review books, all ready to be delivered by my virtual Kerblam assistant. Oh and
will somebody get my package back from Zigorous 3 for me next time they're
passing? Those pesky postal robots misdelivered it down a black hole again when
I wasn’t looking!
POSITIVES + The
scenes of warehouses in the dark full of boxes of alien artefacts, being explored
by workers armed with nothing more than torches, are excellent and very atmospheric.
Unusually details are sketchy on where a lot of this story was filmed (even
though we know minute by minute for some other stories from the era) but
whichever warehouse this is looks just enough like the real thing and plausibly
alien. Putting a robot at the end of the corridor, in the dark, is a neat move.
Interesting how two of the best (or at least most promising) Chibnall era
stories at either end of his tenure make use of a warehouse setting, with lots
of places to run and hide (‘Eve Of The Daleks’ being the other). It would have
been even more fun if they’d simply filmed it in the Dr Who props cupboard so
we could see lots of old artefacts though!
Previous ‘Demons Of The
Punjab’ next ‘The Witchfinders’
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