McTighe, Pete

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

2 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: Kerblam!

The novelisation of McTighe's own script for an episode of Series 11 featuring the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and her companions Graham, Ryan and Yaz.  The Doctor receives a parcel from the intergalactic delivery company Kerblam which contains the plea 'Help me' and immediately diverts the TARDIS to the Kerblam headquarters.  There she and her friends discover a vast warehouse operation where 10% of the work force is human but the other 90% are robots.  When it becomes clear that human workers are disappearing, the Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz go undercover to unravel the mystery.

I've always liked the design of the friendly/creepy robots in the televised version of this story, in fact they're probably the best designed alien/monster of the Chibnall/Whittaker era.  Unfortunately, it also had some very problematic messaging, intentionally or otherwise.  *SPOILERS to follow, so be warned*  In it, we discover that the villain of the piece is a human worker trying to take a stand in support of human workers and the true hero turns out to be Amazon... sorry, 'Kerblam'... itself.  Given Amazon... sorry, 'Kerblam's... record of exploitative practices in regard to workers, it felt a really weird thing for Doctor Who to be in favour of.

I was therefore interested to see whether the novelisation addressed this weird messaging.  And the truth is, it does.  We get to see a bit more of the labour disputes on Kandoka and the reason Charlie's moral compass ends up so skewed.  But despite all that, the core plot element of the faceless product-dispatching corporation is the hero all along remains intact.  It's better, but it's not fixed.  And I've always had a problem with the system choosing to murder an innocent worker as an example of the heartache Charlie might cause being something the Doctor tacitly approves of.  That was in the episode and it's in the novelisation and it remains a weird twisting of Doctor Who's usual morality.

The book itself is perfectly fine overall but without much flair or genuinely engaging characters, but that skewed moral compass pervades it and largely spoils it.  Nice to see a surprising cameo by one of the classic era Doctors, though.

2 out of 5

Collaborations & Anthologies:

Doctor Who: Adventures In Lockdown (here)

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Doctor Who (here)