Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions After Kerblam!
6. Why Was Dan Killed?
There are two kinds of rogue robots in Kerblam! The posties, or Charlie’s Army of delivery bots, and the teammates, still controlled by the System, but not exactly fulfilling the orders of the human managers. Early in the episode, Lee Mack’s character Dan meets his maker when he encounters an out of place delivery bot in the basement. His mistake was to tell the robot that he would contact maintenance to have it returned to despatch.
Though Dan knows very little about what is going on, this could perhaps expose Charlie’s scheme to the System, hence his death is a preventative measure. The other workers to have disappeared had all been test subjects for the weapon, sacrificial lambs before the true targets, the customers, were marked. But by this point in the story, Charlie was ready to unleash his plan with his army assembled.
He is paranoid about the System
knowing what he is up to, and is clearly not thinking logically. He is depicted
as a man on edge, desperate to get his message out there in the most violent of
ways. Dan’s death is as unnecessary as all the others, but is even more
pointless given that it would not have made a difference to the execution of
Charlie’s plan. He was killed because of fear.