Kerblam!

[0:00]

Hello, dear listeners and welcome back to Jody Interterterra, the only Doctor Who Flash cast, delighted to be covering an episode named after the sound that the evil villain's plan makes.

We are here. to discuss Pete McTai's episode of Doctor Who.

The 7th episode of the series Kablam.

And it's the 1st it's the 1st series.

It's the 1st episode to have an exclamation mark in the title.

So that's the thing?

Yeah, I think there are other Doctor Who stories that would benefit from an exclamation mark in the title.

Timelash.

Frontios.

Inferno?

No, that's the night club.

Ambassadors of death.

Actually, that, yeah, that's the one that would benefit the most.

I did see Pete on Facebook earlier saying he was proud of doing something that had never been done before.

[01:04]

So there you go.

So I think that people are generally very positive about this episode.

What did you think, Brendan?

Um, yeah, I really quite enjoyed it.

I think I've been saying for a couple of weeks that what I would really, really like to see is more of a sort of rompy action adventure and I think we had that.

We had a mystery that the doctor got involved in.

Um, We had likeable um, we had likeable characters.

We had a whodunit structure with uh pretty much, almost all the supporting characters, at some point or another, are under suspicion, have motive, and have, um, uh, basically believable opportunity to be the one sort of behind the mystery of people uh, disappearing, uh, or uh, being killed, and we don't quite know what's happening all the way through. um I think this is possibly the uh 1st episode since episode one where all 4 of the main cast are well used and everyone gets something to do.

[02:19]

Um that is germane to their character.

Um, I re- I really love whenever they pair up Ryan and Yaz.

I think they have a, they have a great chemistry and I, I kind of like that.

Early on, there were some hints of an attractional romance between them and we haven't had many of those recently and I kind of, I kind of like that.

I feel like that would be, um, sort of a cliche thing to do with their characters and it kind of felt shoehorned in when they've done it before.

So I just like seeing them hanging out as mates.

I suppose.

They like each other so much.

It's so nice.

I thought that this might have been Ryan's best episode so far.

He was really great in it.

He was super funny as well.

Now when he talks about what he used to hide in the trainers, he goes to make this sort of hilarious hand movement before the doctor kind of shots him up.

So great.

What did you think of them, Tom?

Oh sorry.

[03:19]

No, no, go on.

Yeah, Todd, what did you think?

I adored this episode.

I just relaxed into it.

Peter's dialogue is just so natural for all the characters, especially for the doctor and everything that Brendan said holds completely true.

I was intrigued.

I was into the story, kept my attention.

Other episodes have not kept my attention.

He's done himself proud.

I was talking to him a couple of weeks ago and he's so humble.

Because I said how much I adored Rosa.

And he said, oh, you'll then like demons episode.

They'll probably be your favourites of the season.

And although I think Rosa is, this is, this, for me, is the best of everything else and I really just, I just enjoyed it.

I enjoyed Jody, I enjoyed everybody. everybody had their moments, everybody had humour.

Every, it was just, it was just what I, I've been wanting.

Really.

So I'm really happy.

So, yeah, great.

Yeah, yeah, well, James.

Oh, look.

Oh, you know, I agree, generally, with whatever he's saying.

[04:22]

I thought it was fun.

It was sweet, especially Kira.

She was she was dead sweet.

Dead. and then just dead.

Yeah.

Which is like, as soon as, like, you get to like the character, you know, she's going to get killed horribly.

Well, same with Dan, I think, with Lee Max, Dan.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like this series has been very good at making you like people and then killing them off in terrible, horrible ways.

Well, from the very 1st episode.

And look, I mean, that that gives it some sort of emotional weight that, um, maybe it might be lacking if, if, if there weren't such good actors, uh, portraying these guest roles.

I like, you see, I like all the guest roles too, James.

I like the people.

I think Julie Hesmondhole. is so superb.

Like, and, you know, you can't believe that she hasn't been in Doctor Who before.

[05:23]

And I think, you know, there was a fair bit of exposition in the world building here, but because it was delivered in scenes where like likeable characters were talking, you know, where we were learning more about the characters and about the world at the same time, it didn't, you know, like it didn't seem to be a problem.

It wasn't just some, you know, some previous episodes, I think, have been really exposition heavy, but here I didn't really feel it.

Sorry, Todd.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you, Nathan.

I think too.

There's some touches here like references to modern who and old who as well.

Unlike those licings on the top, you know, for us, little Easter eggs.

I think I think the 2 big ones are obviously the deadly bubble wrap, which has to be from Pete's childhood memories of Arc in space.

And the death's unaccountable file that they come across that Slade is keeping about the missing persons.

[06:26]

It's never mentioned explicitly.

It's a locked filing cabinet.

Yes, exactly.

I also thought them hiding behind that artwork was a bit like robots of death, you know?

Oh, yeah. mixed of pyramids of Mars.

Yeah.

Look, also, I mean, I just, I loved the, the wasp joke.

Yeah.

And the fez.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah, good references delivered in a way that doesn't drag down story.

Well, I mean, she made some reference about meeting Mount Batten last week, which we've never seen on screen.

It wouldn't matter if you didn't know that she hadn't met Agatha Christie on screen. you know what I mean?

That's just a funny, sort of funny reference.

And it's the doctor's been name dropping all year, I think.

So I thought that that was really good.

I did have some political reservations about it.

And it's funny this year that every sort of Doctor Who comment thread has people complaining that it's all PC crap and full of social justice warriors. because I don't know, there are non-white people on it. and women and things.

[07:41]

And that, but to me, you know, this, this series has been a bit a political or a bit sort of clumsily a political, despite all of the, you know, historicals and stuff.

And here, I think, you know, because we, the plot, you know, Pete knows how these stories work, um, the, you know, things like sunmakers or um, Paradise Towers or um, Gridlock, where there's this sort of weird world.

And the, the doctor's job is normally to tear it down, but the twist is that it's the system that's asking for help.

And, you know, the most obvious villain who's slayed, because he's awful, has to not be the obvious villain, otherwise it doesn't work as a whodunit.

I didn't, I didn't get that he was, the Herman's man was going to be the villain.

I just thought it was so clever in retrospect that the system actually put her into the maintenance, you know, and Graham ended up going there.

[08:45]

I just liked that as I you got me on that one, Pete, you know?

Yeah, I think so you think the system put the doctor into maintenance in order to, because it knew, because that one tries to kill him in Slade's office.

So the system knows that it's Charlie.

I mean, it could have sent, help me, a guy called Charlie is, you know, trying to blow everyone up.

But I don't know, maybe the font was too big for the packing sleep or something.

Well, I kind of wonder if the system is an emergent sentence.

Yeah.

You know, it so it still has, it has trouble communicating.

And um, something we were discussing in the text thread last night. was, you know, okay, so the system is the one under attack, but it then takes someone and kills them, you know, to prove a point.

But that cast my mind to something that's happening right now in the development of driverless cars.

[09:45]

They're programming the cars that if the car is in a situation where it is going to crash into a group of 3 people or it's going to crash into a group of 10 people, it will steer to the group of 3 people.

It's the idea that...

Yeah, yeah, the sorry problem.

It, you know, it, yes, it kills Kira, but it kills Kira because there are 10s of 1000s of robots about to go out and kill 10s of 1000s of random people.

Yeah.

I think, you know, like we we talked about the trolly problem.

I think it was, I think, that not having the doctor address how evil the system was directly was an omission.

And, and, you know, we, like, because we know Amazon and how incredibly evil Amazon is, you know, well, no, there are people, you know, wearing adult diapers on the, on the, on the conveyor belts because they're so closely monitored in terms of toilet brakes and stuff like that.

Like they're an evil company.

Um, and, and, you know, uh, Kablam, the 1st, you know, 40 minutes shows how evil the company is.

[10:54]

All of that sort of cheery stuff about private conversations and things.

I think the thing is that the difference, I think, is that the system is not for company.

Yeah, the system is the is the computer that's running the company.

It's it's probably, I mean, you could you could argue it's as much of a slave as the people doing the manual.

Yeah, I think, though, metaphorically because it's called the system.

Like there is a whole heap of sort of science fiction stuff in between a sort of direct interpretation of what's going on.

And, you know, you can't quite map it onto Amazon.

But I still think that, you know, this, I would have liked to have seen Judy and Slade, who is a horrible person, you know, dressed down by the doctor.

You know, the idea that late capitalism will just end up being nice to you, of your own accord later, and you shouldn't do anything to intervene.

[11:58]

You know, I don't think that that was an intentional message of the episode, but it's certainly the message that some people are getting.

And, you know, yeah.

I think that I think it's good in that it is a thought-provoking episode and it's getting people angry about both the themes in the episode and the way that they were handled and, you know, I did feel uncomfortable with, you know, Charlie.

On the one hand, um, sort of being a, you know, a people power person and free the workers and what have you.

But on the other hand, being a homicidal maniac.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think what it comes down to is, uh, you mentioned the sun makers earlier, but this is not, this episode does not have the morality of the sun makers, it has the morality of the dinosaurs.

Because it may have gone to a, it doesn't end with the doctor turning around and saying, well, I'll, I'll fix up the pollution of your planet using galafrain technology.

It ends with the doctor saying, yeah, this world is screwed up and it is polluted, but you can't wipe out a bunch of people to prove your point.

[13:03]

You have to take what you've got and improve it.

Yeah, that's that's what happens at the end and it's uncomfortable and it's not solved.

But I went from thinking, oh, that's a massive oversight to thinking, actually no, I think this might be deliberate.

Yeah, yeah, I, I, like my feeling is, and I don't know, that the desire to, to have the twist. meant that the, something, you know, something went wrong awry with the politics of it.

And yeah, like that it was a storytelling, the storytelling was a priority, which is a good priority and clearly why it's been so well received.

I mean, we've seen any number of episodes where the doctor comes in and sort of tears it down and it's nice to be surprised.

But there is something this season, I think, where they've made a deliberate and laudable choice to tone the doctor down.

[14:05]

You know, she's not a superhero who comes in and tears down your world anymore.

She's a traveller who's here to help.

But it does mean that she's a bit passive, I think, this year.

And she's terribly nice.

And it was nice.

And it was nice to see you not being...

You know, she has a little quip, she has a little aside.

She has little threats and I just like that voice in this episode.

So, yeah, no doctor episode is perfect and I can live with.

Yeah, yeah.

I could a good episode is a good episode.

And she was fabulous stressing down Slade and Maddox, like Julie in that episode.

Just wonderful.

And I was so glad that Julie didn't end up being evil.

Yes, yeah.

She was so Mrs. Foster or Mrs. Flux or something and, you know, it ended up not being that.

What I really like doing, that's all right.

What I really like in her dressing down of duty is later on when she catches them in the office, the doctor reminds her, yeah, no, I'm still looking at you.

You know, and now that I know a bit more of what's going on.

[15:08]

Do you have something to tell me yet?

Like, am, you know, the doctor, the doctor keeps pressing it.

It's not just a moment of, you know, if I don't like it, I'm going to stop it.

It's a moment of, okay, I still don't like this.

I'm giving you a chance to tell me if you're involved.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's, it's, I think the Davison comparisons we've been making with Jody is a real, a real thing because Davison's doctor wants to knock around the universe having fun and playing cricket and all these nasty things keep getting in the way.

Yeah.

And when they get in the way he gets very frustrated and very annoyed.

Do you know, I think it's like Hartnell, where the 3 leads have a crazy friend who gets them into trouble.

Yes, let's go with Hartnell.

That makes me much happier.

Much better.

But do you know what I mean?

Like, she, she is just a traveller.

She's not this sort of fetishized superhero and she doesn't do the sort of snarling David Tennant tea thing.

[16:08]

But I would like to see her a little bit more kind of, um, I'd like to see her tear down the world once or twice.

You know what I mean?

Maybe you might get that in the finale.

I I called the finale, the Battle, the Battle of the Cat just walked across my keyboard the other night when I was talking to Brandon.

I still don't know how to pronounce it.

Yeah.

But yeah, I'm with Todd.

I think her lack of direct involvement and direct action, we might say, is something they're building up to.

She's going to face a choice and either choice is going to be a terrible choice and I think that's going to be the finale.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hope so.

I do hope that they're building up to, you know, addressing that in some way.

But in any case, like this was a hell of an enjoyable episode, an absorbing episode.

[17:11]

And gosh, the show looks good.

Yes, and and that whole sequence on those travelling things that they were on when he slapped his hand and it fell off, I just burst out laughing.

Yeah, it was so much fun.

At that speed from that high tea would have broken his neck.

It's doctor.

He's a space psycho nerd.

There's a gravity curtain.

There's a gravity curtain.

Oh, yeah, see.

Head cannon?

All right.

Well, you heard the soft sound of the timer, which was broadcasting itself through James's watch for no adequately explored reason, which meant it was very quiet.

So we might do concluding remarks if anyone has any.

Eight out of 10.

Stop ranking everything.

No, just enjoy it. 9 out of 9 out of 10.

[18:13]

I was just absorbed and engrossed and I just relaxed and enjoyed it and I thought of that.

Yeah, I thought it was the funnest episode so far. you know, but don't pay any attention to me because I enjoyed the Saranga conundrum, so...

All right, well, that's about all we have time for.

We'll be back next week, but in great Jody interterra tradition, we're not going to spoil the title for you, because I can't remember it.

And you can catch our Christopher Eccleston, our giant epic Christopher Eccleston retrospective this Sunday when we release it.

And of course, we'll be back. bigger on the outside.

It's bigger in every possible direction.

I didn't.

Anyway.

That's just my waist.

Keblam.

Oh, dear.

All right.

Well, I guess we'll sign off.

[19:13]

So we'll just put a big exclamation mark at the end of the episode.

James.

Do you have anything to say?

No.

Okay.

All right.

All right, thanks, guys.

I look forward to chatting to you all. to chatting to you all next week.

See you later.

Bye.

Bye.

Later.

I thought you weren't going to do that.