Rate and Discuss 6.8: Let's Kill Hitler (!)

[Rob McCow]

What did you think of this Adolf-tastic episode?



No rating until you've seen the episode!

[Dino]

Fantastic rating options. But you missed off Blair! (but then maybe it's just me who links the two)
Let's bugger Blair? Yeah... maybe not then!
TEN MINUTES TO CURTAIN EVERYBODY!

Good luck, and may the Lord God have mercy on our souls...

*blows whistle and prepares to go over the top etc.

[Rob McCow]

Sir! Sir! I have a cunning plan...

[Alex]

A solid 8/10 from me, even though it wasn't what I was expecting. I'd stayed away from trailers / spoilers, so was expecting a World War II romp, but instead it was a fascinating insight in to how Melody Pond became River Song, along with a few fun action scenes and a nicely chilling enemy in those robotic jellyfish. Shame we never got to find out if Hitler got out of the cupboard in the end though

[Dino]

I'm too numb really to give a vote. So instead here's my thought process.

"That's going to p*** people off!"

"That's seriously going to p*** people off!"

"That's really without question is going to p*** people off!"

"Oh come on!"

"Oh come ONNNNN!"

"*Sigh"

"*Bigger sigh"

"Bet you Planet Skaro's in meltdown?"

"Ok, now I'm p***** off."

"Come back RTD!"

"Dammit, come back JNT!"

"Yay! Next week's looks like it might make a better episode!"

Although on the plus side, at least this will stop people moaning about "Miracle Day"!

Maybe I need to see it again but... couldn't they have done it a bit less smugly?

[Alex]

I'm too numb really to give a vote. So instead here's my thought process.

"That's going to p*** people off!"

"That's seriously going to p*** people off!"

"That's really without question is going to p*** people off!"

I can understand your not liking it, individual taste and all that, but why do you care if anyone else is enjoying it or not so much?

[egdcltd]

Well, one of my first reactions was "They've killed the Doctor. Again." I think they really need to stop killing people off them bringing them back. Some backstory that seemed to work quite well and, fortunately, not what I was expecting from the title - I skip the trailers too. Not really going to judge everything until the end of the series.

[Dino]

I can understand your not liking it, individual taste and all that, but why do you care if anyone else is enjoying it or not so much?

Just a saying I say. It's me. My problem. It's not put me off, but it wasn't the return I was expecting.

[Si Hunt]

So you come home from work and say "What's for dinner?". "Pork chops" you are told. But when you sit down, its pie and mash. "Oh." you say, afterwards. "I enjoyed that as much as I expect I would have enjoyed the other meal. I just don't know why you lied to me."

Si.

[Darren]

1 out of 10

I thought it was a really annoying non- episode. They wasted 50 minutes on some exposition and back story which surely could have been done in 10.
Why did Amy and Rory have to go through that elaborate scene in the cornfield? Could the Doctor not just have knocked on their door?
Regenerations: Since Moffat took over there seems to have been more regenerations in two series than in the shows entire past series. It's getting a bit blase now.
The Silence want the Doctor dead? I thought it was the Anglican Marines led by Madame Korvornia (she sounds like a cough mixture). They could have dropped in and killed him and no one would have remembered.
What was the voice recogntion bit about in the TARDIS?
Why should the Doctor even actively be looking for Melody Pond baby/child? It's clear things will resolve themselves.
And as mentioned earlier, how many more times are we going to see characters die only to be ressurrected through some plot trick?
Final question: When the TARDIS smashed through the window, why didn't it attract some interest from the German troops in the building?

[Si Hunt]

Never mind when gunshots were heard being fired in Hitlers office! Even my Mum picked up on that one.

Si.

[Alex]

So you come home from work and say "What's for dinner?". "Pork chops" you are told. But when you sit down, its pie and mash. "Oh." you say, afterwards. "I enjoyed that as much as I expect I would have enjoyed the other meal. I just don't know why you lied to me."

Si.

It contained the title in the dialogue. And it's nice for a show to be unpredictable from time to time. Or all of it, even.

Never mind when gunshots were heard being fired in Hitlers office! Even my Mum picked up on that one.

With you on that one though. Unless, erm, they were all on a lunchbreak or something...

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I gave it three because at least it rattled along in an entertaing enough way, but really... I don't even know what I just saw. It was all arc and no story, and even the arc elements were only just nudged slightly along and everythings pretty much as unresolved as it was to start with Berlin, Hitler etc were barely even window dressing, it might as well have been set in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere for the most part, with no guest cast. The justice robot thing and all the crew might have been a nice idea, but was very much in the background. It might as well have had a crew of one for all the purpose they served dramatically. And to top it all off, it couldn't even manage to be logically self-consistent...

If Melody had been brainwashed and trained all her life to kill the Doctor, then why not just shoot him in the cornfield right at the beginning when he wasn't suspecting anything, and avoid all that messing around in Berlin in the first place. Why specifically state that you hunt down all the worst people and give them hell right at the end of their timeline, and then proceed to give River hell within the first half hour of her lifetime (at least in that body), when you actually saw her COME INTO BEING before your very eyes, just to make sure there's no confusion in your mind about which end of her timeline you're dealing with. Come to think of it, how did Amy and Rory even end up back on Earth in the first place?

[Darren]

And surely The Silence/ Madame Korvornia will know their weapon failed.

[Perry Vale]

An easy 9/10 from me, loved it. Haven't got time at the moment to elaborate.

[Larry]

do I feel a little cheated by the title and then getting barely five minutes of screen time for Hitler , yes I do - but that aside I think it was a very good episode - nice to see little Rory, and certainly didn't see the regeneration coming although I'd pretty much guessed River, would save the Doctor, with some kind of regeneration.

[Andrew Curnow]

Darren's summed up my reaction I'm afraid. I've heard Si (Hart) say that when watching Blink first time he was so bored he was watching the clock, waiting for it to end - and that's how tedious I found this episode.

One thing in addition to the points already made, which didn't really 'work' for me - Amy & Rory's rather casual attitude to having a daughter. Or rather, they've had their daughter snatched, but have calmly waited around for somebody to find her ("You've had all Summer"), and then at the close learn they're not getting her back at all. For a 21st version of the show which seems to pride itself on its more emotional edge, it's a real misfire to have them not really that bothered by such a trauma - it's akin to the too glib, "Ah well, Adric's dead, but let's go to Crystal Palace to cheer ourselves up" of Timeflight.

But in general, just very irritating indeed. Sorry.

[Wayne]

What did you think of this episode?

[Jason Thompson]

If Melody had been brainwashed and trained all her life to kill the Doctor, then why not just shoot him in the cornfield right at the beginning when he wasn't suspecting anything, and avoid all that messing around in Berlin in the first place.

Quoted from Last of the Time Lords: 'It's just a bullet, come on, regenerate.' A primitive projectile weapon would be unlikely to kill a Time Lord.

Come to think of it, how did Amy and Rory even end up back on Earth in the first place?

River took them home as instructed at the end of A Good Man Goes To War. She had a time manipulator at that point, which is how she ended up on Demon's Run in the first place.

[Alex]

Darren's summed up my reaction I'm afraid. I've heard Si (Hart) say that when watching Blink first time he was so bored he was watching the clock, waiting for it to end - and that's how tedious I found this episode.

One thing in addition to the points already made, which didn't really 'work' for me - Amy & Rory's rather casual attitude to having a daughter. Or rather, they've had their daughter snatched, but have calmly waited around for somebody to find her ("You've had all Summer"), and then at the close learn they're not getting her back at all. For a 21st version of the show which seems to pride itself on its more emotional edge, it's a real misfire to have them not really that bothered by such a trauma - it's akin to the too glib, "Ah well, Adric's dead, but let's go to Crystal Palace to cheer ourselves up" of Timeflight.

But they also learnt that the best friend they had as children / teenagers was infact their daughter, and that in a way they did bring her up / spend all that time with her. And probably in far more fun a way than they ever could as proper parents. Plus it might take a while to sink in, given everything that they've gone through in that episode, and dealt with later on that day. Like their summer break and the torment of losing Melody, not everything can or needs to be covered on screen...

Quoted from Last of the Time Lords: 'It's just a bullet, come on, regenerate.' A primitive projectile weapon would be unlikely to kill a Time Lord.

Plus the police were minutes away from finding them, and there was no need to do it immediately - anyhow, pretty much the moment they landed she tried to, so it seems a silly thing to be annoyed about.

[Anthony Williams]

There was a lot to dislike about this. Both of us in this household feel that Who hasn't been this bad since The Sun Makers.

And that's from someone who vehemently dislikes Midnight (me), and someone else who equally vehemently dislikes just about anything from Season 24 (Whitney).

So, what was so abonimably crap about Let's Kill Hitler?

Well, to be honest, I don't even know where to begin. It feels like the show that I love has spiralled down into self-indulgent, predictable bullshit. There's no nice way of putting it.

I know that a number of us were worried about the possible portrayal of Hitler. We needn't have worried. What was the point of setting an episode in 1938 Berlin, and then doing pretty much sod all with the setting? As Zbigniev said, it could've been set in a warehouse, with no-one but the principal cast and Alex Kingston, and it wouldn't have changed the plot much.

This is getting boring - I've lost count of how many times a regular has been "killed" or how many regenerations have gone on. I had thought that RTD's use of regeneration in The Stolen Earth cheapened the whole thing, but that's nothing compared to this.

Likewise, the so-called "twists" are equally predictable. We had both guessed the "twist" that Mels was River Song pretty much as soon as she appeared in her horrible pink sports car. The worst thing was... we didn't even care.

I can't help but feel that there's too much "oh look at meeee! Aren't I so bloody clever?!?" going on from Moffat. Yet, it is his stories this series so far have been the most unsatisfactory and predictable. Only The Doctor's Wife deserves a re-watch. Hopefully this wretched arc will be over soon, and we can resume normal service.

Frankly, I miss RTD. He'd never have put this kind of shit out. But, at the end of the day, I am a Doctor Who fan, and I will keep watching. There's always hope that it'll get better.

But, when it comes to re-watching episodes of Doctor Who, I'd rather re-watch The End of Time again, than re-watch the turgid piece of nonsense any time soon. Jesus Christ.

[chalkie]

. Shame we never got to find out if Hitler got out of the cupboard in the end though

i just read that as "hitler came out of the closet"

[chalkie]

so we are shown that while regenerating, bullets are not fatal and that they are fatal, and that mels killed the doctor and did not kill the doctor, and that they couldn't be in the tardis cause of the gas and that they could go in the tardis and get rid of the gas...i need to go sit down

[Darren]

It is an irony that during RTD's tenure Moffat wrote some of the best stories the series has seen, and now we are in Moffat's era, he is writing some of the worst stories the series has seen.

But they also learnt that the best friend they had as children / teenagers was infact their daughter, and that in a way they did bring her up / spend all that time with her. And probably in far more fun a way than they ever could as proper parents.

I've read that four times and still can't believe you wrote it. How on earth could they have more fun with their daughter as a friend than as parents? Her first steps, her first words, her first tooth, magical Christmases, proudly walking down the street with her in her buggy... yes not as much fun as having a mouthy, waste of space delinquent as a friend without realising she's your daughter.

[Si Hunt]

It wasn't bad per se, I'm just sick of the whole of Doctor Who always being about River, Amy & Rory. I just want the TARDIS to land on a strange alien planet and for the Cybermen to be up to no good.

This is the show that can go anywhere, but plotwise it goes to the same place now every week.

Si.