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

[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.