Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions After Kerblam!
8. What Has Agatha Christie Got To Do With Wasps?
Another Easter Egg will have particularly delighted David Tennant fans. In The Unicorn and the Wasp the Doctor and Donna got to meet the famous crime writer in her back garden. It was also the last time the Doctor had to deal with a wasp problem. Sort of. More precisely, the Doctor encountered a Vespiform, a member of an insectoid alien race with shape shifting abilities. Disguised as a local vicar, the giant wasp-like creature, was acting as if it was part of an Agatha Christie novel. It all leads to the Doctor doing some old-fashioned sleuthing.
The specific reference to Christie is particularly apt, given that the Doctor is once again in full-on detective mode (and doing a slightly better job of it than she did in The Tsuranga Conundrum, though she does make the fatal opening mistake of altering the programming of the tags, thus taking her away from the source of danger). Indeed for Kerblam!, the single most influential Doctor Who episode from the archives appears to have been the Tom Baker story The Robots of Death – often described as an Agatha Christie in space.