Saturday night saw the return of Doctor Who to our screens with the second half of the sixth series, with Matt Smith as the Doc.
The episode sort of takes off from where it left off before, with River Song (Alex Kingston) making the surprise revalation that she is in fact Amy's daughter. But in this episode Amy has a new character come in who is a friend of Amy's called Mels (played by the rather foxy Nina Toussaint-White), who holds the Doctor at gunpoint and insists they go back in time in the TARDIS to kill Hitler. The episode soon reveals that Amy and Mels were childhood friends and at school Mels got into serious trouble with her teachers, and later on after leaving school got into some fracases with the law. But Mels isn't all she appears to be after she is caught in the crossfire of a confused and rather disorientated Hitler who shoots her, and then after this, Mels suddenly bursts into a familiar looking ray of light that the time Time Lords tend to when they regenerate, and from there things get a bit more complex.
For a opener to the second half of the series Let's Kill Hitler is highly entertaining, and has quite a few amusing scenes especially the ones with the robots that threaten to kill Amy and Rory when they are unidentified on the spaceship containing miniaturised humans with the lines "you are not identified, you are no longer allowed to live" and "you have been identified, you're allowed to continue your existence". Its also good to see the continued development of the characters, particularly Rory, who throughout the series has grown to be more brave and resourceful, I mean at one point he even decks Hitler and locks him in a cupboard! Matt Smith continues his assured command of the role of the Doctor, and even in the face of death he appears to be one step ahead. Alex Kingston also keeps her role of River Song very much alive and interesting, as she is almost as big a conundrum as the Doctor is, and (PLOT SPOILER) she was as I figured a Time Lord, or was born with Time Lord DNA, as she helps save the Doctor by using up her regenerative energy. This leaves River no longer able to regenerate and she is stuck with her one remaining life. Amy also remains something of a complex character herself, as she clearly is another character which the universe seems to revolve around, one thing I will say about Karen Gillan though is, while she is lovely, she does have a rather pale complexion!
Steven Moffat, the creative head writer (and writer of this episode) continues to delight in confounding his audience, and what's great is he does it in the most entertaining and clever way. The Doctor is forever instrinsically linked to River and the characters of his latest regeneration, although once the Eleventh Doctor's time is up, we can expect to encounter a whole new assortment of characters, as of yet we have seen no sight of Rose, Donna or Martha, or Jack for that matter (although the first three do appear as projected images briefly in this episode!). Also another thing about the Doctor's relationship with River is that its so backward and complex I wonder if Steven Moffat himself knows where he is going with their story half of the time! Clearly when the Doctor in David Tennant's era first meets River, that is indeed the first time he has laid eyes on her, and this was the last time River laid eyes on him. So it does get to the point where you get mixed up about just when their relationship will meet at a certain plateau. Its almost as if Moffat used The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as his inspiration, with the Doctor's relationship with River running backwards, like Benjy's life was running in reverse, aging from old to young while his mind started as a child and got older as he grew physically younger, and while he met his childhood sweetheart when he was an old man, their relationship peaks when they are both in the middle of their lives. Similarly in the Doctor and River's case they must meet in the middle at some point where their relationship will really click and that's when they know each other the most, but the more the Doctor knows River, the less she knows him. So its a real heid fook.
The only negative thing I would probably say about the episode though was that the actor playing Hitler wasn't so great at playing the infamous dictator. The Fuhrer was reduced to simply a comical figure who made an all too brief appearance and was quickly forgotten about and put in the background. I was also half expecting the Nazi officer and Hitler to have a halfway decent German accent, but I think the actor in particular who played Hitler went for a half hearted German/English accent. I mean even Hitler in Red Dwarf's was museum episode was more convincing and a better Hitler to boot! (or uniform).
So it remains to be seen how the second half of the sixth series pans out, but Let's Kill Hitler makes for a really positive start, so here's hoping we get more good stuff in a similar vein. I'm sure we will so I'll blog up more for the remaining episodes when they come on.
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