KERBLAM
Written By Pete McTighe
Directed By Jennifer Perrott
The Doctor and her companions visit a moon orbiting around the planet Kandoka, where they go undercover at an out of space Amazon. Those are the words I would use to describe Kerblam.
It's good in the sense that, if you're feeling a little un-catered so far to this year's series, and are a fan of unreasonably pejorative language then I'd say that this episode is definitely for you.
There are lots of fun things to enjoy about it. It might take you back to some of the classic Who stories. Stories such as "Paradise Towers", or "Robots of Death". It feels like an 80's story. It also reminded of the Big Finish story starring Sylvester McCoy called "The Warehouse" The sets are sumptuous as ever.
It is a fun and engaging piece of television, even though it's unlikely to ever end up reaching my top favourite stories of all time. The supporting cast give out solid performances.
I felt that there was a good pace to it and the mystery is given a lot more time to mature, permitted to twist itself this way and that before the veil is lifted and the pieces fall into place.
However, sometimes it's difficult to know when a show is deliberately throwing in references to a bygone age for the purposes of getting the audience back on-side and when it’s just dumb luck. 'Kerblam!' well, in a sort of sense, “old-school Nu-Who”, and it’s doubtful the English language could survive one, but there is a distinctly 2007/8 -era vibe to this story I felt whilst watching it. A "Planet of the Ood", perhaps, or 'The Crimson Horror' or if you’re looking further ahead down the Doctor Who timeline. There’s a touch of Big Finish Eighth Doctor about the whole affair, too, particularly the way The Teammate robots have such a made-for-audio voice.
They looked a bit creepy up close in the close-up shots, I never did trust those robots, I did think an essential part of the plot would be the robots going bad or turning on the human workers.
Where Kerblam doesn't work for me was when we got to the reveal. Throughout most of the episode, it's a nice build-up, with the mystery and the creepy backdrop behind what's happening and asking questions and all of the story before the reveal is good. When the villain is revealed and their reasons for doing it, that puts a downer on the whole thing for me as it's running okay and you get to the end to get let down. It's almost as if you're not watching Doctor Who anymore.
The conclusion and the ending have to be the reason why I give Kerblam a 5/10. I did give it four when I first watched it, and thought, well a four is a bit harsh as it wasn't that bad. I will settle for five.
Next Week's looks very good! but only time will tell that.
