The Doctor returns from his summer vacation and his first trip may mean Godwin has to find a new law.
What They Say:
Let’s kill Hitler
In the desperate search for Melody Pond, the TARDIS crash lands in 1930s Berlin, bringing the Doctor face-to-face with the greatest war criminal in the Universe. And Hitler. The Doctor must teach his adversaries that time travel has responsibilities — and in so doing, learns a harsh lesson in the cruelest warfare of all.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a summer of waiting for the Doctor to return with news of their daughter Amy and Rory decide to ask him themselves, though to do this they have to come up with a way to get a hold of a man who can be anywhere in time and space. The two manage to figure out a way to get a hold of him but a sudden surprise visitor from their oldest friend Mel throws the reunion into a tailspin when she crashes the party. Mel ups the ante by pulling a gun on the Doctor and whimsically decides that a good place to start her travels would be with killing Hitler.
Through a flashback the audience is introduced to Mel, a strong willed girl( then woman) who has listened to all of Amy’s stories of the Doctor since they were young and has taken them to heart. This of course leads to no small amount of trouble in school with teachers as “Because the Doctor…” isn’t an answer teachers want to hear. Mel continues this trouble as she grows but despite her constant run-ins with the law her friends Amy and Rory are always there for her. Mel is even the reason that after 10 years Amy finally sees what was blindingly obvious to everyone else in relation to her and Rory.
Flash to more immediate (if less current by time’s standpoint) events and the TARDIS is flying out of control as a lie from the Doctor has lead to Mel shooting the TARDIS. The out of control TARDIS crash lands in Berlin, 1938 in the office of the Fuhrer who is at the start of his earning his infamous place in history. Their landing while certainly throwing a kink in history actually disrupts things as he is currently facing off against an impossible “man” who can change his appearance at will and is seeking criminals of a certain type. While the prize the “man” is after is taken away an even greater one falls into their lap as Mel has been shot by Hitler and is dying-but a sudden surge of light from her body changes everything.
Now with heads spinning and a familiar face in the mix, though not exactly who they know and how, the stakes will be raised to a new level. The Doctor’s work will now be cut out for him as he will be dancing a deadly dance with an enemy he can’t possibly kill but who, despite all the Doctor’s planning, may be just one step ahead of the Doctor this time. Now with the Doctor dying before he is supposed to given future/past events, Amy and Rory are forced to try to track down the Doctor’s killer as the Doctor is trying everything he can to survive this event and still make it to his unknown appointed hour in Utah. With more time travelers in the mix, a psychotic assassin and less than an hour to live is there anything the Doctor can do to save himself or will his summer return be the shortest return in history?
Going into the season there was plenty of talk about this season being special being dropped by the production team and on the whole, pirate episode aside, the season has really worked to live up to that hype. With secrets and Easter eggs that date back to the fourth season with David Tennant finally being shown as pieces to a puzzle the current season is slowly giving the viewer an idea what the picture being established looks like and a few key pieces are revealed to start bringing entire puzzle together into shape. While there is a chance this grand scheme will fall a bit flat (as it does to an extent in this episode when what was hinted to be very grand is actually a bit less so) so far things look to be shaping up nicely and with luck the remaining five episodes of this season will be on the more enriching scale when it comes to laying out a grand design. On its own the fact it was willing to confront “the” time travel question was gutsy enough but the quick turn it made showing that it was a feint made for a more satisfying episode than the title could otherwise have suggested.
In Summary:
Let’s Kill Hitler is an interesting concept for an episode as whenever people start to discuss time travel it is pretty much guaranteed to come up with in the first five minutes. That the episode then throws a curve ball into the mix by revealing more secrets and history for the Doctor while also dealing with the killing of Hitler (among any number of other deserving individuals) by time travelers is an amusing twist, it also adds a good number of layers onto an episode that already had a fair number of layers to deal with to begin with given events revealed.
Grade: B
