Yahoo News Doctor Who: Did you spot the nods to classic episodes?
Doctor Who went back to basics this week with 'Kerblam!' delivering good old-fashioned thrills as it pitted our heroes against a tech-phobic terrorist... and an army of robot postmen.
But while series 11's latest episode was a near-perfect package packed with Easter eggs for the eagle-eyed, it did also leave us with a few unanswered questions.
Consider the following 'customer feedback'.
1. How come Ryan didn't blow up the TARDIS?
Kerblam bubble wrap is not to be popped – Ryan (Tosin Cole) and the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) even remind Graham of that fact in this week's closing scene.
But wait a second, rewind back to the beginning of the episode: shortly after the delivery bot drops off the Doctor's parcel, Ryan picks up the bubble wrap it's packaged in and, quite clearly, pops a couple of bubbles. You see and hear him do it.
So why didn't this bubble wrap go boom? One possible explanation is "temporal grace".
Way back in 1976, in the story 'The Hand of Fear', Doctor Who established that the TARDIS interior operated in a state of something called "temporal grace", which meant that no weapons could be discharged inside.
Now, in the years since, this plot point has been discarded and picked up again as convenient: in 2011's 'Let's Kill Hitler', the eleventh Doctor admitted that the presence of temporal grace in the TARDIS was (by that point at least) nothing more than a "clever lie".
Possibly it was authentic at one stage, but will the revamped TARDIS have reinstalled this particular innovation? (Either that, or this is a massive goof. But surely not.)
2. How does Kerblam's delivery system work?
Given that your average Earthbound retailer can sometimes struggle to deliver to a first-floor flat, it's damn impressive that Kerblam is somehow able to locate the TARDIS while it's in flight.
Moreover, how powerful exactly are the delivery bot's teleport systems that they're able to not only traverse the time vortex, but also penetrate the TARDIS's outer shell?
Maybe the Doctor has special settings in place that allows deliveries of this sort to be zapped through? That seems improbable given that she's still getting used to those "new systems".
Kerblam appears to have some Time Lord-level tech at its disposal, which makes the ease with which Charlie (Leo Flanagan) hacked their systems all the more concerning. His plot to ship bomb-carrying delivery bots to the firm's customers is positively small fry when you consider what he might have achieved...
3. How did Kerblam's system know to contact the Doctor?
The Doctor is first tipped off to the trouble on Kerblam's warehouse moon when the package slip on her TARDIS delivery comes inscribed with a message: "Help me."
We know Kerblam has the power to locate a wandering TARDIS, but how did the system know know to turn to the Doctor – righter of wrongs, adjudicator of fair play throughout the universe – in its hour of need?
Most likely, it didn't – the plea for help was probably printed on every single one of the package slips Kerblam was beaming out into the universe and the Doctor was simply the first / only person to respond.
Either that or something in the Doctor's purchase history tipped the system off to her heroic tendencies, so it sought her out specifically. Probably wasn't the fez that did it, though.
Speaking of which...
4. When did the Doctor order that fez?
"Don't remember ordering anything... must've been a while back," the Doctor muses, before discovering that she's purchased a fez.
The fez was, of course, headgear of choice for the eleventh Doctor – his first was destroyed by Amy and River Song in 2010 episode 'The Big Bang', but he insisted he'd buy another. And so it appears he did.
We saw another of the Doctor's fezzes (fezi?) confiscated by Queen Elizabeth I's guards in 2013's 'The Day of the Doctor', so it's also probable that this was the not the first time he'd ordered a replacement.
As for why it took so long... again, for Kerblam to have located the TARDIS at all is something of a miracle, so we'll forgive them missing the estimated delivery date.
5. Who is the First Lady?
Blagging their way into the Kerblam facility, the Doctor and friends give Judy Maddox (Julie Hesmondhalgh) a quick flash of the psychic paper, which establishes the foursome as "relatives of the First Lady".
It's never established to whom precisely "the First Lady" refers, though. Is she a dignitary from the neighbouring planet of Kandoka – or, if said planet and its warehouse moon are part of an Earth colony, then might "the First Lady" refer to the wife of Earth's president?
The Doctor briefly served as President of Earth on a couple of occasions, during a Cyberman invasion ('Death in Heaven') and a Zygon uprising ('The Zygon Invasion'), but these stories fall well out of the 'Kerblam!' timeframe, so any theories that "the First Lady" refers to River Song are probably, sadly, wide of the mark.
6. Who are the Doctor's robot friends?
Ryan's remark that Kerblam's droid workforce is "pretty creepy" is branded "robo-phobic" by the Doctor, who insists that "some of [her] best friends are robots".
Most notably, the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) travelled with two different iterations of robot dog K9 – taking a spare out of storage when the first model decided to stay behind on Gallifrey at the close of 1978's 'The Invasion of Time'.
The fifth Doc (Peter Davison) also technically had an android companion in the form of Kamelion – voiced by Gerald Flood, shape-shifting Kamelion's natural form was in fact a genuine computer-controlled robot prop.
Kamelion hopped aboard the TARDIS at the close of 1983 story 'The King's Demons' but off-screen, the mechanics of operating the robot proved too complex, with frequent malfunctions, and so the character simply vanished.
He eventually reappeared on-screen a year later in the story 'Planet of Fire' and was promptly blown up. Presumably, in the intervening time, the Doctor had left Kamelion to wander the bowels of the TARDIS while he and his other companions went off and had adventures.
So much for "best friends".
7. What happened with the Doctor, wasps and Agatha Christie?
An easy one, this! But just in case there are any Doctor Who newbies amongst us...
When Yaz (Mandip Gill) suggests our mischief-making Doctor is the sort of person who'd "stick a stick in a wasps' nest, just to see what happened", she responds, "Talking about wasps… did I ever tell you about me and Agatha Christie?"
For once, this isn't an allusion to an adventure that occurred off-screen: the Doctor is referring to the events of 2008 episode 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', which saw her tenth incarnation (David Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) meet famed author Christie and battle the Vespiform, a giant shapeshifting alien wasp.
Obvs.
8. What's going to happen in episode eight?
Next week's episode, 'The Witchfinders', sees team TARDIS back in time once more.
It's written by Joy Wilkinson, directed by Sallie Aprahamian (who also helmed 'Arachnids in the UK') and features guest stars Alan Cumming (as King James I), Siobhan Finneran (as Becka Savage), Tilly Steele (as Willa Twiston), Tricia Kelly (as Old Mother Twiston), Stavros Demetraki (as Alfonso) and Arthur Kay (as Smithy).
Here's the official synopsis: The Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz arrive in 17th century Lancashire and become embroiled in a witch trial, run by the local landowner. As fear stalks the land, the arrival of King James I only serves to intensify the witch hunt.
But is there something even more dangerous at work? Can the Doctor and friends keep the people of Bilehurst Cragg safe from all the forces that are massing in the land?
The 'Next Time...' teaser sees Finneran's character demanding that a woman accused of witchcraft be "put to the test", with Cumming's merciless monarch hissing, "We must purify your land! Arrest the witch!"
You don't need magic to foresee that Doctor – with her Time Lord tech, and tendency to put her foot in it – will be branded a sorceress next week...
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