This was a solid episode, one that was clearly inspired by the controversies regarding Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com (which fits into the ongoing political commentary of this season), but also one that was thankfully more story than agenda (not that there's anything wrong with having a message in your story, but I still haven't gotten over that Trump stand-in).
That said, it took an unexpected turn towards the end that reminded me of The Unquiet Dead. In that case, the pro-migrant message was turned on its head by revealing the alien asylum seekers were in fact evil. In this case, the individual behind the sabotage of an exploitative, manipulative, back-breaking system is actually the bad guy. It's...a bit strange.
1. So despite being considered universally ubiquitous, this is the first time we've ever seen or heard of Kablam, an intergalactic delivery service. (It's basically Amazon.com in space). IT comes with a mysterious request for help, leading out gang to go undercover at the factory where all the produce is packaged.
2. When I first saw the delivery postman I was randomly reminded of Space Quest II, a game from the eighties in which you have to use an electronic mailbox in the middle of a jungle to order an object you need to complete the game. And then, what do you know: the Doctor drops the name Roger Wilco, the main character in that game!
Granted, I then did some research and discovered that she was actually saying the shorthand for: "received and will comply", which is clearly where the game designers derived the name of their space janitor from. You learn something new every day!
3. Between the fez and the Doctor's namedropping of Agatha Christie, this was definitely the most continuity-friendly episode thus far.
4. The episode wastes no time in creating contemporary analogies: workers who are grateful to have a job in an overcrowded market, ankle bracelets to make sure everyone is where they should be, monitored productivity in which conversation is discouraged, a policy that ten percent of "organics" (that is, humans) are workers, and quotes like: "real people need real jobs." Yikes.
5. In another example of actors turning up regularly across different shows – that's Amelia Sedley from Vanity Fair! And she's pretty much the same person as she was there, getting through hardship and a repetitive workload by imagining the joy people get on opening their packages.
6. Poor Dan: after reminiscing about his daughter and showing Yaz a necklace she had made for him, he's naturally the first to meet his demise. It's as fatal as a WWII solider showing a photograph of his sweetheart to a comrade right before battle.
7. The undercover work by the team was handled well, with everyone making conversation, coming up with plans, drawing logical conclusions based on what they'd found out, and acting accordingly. Ryan in particular knows how these sorts of places are run (it reminded me of Donna back in the day) and uses that to his advantage.
8. Ah, the good old Chekhov's Chute. You can't introduce one of them without having all your characters slide down it at some point, screaming their heads off.
9. So the truth comes out and it's pretty grim: the culprit behind the plot to murder thousands of Kablam customers wasn't the dickish manager or the suspicious recruitment lady, but one of the lowly workers, protesting against robots having all but ten percent of the jobs and raging against the system.
Only the system knew it have been compromised, and sent the distress call to the Doctor, not to mention sacrificing Kira so Charlie could see the full extent of his evil actions – not that he took it on board. It's hardly an upbeat ending, especially as Judy's inspired course of action is to employ more humans... into boring, underpaid, dead-end jobs. Yay?
10. Still, I have to love the fact that the bombs were hidden inside the bubble-wrap, and that the entire plan was contingent on customers popping them. I get the strong suspicion that this was the central conceit upon which the rest of the episode was built.
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