'Kerblam!' (Story Code 11.07) by Pete McTighe

“Something is very wrong here at Kerblam…” – The Doctor

A robotic postman from the galaxy’s largest retailer, Kerblam!, materialises inside the TARDIS with a package for the Doctor. While the Doctor is pleased with a new fez encased in bubble wrap, Yaz is more concerned with the packing slip, which has a message for help written on the back. Intrigued, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the massive Kerblam warehouse on the moon of Kandoka, where she uses her psychic paper to get jobs for herself and her friends. After the facility suffers a short power drain, the Head of People, Judy Maddox, gives the gang a tour, explaining how Kerblam is 90%-automated by robots, which oversee the organic workforce of ten-thousand humans. The Doctor and her friends are fitted with ‘group loops’ on their ankles, which allow them access to areas of the warehouse; they are then shown the Kerblam operation process: order fulfilment, packing, inspection and despatch, and how the robot postmen, ‘deliverybots’, teleport away to deliver the completed packages to Kerblam’s customers. Robot foremen known as teammates take everyone to their assigned areas: Graham is given a cleaner’s mop and bucket; the Doctor and Ryan are set to work in the packing area, where they meet their enthusiastic co-worker Kira; and Yaz is assigned to the warehouse. Yaz’s fellow worker Dan proudly shows off the pendant his daughter made, explaining how he only returns home twice a year; after their conversation is stopped by a robot teammate, Kira is assigned a package in the triple-9 section; concerned for her safety in such an old area of the warehouse, Dan swaps packing devices so he can retrieve it instead. After another power drain, Kira is reprimanded for slacking by her manager, Jarva Slade; the Doctor immediately steps in and berates Jarva on his people skills, sending him scurrying off; Kira is grateful, and then mentions the disappearance of several workers… In the darkened triple-9 section of the warehouse, Dan is attacked by a deliverybot; his scream is heard by Yaz, but when she investigates, all she finds is his pendant and smashed packing device – then two robotic postmen appear, and Yaz runs for her life… Graham meets his maintenance mentor, Charlie, just as Kerblam suffers a temporary loss of power; all the workers are sent to a park outside, where Graham meets up with the Doctor, Ryan and Yaz, and learns of Dan’s disappearance; he also watches Charlie and Kira, who clearly have a workforce crush on one another. The Doctor, Ryan and Yaz pay a visit to Judy and Jarva to file a complaint about the disappearances; when she shows them the message for help, the managers promise to look into it… When Graham asks Charlie for a map of Kerblam, the maintenance man shows him the company artefacts on display in Reception, which include the original layout designs. The Doctor and her friends sneak into Jarva’s empty office and search his filing cabinet; but they are caught by Judy, having noted where their group loops are registering. Refuting Judy’s accusation of industrial spies, the gang show her records they have found, detailing seven missing workers over the last four months. As the lights turn red from a total system blackout, Graham and Charlie arrive with the map, which helps identify that the is power draining down to the foundation level. A teammate appears and attacks Charlie, almost choking him to death until Judy pulls off the robot’s head. Once the power restores, the Doctor discovers that all of Kerblam’s systems where channelled through the one rogue robot. Judy checks the system and reports that the missing staff are still registering as active. When the Doctor realises she needs to look past all the system updates and patches and back to its original code, Graham takes her to Reception, where the very first deliverybot, ‘Twirly’, is on display. Elsewhere, Kira receives a visit from two robot teammates; bringing news that she has been nominated as ‘Employee of the Day’, they escort Kira away to claim her gift… The Doctor reactivates the two-hundred-year-old Twirly, which quickly runs out of power. Judy receives a notification from Kira’s group loop, a deliberate message from the system that shows her down in the foundation level. Racing after Kira, Ryan, Yaz and Charlie take the Despatch chutes down, whizzing along the hundreds of narrow conveyer belts along with countless other Kerblam parcels. Powering up Twirly, the Doctor patches it into the system to look at the base code; the little bot is immediately taken over by the system itself, which begs for help and warns of trouble in Despatch. Reaching the foundation level, Ryan, Yaz and Charlie find themselves in a vast empty warehouse, where they hear Kira’s voice calling for help. Concerned for her friends’ safety, the Doctor removes a deliverybot’s teleport device so that she, Graham and Judy can follow them. But just as the Doctor activates the device, Jarva arrives and pulls a gun on them, and is caught up in the transport. Materialising inside the foundation level, the Doctor accuses Jarva of the disappearances, but the manager confesses that he has been investigating them too. Graham finds a nearby tank full of black goo and group loops: the liquidised remnants of the missing workers; then the group see into the hanger below, filled with an army of dormant deliverybots, each holding a Kerblam parcel… Elsewhere, Yaz, Ryan and Charlie see Kira through a one-way window, waiting inside a cell just as a Kerblam package is teleported in... Seeing the waiting deliverybots, Jarva realises the reason for the recent complaints of late delivery. The Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to ascertain that the power drains have been feeding into a huge simultaneous teleport device set overhead – someone is planning an invasion of robots. But a search of the boxes shows different items, although all are packaged in bubble wrap... Outside the cell, Charlie shouts a warning to Kira; but he is too late: she opens the box, finds a single sheet of bubble wrap, and pops it – and immediately explodes. Back in Despatch, the Doctor and Graham work out that the bubble wrap has been intercepted and weaponised with tiny bombs. As Ryan and Yaz arrive with the news of Kira’s death, Charlie pulls out a remote control, revealing himself as the mastermind behind the robot invasion: the maintenance man is far cleverer that he admitted in his application form, a lie necessary to get him a job. Charlie has used the abducted workers to test his ingenious bombs, and by framing the Kerblam systems and robots for mass slaughter he intends to strike a blow for people-power, winning back the jobs the machines have stolen. The Doctor realises that the system has been fighting to stop Charlie, and deliberately kidnapped Kira to show him the implications of his insane plan; but the cleaner doesn’t care, and after activating the mass teleporter he smashes its control device. As Charlie evades Yaz’s grip and escapes into the Delivery hanger below them, the Doctor orders Judy to grab a postman’s head; she then instructs Twirly to link all the deliverybots together and change the robots’ instructions so that they delivery their packages to themselves in the hanger, then open their boxes and pop the bubble wrap inside. As the teleport prepares to activate, Charlie refuses to leave with the Doctor and her friends – they teleport away to Reception just as the deliverybots carry out their orders, killing Charlie in the ensuing mass of explosions… Later, Kira and Jarva suspend facility operations so they can ensure that Kerblam becomes a people-led company. Returning to the TARDIS, Yaz asks the Doctor to help her take Dan’s pendant back to his daughter, and Graham carefully puts the bubble wrap back inside the Kerblam box…


Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham O'Brian), Tosin Cole (Ryan Sinclair), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), Julie Hesmondhalgh (Judy Maddox), Lee Mack (Dan Cooper), Callum Dixon (Jarva Slade), Claudia Jessie (Kira Arlo), Leo Flanagan (Charlie Duffy), Matthew Gravelle (Voice of Kerblam!)

Directed by Jennifer Perrott
Produced by Nikki Wilson
Executive Producers Chris Chibnall and Matt Strevens
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
18th November 2018 @ 6.30 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz

*Viewers in America expecting to watch ‘Kerblam!’ on Amazon Video instead got to see the next episode, ‘The Witchfinders’, a week ahead of its premiere on Sunday 26th November. Given ‘Kerblam!’ is an obvious satire on Amazon, was it really a mistake, or petty retaliation against the BBC..?