Doctor Who Series 11: 4 Ups & 2 Downs From 'Kerblam!'
2. The Antagonist Misdirection & The Final Twist
So we’re still not sure as to what’s happening here, or who’s behind it. Julie Hesmondhalgh’s Judy seems nice. Too nice. Heel turn maybe? Maybe. Callum Dixon’s Jarva? The manager? He’s a bit of a prat, isn’t he? Best guess is this douche. We do see him watching The Doctor and co. through the eyes of a creepy Kerblam bot so, maybe he’s in control? We’re thrown about a bit during this episode. We don’t know which way is up or down, who is wrong or right. Then we have a touching moment between Charlie and Kira. But then he makes a rather creepy comment about Kira, asking Graham if he’s smelled her. If that doesn’t sound psychopathic, I don’t know what is. We’ve seen that he’s a bit useless with love so, maybe that was just an off-hand comment. Surely this doesn’t mean he’s some crazed villain- oh he is!
So Charlie isn’t happy about the 10%. Only 10%?! What about the other 90% of all people that aren’t working?! Also, he’s weaponised bubble wrap. Weaponised. Bubble-wrap. Pop a thing and Kerblam! He hacked the system to lure test subjects down to the completely unmanned distribution area of the complex to blow folk up, and since he knew it was all working, he was going to murder thousands of customers to make a point about robots malfunctioning, even though he is the spanner in the works, he is the reason the robots are unwillingly delivering a box of death to people. I’m almost certain they didn’t order that. This misdirection and bewildering approach to how the antagonist was teased and eventually introduced is getting an up from me. Charlie, however, is a bit of a moron. Still, I enjoyed his turn, and how he realised he f**ked up massively when the system caught onto him.
You see, the system is clever. It’s obviously partially sentient. No person sent that ‘help me,’ it was the entire operating system behind the automated part of Kerblam! crying out. What a brilliant way to do things. Poor Kira though. She didn’t need to die, but obviously the system wanted revenge. Getting one Ker-bot to sock him in the face didn’t work, so let’s sock him in the heart. Absolutely f**k you, Charlie. You kind of deserved to die.