TV Recap: Doctor Who - Let’s Kill Hitler

Season 6, Episode 8

By Edwin Davies

September 3, 2012

Let's do what?

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Regardless of the business wrangling that led to the Doctor Who's sixth season being split in half, the main effect it has had on the show is that it has allowed showrunner Steven Moffat to have two season finale-style cliffhangers for the price of one. Following the revelation overload that was “A Good Man Goes to War”, in which we learned that The Doctor is the hated enemy of a religious order, that this religion kidnapped Amy and Rory's baby Melody in order to raise her as a weapon to destroy The Doctor, and that Melody would grow up to be River Song, it seemed like the show might return with something a bit more frivolous, what with all the death and war and baby stealing that made up the last episode. When that episode ended with the legend "The Doctor will return in Let's Kill Hitler", it seemed like that would be exactly the case.

The title proved to be something of a bait and switch, though, since the historical romp that the title suggested turned out to be a pretty dense mythology episode. Rather than being an episode about The Doctor, Rory and Amy trying to kill Hitler - they in fact accidentally save his life, then bundle him into a cupboard, at which point he is never seen again - it was about the birth of River Song. Not the birth of Melody Pond, which we have already witnessed, but the creation of the woman whose life (and death) will be inextricably linked to that of The Doctor.




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She doesn't actually start the episode as either Melody Pond or River Song, but as Mels, played by Nina Touissant-White. Mels is introduced when she drives a stolen car through the crop circle that Amy and Rory have carefully drawn to contact The Doctor, almost running the three of them over in the process. We then see a fun little montage showing how Mels is actually an, until now unmentioned, lifelong friend of Amy and Rory's. An inveterate troublemaker who knows all about The Doctor, she starts off by saying that Amy never told her how hot he was, and then pulls a gun on him. She forces everyone into the TARDIS and utters the line that gives the episode its title, "You've got a time machine. I've got a gun. Let's kill Hitler."

Once in Nazi Germany, they crash through the windows of Adolf Hitler's (Albert Welling) office, accidentally thwarting the efforts of a squad of miniaturised time travelers riding inside a shape-shifting robot (yeah, it's kind of really dumb) to kill him. When Hitler starts shooting at the robot, Rory knocks him out, but not before an errant bullet hits Mels, which - Melody being part Time Lord and all that - causes her to regenerate into River, revealing the fun little fact that, since Amy and Rory named baby Melody after Mels, that means that they named their daughter after their daughter.


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