Kerblam!

Chapter The 170th, in which the Doctor encounters the second scariest bubble-wrap in the universe (cf. The Ark in Space).

Plot:

The Doctor receives a package in the TARDIS from online cosmic retailer Kerblam! delivered by a teleporting robot postman. The packing slip contains the message "HELP ME". The Doctor investigates with her friends Graham, Yaz, and Ryan, materialising on the planet Kandoka's moon, where the company is based. They find evidence that workers are going missing, perhaps nabbed or killed by the many robot 'teammates' who work alongside the humans. Who could be the villain behind this? Could it be happy-go lucky 'head of people' Judy Maddox who you'd least suspect? Could it be the obvious choice, grumpy Warehouse Executive Slade? Could it be Charlie, the mild-mannered janitor? Mmm - could be! Charlie is planning mass murder, delivering parcels to all Kerblam! customers using an army of postmen robots; the bubble-wrap inside the parcels is explosive. The company's computer system has been fighting back: it sent the HELP ME message to the Doctor and even arranged for Kira, a girl who worked in packing that Charlie was falling for, to blow herself up with the bubble-wrap, to show Charlie how it will feel for the loved ones of the victims. Charlie still instigates the plan, but the Doctor - interfacing with the system via Twirly, a prototype delivery drone - changes the destination address for all the postmen, so they arrive back in the warehouse and blow up only Charlie.

Context:

It was the night of 7th November 2020 going into the morning of the 8th. The rest of the family had gone to sleep, but I wanted to stay up to hear Joe Biden's speech live, which was expected at around 1am. So, I put on this story (from the season Blu-ray box-set) to bridge the gap until it was time. The story was just the next one that had come up as a random selection; I didn't choose it for any thematic reasons, though it does touch on globalisation, the power of Big Tech and worker's rights. It also features a misguided Antifa antagonist. It wasn't without some resonance to the American election, is all I'm saying; though, probably, Arachnids in the UK - with its Trump clone baddie - would have been better. At the time of writing the orange gas balloon is still bumping around the White House. If you're reading this in late January 2021 or after, I hope my faith in the US democratic and judicial processes has not been misplaced, and that he's floated away from our lives and our timelines for good.

First time round:

Watched live on its BBC1 debut broadcast in November 2018 with all the family bar one (youngest child, girl of 8 years old, then 6, found the first episode of Jodie Whittaker's first season too scary, and so would not watch the rest). I can't remember much more about it. Looking back on the nearest thing I have to a diary of that time - this blog - I notice that I was busy watching classic Who at that point having published a post earlier that Sunday on Mawdryn Undead, one of many I did that month. It was not a reflection of any boredom or frustration with Jodie's new series that I was taking refuge in older Who; on the contrary, I was finding its new approach refreshing, and Kerblam! was one of my favourites of the year.

Reaction:

In 2018, the writer of Kerblam!, Pete McTighe, was something of an unknown quantity; now, since his significant involvement in the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection (or Who Rays as they are being called online) as consultant, content provider and on-screen commentator, it's clear that he is very fond of classic Doctor Who. This shouldn't have been a surprise, as I now see that Kerblam! is a homage to 1970s Tom Baker classic The Robots of Death. Calmly-spoken, aesthetically pleasing but sinister robots with a stylised look serve an enclosed working community. Some of these robots are going rogue having been reprogrammed by a human planning a revolution. There are a number of suspects for who this might be, Agatha Christie style. I feel a bit dumb for having missed this before now; it's screamingly obvious but perhaps on first watch, and the couple of times I've seen it since, the political slant distracted me. McTighe's script for this year's run, Praxeus, overdid the moral message and ended up being preachy; the subtext of his first story on the other hand, if it can be called subtext as it's pretty overt, is much more successfully handled. The threat of automation on humans' lives and livelihoods is no more or less important than the impacts of microplastics on the environment, but the former integrates better with a science fiction narrative. Also, by making comparisons with Amazon, the story inherits an interesting locale, a planetoid-sized version of one of the real-world company's euphemistically-named fulfillment centres.

When reviewing Praxeus earlier in the year, I briefly touched on Kerblam! stating that the story "had loads of plot, carefully written, nicely paced and delivered, and had no superfluous characters or scenes". I'd stand by that after re-watching. I particularly like the misdirection of Charlie's rom-com subplot with Kira, to make him less of a suspect as he seems to be in the drama for different reasons; then, making him the victim with Kira killed moves him even further from suspicion. Deadly bubble-wrap is a great touch too, in keeping with Doctor Who's history of twisting the everyday into something more sinister. There's a great action sequence with the conveyer belt chase, a cameo from a Fez, and some cracking jokes ("Customers with your current medical symptoms browsed blood pressure medication"). All told, it's certainly a much better written piece than Praxeus, and is easily as well-structured as its probable inspiration. Like The Robots of Death, though, the script alone would not be enough; as with the 1970s story, Kerblam! has a consistency of look and feel across the whole production. The robots here have a cartoony look, rather than the art-deco stylings of The Robots of death, but it's just as impressive. There is a nice chunky, Tonka toy-like presence to the postmen and teammates, and even the comedy Twirly drone, that works well in the story and makes them a great photo opportunity too. Chibnall era Doctor Who is low on memorable new monsters, and these might be the most distinctive they've given us so far.

Casting is very strong, as it was throughout 2018's stories. Everyone is perfect for their role, and giving it their all. Lee Mack doesn't survive for long, but embodies the comic everyman, and conveys the human impact of the story's bigger message, putting up with dehumanising work cheerfully to provide for the young daughter from whom the work keeps him away. Best of all the guest cast, though, is Julie Hesmondhalgh, who's cast to type but nonetheless nails the chirpy administrator exterior with some steel beneath. As there needs to be a few suspects, and they have to be given enough screen time to be distinct from one another and display actions sufficient enough for suspicions to be aroused, there isn't much time for the regulars. And there are a lot of regulars. All four by this point in their first series are well established and don't need to necessarily have characterful moments, but as the producers are unlikely to have anyone faint and have to have a nap in the TARDIS, there's got to be something for them to do. Yaz gets to bond with Lee Mack's character for a bit, Ryan gets to moan about being back to working in a warehouse, Graham gets to call someone 'cockle'. That's about it. After two years, maybe it's the right time to reduce the number of companions / friends / fam.

There are a few flaws. It does seem unlikely that Charlie's plan could have got so far advanced without the system sending a robot to kill him long before; that would be a more direct way of dealing with him than sending cryptic notes to the Doctor. At the end of the story, it looks like the company will be rebuilt anew with better labour practices, but how will that change the wider economy that must have existed around that one company? Also, Kerblam! will continue as a going concern powered by a central computer system that has some form of autonomy and is capable of killing humans just to make a point. It'll all end in tears, I tells ye. The jokey ending with Graham almost unable to resist popping the bubble-wrap falls a bit flat too. None of that, though, takes away from a successful tale, cleverer and less obvious than its title might suggest.

Connectivity: 

Both stories feature a guest actor in a dramatic role who around the time of broadcast was known primarily for situation comedy work (Lee Mack in Kerblam! and Martin Clunes in Snakedance).

Deeper Thoughts:

The FAANGs of Time. I am cursed with a good memory for trivia but not important things. I also have a tendency to consume a lot of popular culture, often watching things again and again many times over the years. The combination of these two factors creates a mental media-space where all of recent history seems to be happening at once. Doctor Who returning as an ongoing series seems like it happened only yesterday, and yet it was more than 15 years ago, longer than the lifetime of my oldest child. Sometimes, little dated references catch me, with a moment of shuddering realisation my bubble of timelessness is popped: I'm re-watching The Christmas Invasion, say, or Aliens of London, or School Reunion, and I realise none of these people have smartphones. Why do none of these people have smartphones?! McFly cameoed as a young boy band in a Doctor Who story just the other day, didn't they? How can they suddenly be in their thirties and releasing a mature comeback album?  It's not just Doctor Who either. The American sitcom Friends recently arrived on Netflix in the UK, prompting a lot of commentary from the commentariat (actually, it wasn't that recently, and could have been anything up to five years ago, I'm not sure - I have no sense of time passing, did I mention that?). A lot of people sniffed at whether the show was particularly relevant any more with regard to its sexual politics or diversity of casting. Nobody thought that it might not be relevant because it is a show about social interaction whose entire run took place in the world before social media. It isn't old enough to be presented or enjoyed as a 'classic', a period piece of its time, but the world has moved on - pretty significantly - around it.

Social media has a lot to answer for. The shadow of the FAANGs tech behemoths (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) has fallen rapidly over a lot of lives and stories; my life's been impacted without my noticing too much as it happened. When I started working in technology for the day job, only the two of those five beginning with A existed, Amazon only barely, and Apple had nothing to do with music or phones. It took only fifteen-ish years for them collectively to become all powerful in the western world. Another few more years after that, they started looking dangerous. The direction of travel could end with a nightmare scenario of mass unemployment as depicted in Kerblam! I've been part of it pushing it along too. I was a relatively early adopter of Amazon, for example. My first purchase was not long after the turn of the millennium. It was a Doctor Who audio CD that I couldn't find in my favourite bricks and mortar shops (which have all now gone) or my preferred smaller online retailers (which have also now gone). My enjoyment of a CD of Marco Polo or whatever has turned, in the blink of an eye, to a monolithic multi-national tax-dodging nightmare powered by insecure labour. I'm weaning myself off Amazon. Netflix's successful subscription model will likely one day put paid to the licence fee in the UK, which may well put paid to the BBC, who make my favourite programme. I can't stop using Netflix, though, as it is the place where I can watch the documentaries that tell me how bad Facebook is.

I've completely given up using Facebook now, but I'm nonetheless a little bit complicit in what it's become. Just like me and that first innocent Doctor Who audio CD, nobody looking for a way to remember people's birthdays or share holiday snaps intended to enable fascism. What happens in the next few years will be interesting, by which I mean terrifying. From my current vantage point, as mentioned above, the president of one of the most powerful countries of the world is refusing to accept the result of a democratic election, and it's playing out second by second on all the platforms. I hope that you dear reader of the future are living in a better world; I think you will be - he can't hang on for too much longer. Perhaps it will be just the start of things getting better. The direction of travel can shift, and maybe a bleak Kerblam! destiny might not come about, and we can retain things of quality like small retailers, public service broadcasters and democracy. A bit of good news would be good for all of our mental health in 2020 too; it's been a tough year, and I've found myself doomscrolling (word of the year for me, I think) through bad news on a daily basis. As well as being unhealthy, it's a bit ridiculous too; with everything jumbled up on a timeline, the serious gets equated with the silly. Pandemics and coups and disasters on my twitter (yes, I still use twitter) timeline are interspersed with people moaning because the Covid-impacted 2021 series of Doctor Who is only going to be 8 episodes long. It's a miracle we're getting any at all. It's time to look on the bright side as much as we can, I think. 

In Summary:

Not as Biff! Bang! Pow! as its comic book title would suggest, but still one of 2018's best.