“Let’s Kill Hitler”
Series 6
Episode 8
Transmitted 27 August 2011
When Reason Slept, When Mothers Wept, When soldiers Crept, The Monsters came
I recall reading about a time when producer John Nathan-Turner asked Eric Saward and possibly Ian Levine over to show them an early cut of The Twin Dilemma, a story that would close out the 22nd series of Doctor Who, introduce the Sixth incarnation of the Doctor and force many devoted fans away from their favorite program. While JNT was jubilant, claiming that it was everything he had always wanted Doctor Who to be, his guests were at a loss for words. In all honesty, I don’t think that Twin Dilemma is all that bad. It has some of the most laughably bad ideas in Doctor Who, but it is still essentially the same program albeit featuring a mentally unhinged maniac as the central hero.
I can imagine Moffat similarly showing Let’s Kill Hitler with great pride to his production crew as a perfect example of how he seems Doctor Who. But Let’s Kill Hitler, on the other hand, isn’t just a bad story. It has no story at all, it’s just bad TV.
For anyone who disagrees with my take on this week’s episode, fair enough. I can actually save you some time by saying that all of the problems I had with the mid series finale are still here only amped up.
(edit-in bold for clarity)
Last year, Steven Moffat orchestrated an interconnected tale that peppered clues and hints throughout each weekly installment. Amy was pregnant and not-pregnant, the Doctor died but then an earlier version met up with Amy, Rory and River. A new monster called the Silence was messing about with time and had some grand mysterious scheme. Etc. When the answers fell into place it was more than a bit out of left field and left more questions such as why an army was assembled to kill the Doctor.
Let’s Kill Hitler opens in much the same way that the series 6 opener did, with an over-blown spectacle, the punchline of which can be seen from Mars. Amy and Rory are driving an old beat-up car through a corn field, creating a crop circle to call the Doctor to them. When the Doctor arrives (in his new smart jacket), the trio are then joined by a hot rod driven out of control. I rolled my eyes waiting for River Song to emerge and say, ‘Hello, sweetie.’ but was surprised by a new character, bad girl Mels. I mean, sure, Mels hit all of the same cords as River, but this was the first new companion in a while so it was at least somewhat exciting.
There is an extensive and lazily directed flashback sequence establishing that Mels is indeed a bad girl and has known Amy and Rory for ages. Having heard the stories of the Doctor by Amy, Mels somehow knows that the Doctor is behind several historical events and gets into trouble at school for making up wild answers for why World War Two lasted so long, why the Titanic sunk, etc. This somehow leads to a life of crime and car theft followed by the theft of the TARDIS in order to take off into the past and kill Hitler… because Mels has a wild desire to do so. So study hard at school, kids… or you’ll become a car thief.
Don't mind him, that's just Hitler
Meanwhile in the past a crew of time traveling police called The Justice Department are making their way past Hitler’s security to kill him inside of a giant robot called a Teselecta. They have abducted a Nazi officer and imulated their craft into his image, sucked him in through the eye and eaten him with electric robot jellyfish. If any of that sounds remotely interesting it’s a crying shame because none of it is ever expounded upon. Like Mels, they apparently had a random desire to kill Hitler.
Despite having resources from a future technology the time traveling cops somehow got the date wrong and somehow stumble straight into the TARDIS’ path. Their simulacrum damaged, the time traveling cops find that they have found a far better culprit after realizing that the TARDIS has arrived. Hitler and the robot exchange gunshots and Mels gets caught in the fray and it appears that a character we had only just been introduced to is going to die.
Not only does the story have nothing to do with Hitler but the time traveling cops aren’t even after the Doctor at all.
To add to the stupidity of the script, Mels isn’t even Mels at all but actually Melody Pond, the half-Time Lord baby of Rory, Amy and the TARDIS. Mels regenerates into River Song and proceeds to preen and prod her new body for a while before flirting with the Doctor. Not only did Moffat fake-introduce a new companion that was incredibly similar to an old one, he TRANSFORMED HER INTO THE CHARACTER SHE RESEMBLED! Some call it clever, I call it lazy writing and the worst example of Mary Sue syndrome since Rose. Moffat has apparently lost interest in writing about the Doctor (shame, that) and is instead writing about his character, River Song. That wouldn’t be such a problem if he had some new material but there’s nothing to River Song at all. She has done the same things and said the same lines since her introduction three years ago only now she is also the solution to Moffat’s dangling plot threads.
River Song tries to shoot him with Hitler’s discarded gun, but the Doctor unloaded it off-screen… she tries again with Mels’ discarded handgun, but the Doctor tricked her into picking a banana (something Moffat is obsessed with). Eventually she kisses him and leaps out the window to start trouble in WWII era Germany. The kiss was of course accompanied by a killer lipstick causing the Doctor to die… only of course he’s not going to die in WWI Germany just like he’s not going to die in 2011 Utah. Why is Moffat trying the same trick again by making us think that the Doctor is going to die?
What is this program’s weird obsession with characters dying but not dying?
A crew of temporal justice police officers attempt to hedge their way into the plot
Rory and Amy steal a motorcycle and attempt to stop River from causing trouble. You may ask why a nation of Nazis can’t kill her. Because the script won’t allow them to. Once again, the BBC Wales program insists that regeneration is a magical process involving mystical flames that has long-lasting effects. One can deflect bullets, regrow limbs, send energy into severed limbs, raise the dead, presumably start a car, make toast and sell a house in a depressed economy. It’s magic.
Meanwhile the Doctor attempts to find a cure using the TARDIS data banks which somehow prove useless. The TARDIS presents young Amelia Pond as a holographic interface and for a moment I was worried that the cure to the Janus poison was going to actually be fish fingers in custard. Luckily, the script didn’t find the time to get quite that poor.
The Doctor finds time to dress for the occasion
It’s unclear exactly what the deal is with the robot full of time traveling police as they never really get a chance to explain themselves or really do anything. There is a brief attempt at saying there are crimes that go unpunished throughout history… but if there is such an organization wouldn’t that not be true? Wouldn’t history be different? Wouldn’t they be after the Doctor? And what about Hitler? Is he still locked in the cupboard?
Never mind, the script could care less about any of those things because this story is all about River Song. Unfortunately, it has nothing new to say about her. River smack talks, finds herself sexy even though she looks like a man and shoots people. We have seen this several times now. I’d even be okay about all this if this meant it was the end of the River Song story line, but I wager she’ll be back.
Amy and Rory get sucked inside the robot ship (the only cool thing about this story aside from the Doctor’s new coat) and are immediately attacked by weird robot jelly fish things that fill the ship and would kill anyone unless they had a green wristband. It’s like concert security from a William Gibson novel. They are escorted to the bridge where several characters sit with nothing to do but stare up at the viewer.
The Doctor changes into a smart tux and sonic cane (I assume the action figure was already made) and appears to have used all of his time off screen in a time machine dressing. He has no master plan, no scheme and most importantly no antidote to the poison coursing through him. The robot begins to kill River for killing the Doctor and he starts to die inches from the TARDIS. Despite the death ray coming from a robot from the future, it seems to need more time than about three minutes so even though River is caught in a sea of hell fire, she doesn’t die.
Weird 'antibody' jellyfish things
Amy somehow uses the sonic screwdriver to turn all of the green wristbands red and the evil jellyfish that populate every corner of the time traveling robot ship turn on the crew. Looking past the fact that Amy essentially just killed everyone on the ship, why would they carry a Nazi officer-load of deadly killer robots around with them? If they are that idiotic it’s no wonder history is full of chaos, murder and wars. However, the crew of the robot Nazi man-thing are beamed up in a manner that would make Star Trek Deep Space Nine blush and escape. So the only character who really dies in this whole story is the Nazi officer in the beginning… lucky sod.
The Doctor nears death but is saved at the last minute when River ‘uses up all of her rengenerations’ on one go. As if making the process of regeneration involving magical flames wasn’t dumb enough it is now something that one can will to happen and can expend like chi or bad gas.
Placed into a cat-nurse staffed hospital, Mels/Melody/River Song goes on to enroll in a galactic future university to study archaeology because she has the hots for the Doctor. So once again, sexual attraction is the sole motivator behind characters in Doctor Who. The Doctor loves the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver is his penis and every one of his companions has fancied him.
I imagine there’s going to be a big reveal mid-series where Rory professes a deep burning desire for the Doctor. There are worse Doctor Who stories than Let’s Kill Hitler, but I’m not exactly sure that Twin Dilemma would be one of them. Twin Dilemma was full of bad acting, poorly thought-out characters and a police headquarters that looked like a Chinese restaurant. But it was at least not set on a planet ruled by a giant slug but actually all about how much in love Peri was with the Doctor or how Adric was secretly the Doctor’s son from the future.
I really don’t want to be so negative about this episode as it sets the tone for the remainder of the series. I’m a die-hard fan and have been following Doctor Who in its various forms for ages (check out my classic and new series pages) and have been especially happy with the new regime of Moffat and Smith. But last year started a downward spiral that has only gotten worse with this week’s episode. The program is getting very self-indulgent and contrived. Rather than telling a captivating science fiction or science-fantasy adventure, it seems more interested in towing along the overly convoluted back-stories of its supporting cast while continuing to lay hints at plot threads that are getting strained far too much. In a recent interview Moffat accepted that with this year’s run of stories the arc had taken over the series and has already decided to step away from that direction in the following series.
I hope that the coming weeks pick up in quality and the resolution to the TARDIS explosion/death of the Doctor/the Silence/Demon’s Run is worth the ride, but a story that ignores so many plots in order to firmly cement yet another stepping stone in the history of River Song is not where Doctor Who or Moffat as a writer and producer should be taking the series.
At best, this week’s episode felt like fan fiction. It contained so many of the flaws that I have found in Moffat’s writing, but taken to a new level of badness. Characters were empty, the plot was convoluted, old gags were hauled out, and resolutions were flimsy. Keeping in mind that there has apparently never been more attention directed at Doctor Who than there is now, you’d think it would actually be worth watching.
Next time: Night Terrors
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