Some regular readers of my blog (all three of you…) may have noticed an absence in these pages over the past month or so. I’ve not been writing about ‘Doctor Who’.
I’ve been mulling it over and I decided not to write about the episodes in the days after their broadcast for several reasons, for one I was already musing about Torchwood and secondly I wanted some time to digest the episodes in this series because last time I don’t think I properly appreciated them.
So over the course of a week, after due consideration, I’ll be talking about one episode a day. I’m not even going to pretend to try and be spoiler free so if you don’t want to know anything about this second half of the series look away now.
So let’s get cracking… or more to the point ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.
‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ starts, as all Doctor Who series openers should, in rather dramatic style. Amy and Rory are at home in Ledworth making crop circles to try and get the Doctor’s attention and when he arrives so does Mels, Rory and Amy’s friend from school. Mels is toting a gun, on the run from the police and hijacks the Tardis, Doctor and all so they can all go and “kill Hitler”.
Teased Bond stylee at the end of ‘A Good Man goes to War’ the title ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ was so exciting. Doctor Who has met Hitler before (the 6th and 7th Doctor) but in the hands of the new team I thought it could be something really interesting. However it turns out that he’s not in the episode for very long, in fact the whole World War 2 setting is pretty incidental. I wasn’t that bothered about it because this episode was great, I just thought it was worth pointing out that despite his name being in the title, he gets very little screen time.
The story is that there are miniaturised people who pilot robots called the Teselecta that take the form of a full sized, actual person, hunt down War criminals from the past to prevent genocides and world wars happening. As this weeks ‘baddie’ they were fine, forgettable but fine. In fairness they didn’t really have a lot to do because this episode belonged to Melody Pond.
Mels, played by Nina Toussaint-White, is the most annoying Doctor Who character I’ve come across. In fact, she annoyed me so much I was relieved when she got shot. Low and behold when she gets shot she starts to regenerate. It’s at this point we put two and two together and come to the conclusion that Mels is Melody Pond, the regenerating child from the end of episode 2 (Day of the Moon). Toussaint-White promptly morphs into Alex Kingston and everyone’s happy. Everyone except the Teselecta.
It transpires that the Teselecta, on discovering that Melody/River is in the vicinity, decide to leave Hitler and chase her down for the crime of killing the Doctor. Now, I’m not on my own here in thinking that the suggestion that the Teselecta would view Melody/River as being worse than Hitler is a bit… wrong. I’m all for artistic license and what not but when it’s something so huge and (in the grand scheme of things) so recent I do think a certain degree of care should be taken over the subject matter.
Alex Kingston as newly regenerated Melody is like a whirlwind! She shows River at the very start, which is fun because we’re seeing her story play out in true wibbley wobbley timey wimey style. We’ve seen her demise (‘Forest of the Dead’) and in this we see her genesis so now all we need to do is fill in the gaps in between…
As you’d expect she has some cracking lines ("So I was on my way to this gay, Gypsy, bar-mitzvah for the disabled, then I thought, the Third Reich's a bit rubbish…") but she manages to rein herself in for a lovely, quite moving final act. There were fair few mysteries solved which was nice, we know where she got the Tardis diary, we found out that yes she can regenerate but she gave it all up for the Doctor thus sealing her fate in the Library but we’re still not 100% as to who she is to our favourite Timelord.
Matt Smith is cementing himself as my favourite Doctor ever with an excellent performance that shows us everything the Doctor is. He’s manic and vulnerable and funny and angry; the Doctor is everything all the time and Matt Smith nails it perfectly.
Another good thing about this episode is that it’s nicely speedy and full of energy (mostly provided by Alex Kingston). There are some good slapstick moments and the cast are at their humorous best. The dialogue is nicely zippy too with some good laugh out loud moments (when Rory said “get in the cupboard Hitler” I let out a laugh like a foghorn). There’s a bit of a change in pace as we go careering into the final few scenes which could have been jarring but is handled really well.
Over all, a nice solid opener after the summer break. It answered some of the questions that I wanted answering at the end of ‘A Good Man goes to War’ but in a fun, frolicky kind of way.
Tune in tomorrow for my look over ‘Night Terrors’.
It’s about time for some…
Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Autumnwatch returns! Yay! I’ve been an avid watcher of Springwatch and Autumnwatch since June 09 when Chris Packham joined the programme, I used to watch him when I was younger and I was interested to see how he’d do because I had seen the show on and off when Bill Oddie was presenting. Needless to say it’s been a resounding success and has built on the fanbase that already existed. I found that whilst Oddie was great in small doses having him co-anchor the show wasn’t great because he had a tendency to go off on one and waffle whilst poor Kate Humble looked on helplessly. The balance of factual TV and entertainment has been addressed and I think they’ve got it spot on, accessible to ejits like me that know next to nothing about the natural world and insightful enough to keep the most devoted twitcher amused. Michaela Strachan is co-host this series in the absence of Kate Humble. I like Michaela, she used to present Disneytime! Plus Chris loves the Smiths and Martin Hughes-Games is a silver fox! Episode one of an 8 show run airs on Friday night at half 8 on BBC 2 with ‘Autumnwatch Unsprung’ at half 9 after the main show.
2. More Avengers pictures. Only 2 this time after the bumper crop of last week but one of those pictures is a totally lush and exciting photo of Thor and Captain
3. New Muppets character posters! Btw… 130 days to go!!!
That’s all I’ve got for today!
Goodbye till next time :-)
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