New Who Review for “Let’s Kill Hitler”
Posted By Kathleen David on September 14, 2011
For new readers: New Who Review or NWR is where I talk about the current episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Smith, K-9 and any other Whovian related show. I try not to put any spoilers above the cut but once below the cut and in the comments, then all up to and including the episode I am talking about are fair game. I ask the future episodes (even if they have aired) not be discussed until I review them. Also No Future Spoilers Please. I am trying to come at this from just what I have seen.
This was a series of hits and misses for me. When it worked it really worked but more due to the actors than the script. The script felt like a lot had been shoved into it to start the second half off with a bang. Maybe a little too much bang over all. But even with all the shock revelations and big bangs, it felt a little slow over all.
There comes a point that if you have an arc you are going to resolve, you need to start resolving it so that the end doesn’t feel like a mess. I have a feeling that once this season is done, we are going to do our usual marathon to see if it all fits together but right now SOMETHING needs to start fitting together or we are back at the Torchwood problem again.
I am grateful that Doctor Who started up again
So the minute I heard the title, I flashed back to the Tom Baker episode “Genesis of the Daleks” where he talks to Sarah Jane about whether he had the moral right to destroy the Daleks before they even come to fruition. I guess that a conversation that has long been forgotten.
So we sort of pick up from where we left off with River Song but not really. I almost wish they had left her as Mels for a bit more. She was insane fun and Nina Toussaint-White looked like she was having a blast and a half. Hands up if you DIDN’T figure out who Mels was about 30 seconds after she appeared. Peter and I looked at each other and said “River” about the same time.
Apparently when you die is a big thing to the universe. I almost went back to make a drinking game of each time the sentiment “You can’t die, it’s not your time or place” was used in that episode but I think I would end up stinking drunk by the third act.
The justice robot was an interesting concept but we end up with that silly timey-whimey paradox that just screws everything up. So you are going to deliver justice right before the person dies? Is that really going to make the universe feel better? Also notice once they go off their original purpose the whole thing kinda breaks down. Kill River BEFORE she commits the crime they are killing her for? So if they kill her, then she never commits the crime so they are as guilty if not more so for killing her. See that’s why time travel coupled with moral issues makes my head hurt.
I give Matt Smith, Alex Kingston, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill top marks for this one. But Matt went to the head of the class this week. That was just a brilliant performance from the kiss forward. Also I think his hair is starting to use David Tennant’s hair’s agent because it is starting to take on a life of its own.
I have really mixed feelings about this episode but I think it boils down to I loved the acting all around but didn’t think much of the script (Sorry Moffat, they can’t all be gems).
I can definitely go along with you that the script was lacking…something. However, I don’t see what you’re talking about in terms a paradox regarding Melody/River being punished for something she hasn’t done. They don’t show us the face of who’s in the spacesuit when the Doctor is shot at the beginning of the Impossible Astronaut, but they’ve pretty much come right out and said that it was the young Melody Pond after being brainwashed to kill the Doctor. From the perspective of the Melody in Let’s Kill Hitler, she’s already done that, so now guys in the weird shapechanging robot are punishing her for it.
Of course she tried to kill him again because that was what she’d been programmed to do, but since the programming was defeated in this episode, I think it’s safe to say that she’s already killed the Doctor along her personal time-line.
All of this is dependent on the assumption that it Melody was really in that suit and the Doctor really did die, but the guys in the time-traveling robot seen to think it was a slam dunk murder case. Everyone is convinced that’s the way events went down. I’m sure the Doctor has an ace up his sleeve and that he’ll manage to finagle the events to get the out alive (we wouldn’t have a series otherwise), but that’s what the events look like now.
Yes, the Doctor certainly has something up his sleeve.
He also has a couple hundred years to figure out a loophole or something. (Unless, of course, the Doctor lied about his age when met up with the companions in the desert. After all, as we are reminded several times in the past few episodes, Rule 1: “The Doctor lies.”
I don’t think that it will be a Ganger Doctor that dies, since we’ve seen the Gangers dissolve upon death, and that *isn’t* what happened in the season opener.
Still, it ought to be fun to see how they work themselves out of this.