So after cancelling my pre-ordered ‘Doctor Who’ series 11 Blu-Ray with Amazon, I sat down with a clear conscience to watch the latest episode ‘Kerblam’. So after civil rights and religious segregation series 11 now takes on the evils of the world’s most popular order crap you don’t need service.
For its part ‘Kerbalm’ did a fair job at highlighting the appalling conditions the staff at Amazon face. There may not be a soup made from missing workers (well at time of publication anyway), but the surveillance and control of the staff was pretty much spot on, just given a futuristic sci-fi twist.
Speaking of twists ‘Kerblam’s’ felt a tad ‘Scooby Doo’, except there were no masks. The plot was a little basic, but the script was fun and full of great one liners. There was also some lovely call backs to the Smith and Tennant eras ; first with the delivery of a fez to the ‘Doctor’ and then the ‘Doctor’ starting to tell her companions about the giant wasp she fought when hanging out with Agatha Christie.
I would have liked some more airtime for Lee Mack. He may have been portraying a version of himself, but his short time on air provided some of the episodes best moments. In fact the whole of this week’s supporting cast was strong and in Claudia Jessie’s ‘Kira’ there was a hint of future companion, until they want and got themselves blown up.
The series 11 theme of ‘humans are the real monsters’ continued, but once again the writers found the correct balance and it never felt preachy.
‘Kerbalm’ was a fun episode, but the limitations of the story and the cliché twist just niggled enough. Overall it felt like a missed opportunity to do so much more.
Rated out of 10: 7.5
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