#kerblam

[dandelionjack]

some final thoughts on the matter from me, my twitter mutual Frosty, and their mutual Bonnie.

never been so disappointed in my fav show.

[paternostergays]

if i had a nickel for every time a doctor who episode had a political allegory episode that managed to at the same time accurately portray a genuine issue in current society whilst still missing the mark on holding the root cause accountable and villainising someone genuinely and justifiably angry at said issue but was just going about bringing justice to it in the wrong way, I would have two nickels. which isn't a lot but it's starting to get on my nerves

[funeralgreys]

12 and bill would’ve killed that thing with hammers I can tell you that much

[evviejo]

thirteen's era appreciation: 559/?

[verloonati]

heartbreaking: the guy who wrote a story in which the twist was that space amazon was good actually, and everything bad was the striking worker's fault and "the system is good" incapable to deliver commentary on far right podcasts and online agitators that questions the sci-fi military.

[tharizdun-03]

i'd say interstellar song contest falls somewhere in between the zygon inversion and kerblam on similarly iffy politics.

actually let's compare this in more depth. because both the zygon inversion and kerblam feature revolutionaries who are presented as extremists who have "gone too far". but i still love the former story and hate the latter.

kerblam has charlie. inversion has bonnie. both are explicitly framed as rebels who want to overturn what they perceive as oppression. and both are framed as extremists whose ideologies are quickly dismissed as irrational and dangerous.

neither story meaningfully explores the root cause of rebellion. charlie’s automation-focused ideology is undercut while bonnie’s grievances are left vague or incoherent (treated like cattle how, bonnie? the story doesn't care enough to ask).

kerblam ends with vague reforms and no structural change. judy may propose the organisation becomes majority-organics, but there’s no guarantee anyone will listen. all of the worker characters die. the two bosses survive.

the background worker characters get one month off but only paid for two weeks. and instead of the horrible minimum-wage jobs being automated, they'll just hire more human workers to inflict further misery upon.

meanwhile; inversion sees the doctor enforce a fragile truce that resets the same failed peace repeatedly. kate’s memory has apparently been wiped multiple times. people keep getting slaughtered. each time, the doctor resets it to more or less how it was at the start.

both feature climaxes with the doctor confronting the antagonist; in both, the terrorist gets an appeal to emotion and neither seriously proposes alternatives to the existing system. radicalism is treated as inherently flawed or harmful, not a potential source of systemic change.

so, where do they differ?

first of all: kerblam addresses real-world issues like amazon-style capitalism, automation, and labor exploitation head-on. inversion uses metaphor.

zygons can never truly be about isis or refugees or imperialist wars or dysphoria, but it can orbit that territory. which lends the story to ambiguity, multiple possible readings, and prioritising a more coherent moral purpose.

inversion follows a clear moral arc with bonnie’s redemption paralleling the doctor’s trauma. she’s equated with him in the time war, framing her feelings as valid. she just needs to find a non-lethal third way, which ends up being stepping into the role of the missing osgood.

charlie gets no such treatment. he is killed off with no emotional payoff, no redemption, and framed as a generational pariah. he’s radicalised by being a millennial.

kerblam is cynical. it lacks any emotional sincerity. it undermines its initial setup with a confused message. but inversion is constructed with nuance, ambiguity, and clear intent by harness and moffat the entire way through with a coherent, optimistic moral.

it also helps that inversion is a major narrative climax in series 9, led by capaldi and coleman, who are the two greatest lead actors in the history of the show. they both deliver all-time nuanced and emotionally devastating portrayals.

so; the main difference comes down to empathy. the zygon inversion has deep empathy for bonnie even if it doesn't have an interest in her specific motives. it has deep empathy for the issues it explores. it has deep empathy for its audience. moffat (+harness) prioritizes empathy.

kerblam has no empathy for charlie and randomly kills him off in a blaze of fire. it has no empathy for the issues it explores and actively inflicts further misery on even more workers. and chibnall (+ mctighe) seems to despise the disaffected youth that is its own audience.

so, where does the interstellar song contest land? well, sort of in between.

there's nothing as explicitly fascist as "the systems aren’t the problem", it does have empathy for the oppressed, and it does end its story with giving the group a voice at eurovision.

naturally; none of this is enough. the story is still about how one individual person of a genocided group went "too far for his good cause" instead of being a story about the oppression.

the doctor still tortures this "evil freedom fighter" but does nothing about the corporation that is behind their oppression (if he's even aware of it).

and the liberal solution to the problem doesn't imply that the material reality of their home planet has actually changed at all, so the killing will likely just continue.

it's a horrible move to write this sort of story in this current political climate. rtd's entire modern doctor who era is deeply cynical in how it tries to faux-appeal to its liberal audience.

but there's just enough wiggle room there that i think you can place it between the zygon inversion and kerblam on this specific axis. moffat's attempt isn't as leftist as it should be, but it's still the best shot so far. let's hope future doctor who stories do better.

[the13thh0ur]

Every family photo ever (Yaz and Graham were prepared, Ryan was sleepy, and the Doctor didn’t even know a photo was being taken).

[cryptidjeepers]

oh my god this is years late but everyones perception of kerblam is literally wrong??? when the doctor said the "system" wasn't wrong, she meant automation? not the company? like the concept of automation isn't inherently wrong (there is a good point for making dangerous and menial tasks automated) and it wasn't trying to hurt people. And when she said the people exploiting the system were wrong she meant people exploiting automation (including charlie, who was using it to kill people so the system would take the fall. the doctor even points out he isnt an acitivst, he's just killing people). the metaphor is a bit fumbly. but it was never pro company/amazon?? the episode ends with a focus on the company being people led. man, i dont think ill ever not get annoyed with the way people bring this episode up to make series 11 look bad.

[doctor-the-13th]

I see no difference.

Bonus:

Imagine River and Amy come back from the dead just to do this.

[thetimelcss]

listen, lucky day, liked it lowkey - it was fine and i feel for ruby. but, the general political context in which they portrayed the message was—oh it was written by kerblam guy? makes sense.

[oreo102]

Saying kerblam is pro capitalism is fucking dumb and you’re wrong. I usually try to avoid telling people their takes of an episode is dumb and wrong(at least to their faces) but this time it is. And I’ll prove it.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s anti-capitalism, but to say it’s pro isn’t right either. Kerblam is pretty obviously a stand in for any big corporation, and since Amazon is, well, Amazon, I’m using it in my comparisons.

We learn early on that kerblam is on a moon and it’s heavily implied that the human workers stay there year round (Dan saying he splurges twice a year to see his daughter) but this isn’t framed as a good thing- there’s no way to frame that as a good thing. It’s framed very obviously as sad, he’s sad he can’t see his kid any more because he has to work.

There’s also a very high unemployment rate, as stated by multiple characters, which again: it’s shown as a bad thing. Hell- Charlie says as much. It’s bad, it’s terrible, it shouldn’t be. And no one argues with him- the doctor agrees! It is terrible that so many people are unemployed, but it’s not the AI’s fault

That’s the moral. AI is not responsible for the people who use it for wrong (please note for this next part: how it is right now, I am not pro-AI, this is from a strictly scifi perspective where the AI has a conscious(?)). AI could be an incredibly helpful tool, but how it’s being used irl and in the epsiode, it’s not good.

Where real life and Dr who depart is that the AI in kerblam is- if not sentient, close enough that it knows to send for help so innocent people don’t die. Which is what would’ve happened! Charlie had a good goal. But how he went about it- the way he decided to try and fix the issue was to kill countless people.

This episode isn’t saying Kerblam is good. It isn’t saying the practices of big companies like Kerblam or Amazon is good. It actively discourages it, actually. It’s saying that AI is not at fault for how people use it, that to make a problem better you shouldn’t murder a bunch of innocent people. It’s not pro-capitalism. Stop it.

And if you have an actual argument with evidence from the episode I’d be happy to hear it! But only if it includes actual evidence :)

[dandelionjack]

pete mctighe is great at characterisation, dialogue, and tying together various plot threads, but he needs a special political advisor close at hand every time he writes an episode to make sure he doesn’t well-meaningly blunder into awful optics again liberal style

[paternostergays]

kerblam pisses me off soooo much because of the complete lack of thought behind it - same as lucky day. the famous 'the systems aren't the problem' line (terrible choice of word, because the doctor is referring to automation and not the system of capitalism) tops off the conclusion of the allegory of the extreme activist, which was poorly handled and makes the whole episode appear to be supporting capitalism anyway. the episode is right to point out that charlie's plan (aka mass murder of kerblam customers) is awful, but doesn't drive home the message that a) he's targeting the technology rather than capitalism and b) if he gets his wish then what? even more people work underpaid menial jobs that have been established as easy to do via automation? which is the end result of the story anyway. the episode does a very good job of pointing out the capitalist system and how damaging it is (particularly the line about how the company is its own security, healthcare etc) but does nothing to fix it - and fumbles the 'people who misuse technology are the wrong ones not the technology itself' message to boot.

ANYWAY. onto lucky day, because they were written by the same guy. overall much better and more nuanced episode that again gets its messaging confused because the writer picked UNIT to function as an allegory for the climate deniers/conspiracy theorists/anti NHS (etc) types to rail against. If UNIT was not so heavily militarised, the episode would read a whole lot better. But yknow, it's hard to disagree with Conrad when he points out that they have a massive Avengers style tower and many many guns and go around arresting journalists (slight aside, he was arrested for something like breaking the peace - I can't quite remember the exact phrasing - when what he was actually doing was basically a misuse of emergency services, which would have worked a lot better alongside the 'I didn't take the antidote' line). and the climax of the episode being the paramilitary government organisation siccing a deadly alien on a guy was... yeah, again unintentional because we all hate conrads guts and sort of want it to happen by that point, but still. and I saw someone make the point that the episode refused to address any of the systems in place/social climate - such as government spending on things other than the systems put in place to help people, the cost of living, struggling healthcare system etc - that would allow people to become radicalised in the way conrad was, which makes sense when compared with kerblam. both point out the flaws in the system and have villains who rail against them in the wrong way - but neither goes so far as to suggest blaming (or, consequently, fixing/abolishing) the systems themselves for the problem they've ultimately created.

i think that's what annoys me about both episodes, to different degrees. they both leave you feeling confused about the message they're aiming for.

[dontbelasagne]

Pete Mctighe really likes to end an episode off with the doctor yelling at us about individual responsibility and personal harm as to why this system continually harms us all :)

[evviejo]

requested by @thirteensfavoritetoy >> thirteen under different lighting colours

[thekinglemingle]

Pete McTighe is actually a decent writer who gets Doctor Who, but he needs to be banned from writing politics because his every attempt to write a fairly unsubtle left wing message comes out as "maybe it's the unions that's the problem, not Amazon" or "maybe it should be illegal to question the quasi fascist military that answers to no authority"