It's not illusion of control, the disc allows people to buy from other stores and allows people to resell their games. Games on disc go down in price much earlier than in the store. Spider-man 2 still costs 80€ in the PS Store, I can get it for half of that on disc and that's not even the used disc price. Sony removing the disc option gives them full control over game prices. On PC you can buy from some other store, but that also comes with its issues.
I think there was something about the TARDIS doing something to people so everything is translated. There was an episode (The Fires of Pompeii) with 10 and Donna where they're in Pompeii and Donna says something in Latin to some Roman guy and he doesn't understand it.
The "West" you're talking about is two South Korean companies and one US American company that mostly manufactures in Asia.