It feels good to have it back doesn’t it? After a summer of riots and phone-hacking scandals, nothing could be more appropriate to lighten the mood than locking Hitler in a cupboard. The beauty of this episode was that it managed to be fun and silly while still clearing up a lot of questions left dangling from the first half of the series, particularly regarding one River Song/Melody Pond.
Despite it’s comical title, Let’s Kill Hitler, this wasn’t the type of episode I was expecting to open up the second half of the series. The mid-series finale, A Good Man Goes To War, was very dark and grim in places, especially towards the end when the Doctor realises the extent of pain and destruction he has caused the universe, so I was assuming we would continue in that vein for a while. But instead, Let’s Kill Hitler was a fun-filled rollick around 1930s Berlin, who’d have thunk it?
Doctor Who Episode 8 Review - Take Me To The River
Like us, the Doctor has been gone all summer, he has been searching for Amy and Rory’s daughter, Melody Pond, whom we found out in the mid-series finale is also River Song. As the Doctor doesn’t carry a mobile phone with him, the easiest way to get his attention is to create an elaborate crop circle spelling out his name - which is what the Ponds do. They got it absolutely perfect, I wonder if they are well practiced? Maybe they tried it on a number of different crop fields until they got it right.
The Doctor informs Amy that he hasn’t yet been able to locate Melody, but that she should be safe in the knowledge that he will do eventually, because they all know she grows up to be River Song.
Just look at the way she holds that gun? I should have seen the twist coming, but I didn’t! The gang is joined by Mels, who describes herself as Amy and Rory’s best friend, who we have never heard of previously. The signs were all there for the twist to come: the flirting with the Doctor, her previous jail time, running from authority, and the name! Come on, I should have made the connection with the name!
Mels basically hijacks the TARDIS, “You’ve got a time-machine, I’ve got a gun. What the hell? Let’s kill Hitler.”
There is a nice little flashback of Amy and Rory as kids, along with Mels, who it seems really was their best friend. Is this an alternate time-line? Or was Mels always a part of their lives? Mels appears to have an obsession with the Doctor just like young Amelia does, and is constantly questioning Amy about him.
The bit with Amy realising that Rory likes her, thanks to Mels meddling, is a really sweet moment, and quite strange when you think that Melody basically brought her parents together. And then Amy named her daughter after her…daughter.
That poster in the background was intentional right? “Break the Silence…” It has to be. See, I spot the little things in the background but I miss the obvious stuff staring me right in the face.
So with a bullet lodged in the TARDIS, we end up arriving in Berlin 1938. What at first appears to be some sort of robotic janitor, turns out to be a human-looking spaceship that is controlled by miniaturised humans. That’s right, things all go a bit…
Honey I shrunk a Nazi! This spaceship can copy the appearance of others, morph itself in to them, while shrinking them down to mini-mes and bringing them aboard the ship. We see this happen to a Nazi Officer, who is zapped aboard the craft, and set upon by the “anti-bodies”, which look kind of like large jellyfish, although with these I doubt you can cure the sting by urinating on it.
“Welcome, you are unauthorised, your death will now be implemented,” the jellyfish tell the Nazi Officer. I like that they still welcome you before they terminate your existence, politeness goes a long way.
We learn that this spaceship is called the Teselector, and their objective is to punish the unpunished, those who committed great acts of atrocity in their life-time but never got true comeuppance. They focus specifically on war criminals, such as Hitler, and extract them at the end of their time-stream and “give them hell”. However, they arrive too early in Hitler’s time-stream, but before they have a chance to regroup, the TARDIS comes crashing in.
The Doctor and co end up inadvertently saving Hitler, “Believe me it was an accident.” Hitler is basically a MacGuffin, something believed to be a massive plot point but in the end is forgotten about, and rather quickly too. Hitler is played for laughs, he gets punched in the face by Rory, told to shut up, and then locked in a cupboard - just brilliant.
No, the real plot point here is Mels, who is caught in Hitler’s cross-fire, and lays dying on the floor. Mels tells the Doctor that she used to dream about marrying him, which is just one of many wedding references in this episode, and I’ll come back to that later. The Doctor makes a deal that if Mels survives he’ll marry her, and get her parents on the phone to ask permission, “Might as well do it now, since they’re both right here.” And the penny drops!
Mels = Melody Pond. All the clues were there, I still can’t believe I missed it, but I’m glad I did because it was a nice surprise. As Melody regenerates we get confirmation that the Little Girl that we last saw wandering the back-alleys of New York was also a regeneration of Melody, which many of us had assumed, but it felt good to have it put to rest finally.
Mels regenerates in to River Song, and this must be the moment that River talked about earlier in the series, that when they meet again the Doctor will know more about her than she does him. The Doctor and River have a cool little scene of one-upmanship that sees the Doctor thinking a step ahead every time, until the fatal Judas kiss. Again, the scene is played for laughs but is still informative.
“I was trained and conditioned for one purpose - to kill the Doctor,” River tells Amy. And with that one kiss River seals the Doctor’s fate, as she poisons him. The Meet Dave folk confirm Melody/River as the Doctor’s killer, but they dispute the date of his death, because their records show that the Doctor dies in Utah in 2011, which we saw in The Impossible Astronaut, and according to them, this is a “fixed point” that cannot be altered.
While the Doctor is slowly dying, Amy and Rory go on pursuit of River, who is running wild over Nazi Germany, killing guards, crashing parties, and stealing clothes. I know a lot of people find River Song an annoying character, and her flirting with the Doctor can get a bit tiresome, but she has grown on me over the series, and I thought she worked very well here.
One thing that did annoy me, or not so much annoy, but just didn’t sit well, is the fact that while you are regenerating you seem to gain superhero like powers, such has been able to survive jumping from buildings and bullet-fire. It’s a minor quibble, but a quibble nonetheless.
The Doctor is looking for strength to get him through his final moments before death. He returns to the TARDIS and activates the voice interface, which provides a hologram like image of people involved in the Doctor’s life, past or present, it’s very Star Wars. It first appears as the Doctor himself, but he tells it “Give me someone I like,” yes, the Doctor is self-hating. It then brings him Rose, Martha, and Donna, all of which represent guilt for the Doctor, and not strength.
Finally, it brings him young Amelia Pond, and although she continues to tell him “you will be dead in 32 minutes”, and that his regeneration abilities have been disabled by the poison, her recollection of “fish fingers and custard” is enough to give the Doctor the strength to power the TARDIS. We don’t get to see the rest of this scene, and I think that was purposeful, I’m sure more happened in between the Doctor starting up the TARDIS and him returning.
Meanwhile the Meet Dave ship morphs in to Amy, and shrinks the Ponds aboard. Both Amy and Rory are given privileges so that they don’t have the life extracted from them by the security jellyfish.
Spaceship Amy reveals some very vital information regarding the Doctor’s death and the Silence. She tells River “You killed the Doctor on the orders of the movement known as the Silence, an academy of the question.” This is the first time we have heard of the Silence referred to as a “movement”, before we just believed them to be scary Nosferatu looking alien things in sharp suits.
As the Meet Dave people begin to extract River, the Doctor returns, dressed in an immaculate tuxedo and top hat, and he even has a cane. Now, perhaps this is just Moffat being quirky, because “top hats are cool”, but I think there is something more to this. Why would the Doctor return wearing a tux? He was almost knocking on death’s door, surely there are more important things at hand than a change of clothes? Well, like I said, we didn’t get to see all of the Doctor/Amelia scene inside of the TARDIS, maybe because we will see that play out later in the series.
I believe the Doctor flew the TARDIS somewhere else before he returned to Berlin. Where did he go? Well, like I mentioned earlier, this episode had a fair few wedding references, first Mels tells the Doctor “I don’t do weddings,” which River backs-up later on, but as Mels lays dying she says that when she was little she dreamed of marrying him. Also, back in the Series 5 episode The Big Bang, when Amy remembered the Doctor back in to existence, where did he end up? That’s right, a wedding, and what was he wearing? Yep, top hat and tails.
So has the Doctor been to a wedding? Whose wedding? His wedding perhaps, to the one and only River Song? The show has hinted at it, the characters have hinted at it, the fans have speculated about it, and maybe it is true, perhaps the Doctor and River are husband and wife. Why he would have went to the wedding before he returned to Berlin, I have no idea, but if this is the case I’m sure we’ll find out later.
The Doctor asks the Meet Dave ship/Teselector to provide him with his records, which Amy has the privileges to allow. He wants to know who wants him dead, and we are given even more information on the Silence. “The Silence is not a species, it is a religious order or movement. Their core belief is that silence will fall when the question is asked…The first question, the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight.” - Okay, I’m trying not to miss the obvious this time, but is it trying to say that the question is…”Doctor who?” Surely not, because, I dunno, that seems a little corny.
Meet Dave folk start to “give hell” to River, basically torturing her, the Doctor demands they stop but they refuse to listen. Amy and Rory have to help, so Amy uses the sonic screwdriver to turn off everyone’s privileges, and the jellyfish go on a rampage. The crew are beamed up in an obvious Star Trek reference, while Amy tells the jellyfish “We come in peace,” in an obvious Star Trek reference.
Now that the Ponds have saved River, it is time for her to return the favour, and she flies the TARDIS, rescuing Amy and Rory. River says the TARDIS spoke to her, she is “a child of the TARDIS.” It does bring up the question, how many other human-time-lord hybrids could the Doctor create if he starts up a couples retreat on board the TARDIS?
Melody/River asks who River Song is, and so Amy accesses River Song’s files via the Meet Dave spaceship robot thing, even though I thought Amy lost her privileges? The ship morphs in to River Song, and seeing herself, Melody/River has a change of heart, and uses all of her regeneration power to bring the Doctor back to life. Just like she did when she first appeared in The Silence In The Library, River sacrifices her life(s) to save the Doctor.
River is left to recover in hospital, the Doctor leaves her the blue diary that we have seen River with in past episodes. We are told that River has used up all of her remaining regenerations because of saving the Doctor, and that explains why she didn’t regenerate in The Silence In The Library. As the Ponds and the Doctor prepare for more adventures, at the Lunar University in 5123 (imagine what the price of tuition fees will be then!) River tells a professor of archeology that she is looking for “a good man”. And the penny drops!
I think some people were disappointed with this episode because they had become a victim of hype, and they expected something different. Fair enough, the title was misleading, as it was more Let’s Kill The Doctor than Let’s Kill Hitler, but I think Moffat managed to create a fun, humorous, weird episode that was also information packed. It was really River’s coming out episode, and Alex Kingston was on fine form. We had plenty of confirmations regarding River Song; we know she was the Little Girl, we know why she didn’t regenerate in TSITL, we know where she got the blue book, and it was strongly hinted that the reason she was in prison was for killing the Doctor.
We also got more information on the Silence which I’m sure will be a running arc throughout the next five episodes. And on top of that, Hitler was left in a cupboard!
I’m happy to have the Doctor back, and I look forward to discussing the rest of the series.
by Martin Holmes
The Impossible Astronaut Review: http://bit.ly/esSJmD
The Day of the Moon Review: http://bit.ly/iMyZ1f
The Curse of the Black Spot Review: http://bit.ly/iTFn59
The Doctor’s Wife Review: http://bit.ly/kdpoD3
The Rebel Flesh: http://bit.ly/k6qbKl
The Almost People: http://bit.ly/k4xiCu
A Good Man Goes to War: http://bit.ly/ioNf8M
Let’s Kill Hitler: http://bit.ly/qQOy74