Kerblam! & The Witchfinders (Doctor Who 11.7 & 11.8)

[unfeathered]

Kerblam! (watched 9 Feb but couldn't be bothered to review till now)

Not quite as boring as I remembered but not exactly gripping. Though there were at least a few moments at the end there where I actually felt some tension (with Charlie and the bomb and wondering how the Doctor was going to stop it). And once again the guest characters were quite interesting – Dan, who died far too soon; Kira, who was quite adorable despite being *incredibly* dim and naïve; and Charlie, the dark horse, who actually had me fooled for a bit even this time, thinking I misremembered that he was behind it all.

A little bit more for the TARDIS team to do this week. Yaz got to do some investigating and being brave in that creepy warehouse, and remembered she was a police officer when apprehending Charlie at the end. Graham got to do some detective work, as well as being the comic relief. And Ryan's previous warehouse experience came to the fore. Their descent through the packing chutes was quite fun, although not as scary as I felt it should have been.

Actually, the scariest thing was the ankle things and all the robot supervision, checking up on productivity and telling people to save chatting for break time. It's bad enough having a manager breathing down your neck half the time, but having robots spying on your every action and conversation, and knowing this is the only job you can get? Definitely scary.

I had forgotten that the help message came from the system itself, which was quite a decent twist, especially considering the general message of the episode appeared to be 'beware over-mechanisation' (I think? It wasn't really addressed!). Also a decent twist that neither of the humans in authority were 'evil' too, though it felt like a bit of a cop-out too. In the end, I felt it wasn't really at all clear what the message of the episode actually was! Amazon is good??? Down with activists???

Fun bits:
The refer-back to The Unicorn and The Wasp
The Doctor using Venusian Aikido on Slade
The fez

And hey, the Doctor actually did something useful for once! She actually got involved and saved the day! Well, except that, as many people have pointed out, she didn't actually have to get the robots to pop the bubble wrap. What did that achieve? Well, actually, perhaps blowing up their robots was actually a clever ruse to cost them money and make them employ actual people to deliver the parcels instead? But if that was the idea, it wasn't pointed nearly enough!

Generally, I don't seem to have as many problems with this episode as some people (my main problem with it, as with most of the series so far, is that it was just rather 'meh') but I do have a problem with the Doctor's stance on 'the system isn't the problem' and wish she'd actually done more to tackle the system and make things better for the workers. Or actually address Kira's death, and those of the other workers the 'system' killed. Or, you know, that the episode had worked out what it was actually trying to say, and said it. I still don't really have a clue!


The Witchfinders

Well, that was a bit more like it. I mean, not a whole lot of substance, still, but at least there was some lightheartedness and comedy! And Boris ("I am invicible!") – sorry, King James – was fantastic. So much fun! Especially coming on to Ryan at the end! Oh and his fabulously over the top posh+Scottish accent! He really made the episode for me.

Having watched Siobhan Finneran recently in The Stranger, I do think she's a wonderful actress, too. She brought a lot of depth to Becka, and her Queen of the Morax was awesome!

I did enjoy the Doctor bemoaning "this would have been much easier if I was still a man." Well, yes. Welcome to our world, Doctor! Also her telling King James he hides behind a mask and him throwing that right back at her.

Interesting that the Doctor was apparently trying to take the fam to the coronation of Elizabeth I, considering her later interactions with said Queen!

Also interesting that the Doctor doesn't mention having met Satan (i.e. The Satan Pit)…

The pacing felt a bit better this week. Felt like fewer times when I was just sitting there, waiting for something to happen. Though the Doctor sermonising (is that a word?) at King James felt like one of them.

Some reviews have bemoaned that the Morax didn't exactly pose much of a threat, but I think they're missing the point. The point surely was that humans don't need much persuasion to turn against each other, horribly, viciously, and deadly. Though, to be fair, this is yet another historical episode this series where the alien 'threat' really wasn't needed at all!