11.22: Let’s Kill Hitler
In which it all goes wrong, but hugely entertainingly.
Broadcast: August 2011
Watched: December 2021
The quote that sums up the problem with this episode best is, “So that’s it, we leave her there?” It’s obviously a late patch to deal with the fact that The Search For Melody isn’t the entire story of the season’s back half: it needs to be put back in its box.
So: we get an entirely new character, inserted into Amy & Rory’s lives via clipshow and a retcon to explain why she didn’t show up to the wedding. And she turns out to be baby River and thus, we’re meant to conclude, a) they can’t raise the baby, because we already know the shape of her childhood, and b) everything is fine.
The problem is... that may fix things for the baby or the web of time. No way does it fix things for the parents. Another line that sums things up is, “She’s been brainwashed, it all makes sense to her” – it’s a convenient get out clause for the fact this doesn’t really work. Worse, it’s followed by, “Plus, she is a woman”. Thanks, Moffat.
All of which is really annoying, not just because it breaks the season arc, but also because this is in other ways an absolutely terrific episode which those massive problems inevitably taint. For a start, it probably has a higher density of quotable lines and memorable moments than… well, anything ever. Some examples:
“You will experience a tingling sensation and then death”
Rory, punching Hitler in the face.
“Rory, take Hitler and put him in that cupboard over there.”
“You named your daughter... after your daughter”
“Time can be rewritten. Remember Kennedy?”
“Okay, I am trapped inside a giant robot replica of my wife. I’m really trying not to see this as a metaphor.”
“I might take the age down a little. Just gradually, to freak people out.”
“You’re dying, and you stopped to change?” (Pertwee levels off the scale.)
And, my personal favourite:
RORY: Is anybody else finding today just a bit difficult? I’m getting a sort of banging in my head.
AMY: Yeah, I think that’s Hitler in the cupboard.
RORY: That’s not helping.
Also, that is a *brilliant* title, and the episode is utterly, joyously insane. The crop circle intro! The Leadworth flashbacks! Time travelling numbskulls in Nazi Germany! Mels regenerating into River! It’s lovely to see little Amelia back, an of course we learn that little Rory was smaller than her. Darvill is brilliant in the bit where Mels gives his secret love away, and the simultaneous delivery of “A friend”/”Gay” is perfect (even if it’s another bit where the show is giving us sitcom when we were waiting for drama).
The Teselecta is great, both in concept and execution (“Art department wants to talk skin tone...”), and the moment when it steals someone’s glasses is brilliantly creepy. And the contrast between “justice” and the Doctor’s mercy – saving River even after she’s tried to kill him, thus leading to her reform – is nicely played.
But... the way none of that has been properly thought through is the other problem with the episode. “The biggest war criminal of the lot” makes sense, when you assume they mean the Doctor (he has, after all, committed rather a lot of genocides). But that’s a fake out. And the implication that River is worse than Hitler because she killed the Doctor is a bit massively uncomfortable.
Oh, and it’s very weird how the season’s initial mystery is completely unravelled by now. The Doctor knows he’s facing death, we know, pretty much, that it’s River who’ll bring it. We even have a complete timeline for Melody, really. The only problem is, we’re now going to pretend Amy shouldn’t be scarred by her experiences.
Other things:
Big fan of the Doctor’s new coat, shame he doesn’t wear it more.
There’s a brilliant visual effect when Mels throws the model of the TARDIS, and it transforms into a real thing.
Someone once argued to me that it’s offensive to treat Hitler as joke. I think this is silly, but then he didn’t kill any of my relatives.
It had somehow never previously dawned on me that Hitler shoots River.
At one point River says, “I’m gonna wear lots of jodhpurs” while checking out her own arse. Er, is Moffat perving on Kingston?
The scene with loads of flashbacks to the Doctor and River moving guns about is another cool but slightly mental reminder we are now in a post Sherlock world.
While we’re on Kingston: she’s normally amazing, but she really can’t sell the line, “Every form of warfare... except perhaps the cruellest”.
She kisses the Doctor with the poisoning of the Judas tree. Nice.
The parade of companion holograms – is this meant to be a comment on the way the Doctor wrecks lives, which is sort of the theme of this bit of the season?
This is the second episode running with jokes about Scotland and the Scottish which read weirdly because a Scottish writer put them in the mouth of an English actor.
This week the Temple of Peace is a restaurant.
Smith’s horribly pained delivery of “I’m not dead” is quite amazing.