One Divisive Doctor Who Twist Is Better Than You Remember
In 2011, "Let's Kill Hitler" felt like an odd move. It plays better today with what we now know.
Back in 2011, Doctor Who fans didn’t know how good they had it. Matt Smith’s triumphant Season 6 had been split into two parts, consisting of seven episodes from April 2011 to June 2011, and then a hiatus of roughly two months before Episode 8, “Let’s Kill Hitler,” picked up where the cliffhanger, “A Good Man Goes to War,” left off. Back then, fans and critics were pretty upset about this “half-season” wait, but now, considering that the most recent Who seasons have been only eight episodes, the mid-season 2011 debut of “Let’s Kill Hitler” feels daring, fun, and, interestingly, boundary-pushing for the canon of Who overall.
Here’s why, 15 years later, “Let’s Kill Hitler” feels like vintage (modern) Who at its best.
Following the revelation in “A Good Man Goes to War” that River Song (Alex Kingston) has always been the daughter of Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), “Let’s Kill Hitler” took everything a step further by retconning two things: River Song can regenerate, and has regenerated, and that she was, in a previous incarnation, Mels (Nina Toussaint-White), Amy and Rory’s trouble-making friend from childhood.
At the time it aired, showrunner Steven Moffat was seemingly going full timey-wimey, making the revelation that River Song/Melanie Pond was Amy and Rory’s daughter even more convoluted by asserting a paradox that they named their daughter after their best friend, who was, actually, their daughter in disguise. To this day, Who fans probably can’t agree on whether or not Moffat’s method of fixing Who plot holes is the correct way. But if you’re wondering what Moffat’s tenure was like, “Let’s Kill Hitler” is an interesting microcosm. Got a time-travel paradox that needs straightening out? In the Moffat method, the fix was to just add even more time travel while also stretching the Who canon in ways that had yet to be attempted.
Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor.
Getting a regeneration episode had been, up until the Moffat tenure, something generally reserved for the finale of an outgoing Doctor. But in “Let’s Kill Hitler,” when Mels regenerates into River Song, Moffat gets to have a big fandom-altering event within an episode that just happens to occur in the middle of the season. This concept was ultimately good for Who canon, as it posited that a quasi-Time Lord, like River Song, might have the same regenerative powers. And, to this day, this also suggests there are (maybe) some versions of River Song that we didn’t meet.
But there are a lot of moving parts in “Let’s Kill Hitler,” including the introduction of one of those great ideas that feels like it should have already existed in Doctor Who, but wasn’t fully realized until Moffat made it happen: The Teselecta, a human-shaped vessel crewed by tiny humans whose job it is to hunt down war criminals throughout history. Hitler is one war criminal, but as we’re told, River Song is perhaps another, since she supposedly will kill the Doctor at some future date. Though never stated outright, the romance between River Song and the Doctor was almost like Who’s version of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade from the 1990s Star Wars Expanded Universe: Someone brainwashed to kill a space hero, who ends up being his bride. Talk about enemies to lovers!
But the power of “Let’s Kill Hitler” is mostly found in its humor. Matt Smith’s physical comedy is on full display in this episode, while Arthur Darvill nonchalantly brandishes a pistol and orders literal Adolph Hitler around borders on something out of a Monty Python sketch. For Moffat’s part, he claimed that the idea was to utilize Hitler the way the historical monster was depicted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: to mock him, instead of lingering too much on the historical implications of this age-old question: If you had a time machine, should you go back in time and kill Hitler?
The dream TARDIS team, in their golden era.
In a way, this episode demonstrates Moffat’s ability to use the time travel inherent in Doctor Who but weaponize it to serve the needs of his characters and larger plot arcs. Keep in mind, at this time, Doctor Who Season 6 was doing serialization in a way that was much heavier than in the first Russell T Davies era; the concept of The Silence wouldn’t be fully resolved until the end of Matt Smith’s tenure, and many of the mysteries introduced in Season 5 were still becoming more complex in Season 6.
But if you take all of that out, the incredible thing about this era of Moffat is how even a lore-heavy episode like this can still feel like a standalone. It’s a great Doctor Who premise, combined with several character-heavy gut punches. This was Who in one of its greatest eras, with the 11th Doctor and his companions at the height of their powers. “Let’s Kill Hitler” might not be one of the greatest episodes of Doctor Who of all time, but in what it represents about the greatness of the Moffat era, it’s a hidden gem, hiding in plain sight.
