TV Review: DOCTOR WHO, 6.8 - "Let's Kill Hitler"
You ever watch a TV show and, at the end, feel like lighting up a cigarette and basking in the afterglow? Yeah, it’s like that.
Im putting Hitler in the cupboard. You ever watch a TV show and, at the end, feel like lighting up a cigarette and basking in the afterglow? Yeah, its like that. After the mid-season finale, A Good Man Goes to War, expectations were extremely high for Lets Kill Hitler. I am happy to say that the show lived up to all those expectations and more. Our story opens with Amy and Rory driving through a cornfield making patterns in the crops. This leads them to the TARDIS where they start having a conversation with the Doctor, only to be interrupted by a woman in a Corvette. Must be River Song, I thought. No, it was some woman named Mels, a childhood friend of Amys. She promptly pulls a gun on the Doctor and demands he take her away from the police who are chasing her. When he asked where, she says, Lets see. I have a gun and a time machine. Lets kill Hitler! And were off! Meantime, in 1938 Berlin, we have a group of people traveling around inside a robotic version of a Nazi. Yes, indeed. Apparently they have the ability to miniaturize themselves (rather like with the Masters tissue compression eliminator, but apparently more survivable). As were treated to a series of clips showing Mels, Amy and Rory growing up together, the robot Nazi people take the robot to Hitlers office with plans to kill him when the TARDIS pops up and knocks the robot down. Hitler thanks the Doctor and friends for saving him, and then tries to shoot the robot. He misses the robot, gets put into a cupboard by Rory and, as it turns out, managed to hit Mels. She appears to be dying, but then to everyones surprise, a golden energy begins to flow from her body Thats about the first ten minutes. Theres 32, or so, to go. Theres many, many places this story could have gone wrong, but astonishingly, it worked. It worked well. The story was very entertaining and the pacing was tight. I love the fact that it tied up a bunch of loose ends, some of which had been flapping about since Silence in the Library/The Forest of the Dead, and if we dont actually get to see a certain Nazi bastard getting his comeuppance, well, thats ok. I also really enjoyed all the continuity and fan porn. We get brief mention of the TARDIS state of grace and we see, at least briefly, Rose, Martha and Donna (though in that particular scene wouldnt it have been lovely to see one of the previous Doctors?). Heck, the trick River uses toward the end of the story was even mentioned as a possibility in the Fifth Doctor story, Madwyn Undead. Even the places where I was kind of rolling my eyes, like a scene where someone gets shot repeatedly and then somehow uses a special energy to take down the shooters, still worked for me. Its quite pleasing that a scene I didnt like as much as the others was still a good scene. All the actors were firing on all cylinders, particularly Alex Kingston, once River Song appeared in the story. Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvil (and, man, does it seem like Rory has taken an A-level in badass), also continued to live up to what weve come to expect from the show. Overall if this is a good sample of what we have for the rest of the series, Im quite pleased. This series has, so far, been the best the show has had since the relaunch in 2005. I hope that trend continues.