Let's Kill Hitler

[daibhidc]

A great start to the second half of the series.

Funnily enough, when that Corvette came rushing towards our heroes, my first thought was "Oh, I wonder who makes an enterance like that?" And then I thought I was wrong...

Given the title, Hitler himself didn't actually play much of a role in procceedings, although that certainly beats either writing round all those Terrence Dicks novels or leaving the fans to work out the chronology themselves.(Seriously, check out Hitler's TARDIS Wiki page.) And I wouldn't be at all surprised if he returned, since ISTR Winnie showing up in the trailer.

But the point of the episode is that Melody Pond is Mels is River Song has now met the Doctor for the first time (from her POV). A little unclear as to how she went from regenerating in New York to growing up in Leadworth, but I'm sure it'll all make sense eventually. It would also have been nice if we'd ever seen Amelia's best mate before, but the montage glossed over that point nicely. (Ironic twist line of the week: "You're going to end up in prison!")

After that, a fairly constant stream of revelations, mixed with funny moments from Rory and Melody (who is very River-like right from the start, despite being a programmed assassin who doesn't know any of the usual River stuff). Melody wants to kill the Doctor! Rory and Amy want to stop Melody killing the Doctor! The Tessilate want to punish Melody for killing the Doctor! Rory and Amy want to stop the Tessilate punishing Melody for killing the Doctor! The Nazis don't know what's going on, but are in favour of killing everyone on general principles!

And the Silence aren't the Silence! It looks like the race we thought of as "the Silence" are just agents of the actual Silence, which are Eyepatch Woman and her chums. Which fits together very neatly, since they were controlling the Mysterious Regenerating Child who has now been firmly confirmed as Melody/River/Mels/Eyepatch Woman's Weapon.

And gosh, there were a lot of Amys this week. Amy, Amelia, Robot Amy and TARDIS Amelia. (Talking of TARDIS Amelia, it was quite cool to see the RTD-era companions again, however briefly.)

Not sure about the Regenetation Energy Can Do Anything ending, to be honest. But the scene with River (who now thinks of herself as River) in hospital with her diary as a present from the Doctor was really nice. And a cat nun!

And the Doctor, who's known something's going on for a while, now knows where and when it all ends. (Well, "when" in absolute terms. In personal terms it's anyone's guess, especially since we're not told how long he spent looking for Melody. But I suspect "around the season finale" would be a good bet...)

Comments

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

River could regenerate because she's a child of the TARDIS, which ties in with her regeneration energy being somehow TARDIS-flavored and therefore able to do anything like the Heart of the TARDIS (Bad Wolf) or just cure the Doctor because of his connection with the TARDIS.

For now at least, my half-asleep head!canon sees the regeneration gag as a one-shot River/TARDIS/Doctor trick, not something any old Time Lord could do.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

I found it all deeply annoying I'm afraid. The whole River/Melody/Mels Plotline was just too far up itself for me. Moffat seems to be forgetting the show is called "Doctor Who" and not "The River Song Show".

And, if you chase a load of people out of a restaurant using automatic weapons (in their underwear, even) in the middle of any big city, much less 1938 Berlin, you're going to get a large quantity of law enforcement bods arriving in short order to ask what you think you're a-doing of. It's preposterous that the characters were left unmolested by the authorities for so long.

Also, what eejit build a robot/ship whose default setting is to kill the entire crew? How stupid is that?

I'm normally a relatively uncritical viewer too....

On the plus side, Rory was awesome.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I think that, at this point, with it firmly established that the Doctor's arc for this season is directly connected to River at least twice, "The River Song Show" is a lot more justified than "The Rose Tyler Show" was a couple of years back (especially Year 3, which was "The Show That Doesn't Have Rose Tyler In It Any More, But Somehow Every Episode Is About Her Anyway").

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Perhaps so, but I still don't like it. I'd no objection to River popping up every now and then, if only because it makes sense that the Doctor would sometimes meet the same people in his travels, but it's becoming ridiculous IMO.

I didn't see it at the time, but someone has also pointed out elsewhere that it's a tad offensive to suggest that River killing the Doctor is worse than all Hitler's atrocities put together...

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

See, as far as I'm concerned, with the infinite canvas of time and space at his disposal, it doesn't make sense that the Doctor would meet the same people, unless he was actually looking for them, or they were looking for him. I find the number of times he's stumbled upon the Daleks a bit unlikely, TBH, and they're an entire race.

To me, it only works because River is "connected" to the Doctor, and that only works because she's an important part of the story arc. Without that, what's the point of her at all?

I didn't see it at the time, but someone has also pointed out elsewhere that it's a tad offensive to suggest that River killing the Doctor is worse than all Hitler's atrocities put together...

That's the drawback of using historical characters, especially EVIL historical characters. If, as I originally thought, the Justice people had been after th Doctor for his actions in the Time War, it would have been just as offensive, and yet he wiped out two entire planets...

[sabremeister]

OTOH, just look at all the planets the Doctor's saved, all the times he's stopped the Daleks/Cybermen/whatevers committing atrocities. Add in the fact that he can travel throughout all time and space, and his potential for preventing atrocities goes up even further. There's no knowing when or where the Doctor will next appear to stop a threat in its' tracks. So killing the Doctor is not necessarily the most serious war crime in history in and of itself, but it's the resulting prevention of him being able to go anywhere and do his thing that could be considered so. After all, Hitler only caused the deaths of a few million people on one planet - the Doctor has in the new series alone, prevented the destruction of the entire universe twice. Billions of people on one planet, billions of planets in a galaxy, billions of galaxies in the universe.