On TV: Saturday 27th August 2011
Channel: BBC One 7.10pm
Episode Type: Mid Season opener, 8/13
In 1 Sentence: A decent opener to the second half of the series, which despite the title has little to do with Hitler or killing him...
BBC Summary: In the desperate search for Melody Pond, the TARDIS crash lands in Thirties Berlin, as the time-travelling drama returns for the second half of the series shown earlier in the year. The Doctor comes face to face with the greatest war criminal in the Universe. And Hitler. Old friendships are tested to their limits as the Doctor suffers the ultimate betrayal and learns a harsh lesson in the cruelest warfare of all. As precious time ebbs away, the Doctor must teach his adversaries that time travel has responsibilities. And he must succeed before an almighty price is paid.
SPOILERS!
My Review: As a huge Doctor Who fan, I am very frustrated that I don’t post more about the show. I try to post about news and I reviewed The Impossible Astronaut, but now I’m going to try and review every episode for the remainder of the series. Well I’ll give it a go anyway!
So kicking off with Let’s Kill Hitler, which has generated a lot of controversy this past week. Those that aren’t fans of River Song (and indeed informative titles of episodes - Hitler was barely in this for 5 minutes!) were not going to be pleased at all as the episode focused entirely on River Song, or ‘Mels’ as she was for the first 10-15 minutes or so. I really liked seeing a different ‘incarnation’ of River and especially loved that it allowed us to see Amy and Rory as children, one of the few things that most fans seemed to credit the episode on. The scene where Amy thought Rory was gay was brilliantly done and is an example of a lot of the humour peppered throughout - mostly from River Song admittedly.
I have never had much of a problem with River, although I do agree that it can be hard to ‘like’ a character without much backstory, I don’t believe we as the audience have been “forced” into liking her in anyway. Of course a character such as River is so complicated - we are essentially viewing her life backwards - that it was always going to be almost impossible to give her much back story without stabbing future writers in the foot. I enjoyed seeing the brand new River fresh from regeneration as it allowed the audience to see her as we rarely get a chance with most characters - with foresight. We as the audience have seen her death, seen her as a hero, and now (apparently) as a nemesis to the Doctor. Although what I found thoroughly frustrating was the 2 minute turn-around from wanting to assassinate the Doctor to sacrificing her future regenerations for him.
But let’s start back at the beginning. The episode opens with Amy and Rory sending the Doctor a message in a cornfield. This is brilliantly directed and looks fantastic, something which Doctor Who fans often take for granted these days, but which I still appreciate very much. Amy and Rory are looking for the Doctor as he is meant to be finding their daughter Melody. Yet once Mels turns up and they end up in 1930’s Berlin, finding Melody is barely mentioned, clearly the more pressing matter of their best friend dying, her turning out to be their daughter all along and then having a newly born River Song on their hands was more than enough. Hardly surprising. There is so much to pack into the episode, that I haven’t even managed to mention the ‘enemies’ which included “anti bodies” which were security robots in The Teselecta, that killed anyone who weren’t authorised (in a nice bit of old-fashioned sci-fi action) and the robots than can disguise themselves as pretty much anything (humans, motorcycles etc) called The Teselecta, where the “anti bodies” resided. The human robot contained a crew of miniature people (borrowers style!) who control the robot. Their mission: to find, bring to justice and punish history’s ‘evil’. This was a great concept hardly used at all, but I’m sure, like ‘The Flesh’ they may pop up again, at least I hope so!
Also not used was Hitler, who was quite literally locked in a cupboard after some awesome Rory punching. Arthur Darvill really is superb. I really think the episode would have been better as a two-parter or at least an hour long. The extra time would have allowed the script to breathe and taken advantage of this huge storyline and excellent aliens.
Lastly, I’d like to mention the end scene when the Doctor is dying. After being poisoned he is in the TARDIS, where he is faced with past companions - Rose, Martha and Donna. Fans across the nation surely had a little squeal at that - I certainly did! - as ‘new Who’ barely mentions them at all, so it is nice to see them, even for a brief moment and with the Doctor referring to his guilt. Little hologram Amelia telling the Doctor he has 32 minutes until his death was touching, funny and sad all at the same time and gave the episode a much needed spark of emotion that made it more memorable and worthy of being a mid season opener. Then when the Doctor was abruptly dressed in formal attire, a whiff of time travel seemed to have happened in those 32 minutes (many whispering about Amy and Rory’s wedding - there were an awful lot of wedding references in the episode). I don’t think there is much more to say about this great, controversial last scene. As I said above River’s u-turn in feelings was a little hard to believe and therefore dampened the effect. But it was nice to see her finally realise who River was: herself. That was played beautifully by Alex Kingston, in fact she pretty much carried the whole episode.
However casual viewers I’m sure would have been alienated and not have a clue what was going on, (a shame as otherwise Who will only end up losing viewers) as the whole episode whizzed around a little, the pace a little hard to hack on the first viewing. A second viewing is in order to fully grasp what went on, all the little jokes that were said, and to fully appreciate Who at its best. Not that I’m complaining!
But frankly the episode was a bit of a mess, which is why my score is a little low this week. It felt a little like Moffat had made it so complicated that we wouldn’t notice, or think it was ‘clever’ which is was but just much more than it needed to be. I kind of miss the RTD era when things were a little simpler. Now I never thought I’d be saying that...
Score: 8/10
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