Let's Kill Hitler
Sep. 6th, 2011 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI enjoyed that but I can see that it may have been a bit of a specialist fan construction.
I think I may have mentioned before that, in the wilderness years between the show's cancellation in 1989 and its revival in 2005, fan circles had a regular small industry in producing articles on the subject of how you would modernise Doctor Who if and when it returned to the screen. The prevailing wisdom was that too much harking back to old friends and enemies, while fan pleasing, tended to lose the general viewer. One of the surprises, therefore, of the later Davies seasons was the enthusiasm with which the general public embraced returning companions and battles between Daleks and Cybermen.
I hear that the general public was alienated by Let's Kill Hitler. Frankly, I have everyone I speak to on a regular basis far too well trained in Who lore to count as the general audience so I'm taking that on hearsay. But it does seem to me that Let's Kill Hitler was playing a very different game, in terms of backwards references, than a Davies style everyone meets everyone else finale.
The Daleks and the Cybermen are as much a part of the public's folk memory of Doctor Who as the Doctor and the Tardis are. Similarly people can easily recall companions from two to three years ago without necessarily needing to recall every detail of everything that happened to them in their time with the Doctor.
Let's Kill Hitler on the other hand is clearly part of the puzzle box Moffat is creating surrounding River Song and the Doctor's apparent death in The Impossible Astronaut and it relied, critically, on remembering details of who said what to whom at what point in interleaved time lines. In short, it required people to be on top of the detail in order to feel included in the plot.
I loved it but then I'm quite a puzzle boxy detail sort of person. I thought the joke about temporal grace was funny, and I had to explain that to B. so I assume it completely passed most people by. But I also enjoyed the sense of fun the episode seemed to have and the way Rory just gets better and better. I laughed at the miniturisation ray joke as well.
I fear that this story was a bit too much of a fan pleaser or perhaps, given the way it is slotted into the middle of season arc, a fan teaser. You can see that this episode is attempting to be a bit of a fun run-around, presumably in the hopes that non-fans won't worry too much about all the River Song baggage and will simply enjoy the ride. But I suspect that River Song was far too much in the foreground to be overlooked.
I think I may have mentioned before that, in the wilderness years between the show's cancellation in 1989 and its revival in 2005, fan circles had a regular small industry in producing articles on the subject of how you would modernise Doctor Who if and when it returned to the screen. The prevailing wisdom was that too much harking back to old friends and enemies, while fan pleasing, tended to lose the general viewer. One of the surprises, therefore, of the later Davies seasons was the enthusiasm with which the general public embraced returning companions and battles between Daleks and Cybermen.
I hear that the general public was alienated by Let's Kill Hitler. Frankly, I have everyone I speak to on a regular basis far too well trained in Who lore to count as the general audience so I'm taking that on hearsay. But it does seem to me that Let's Kill Hitler was playing a very different game, in terms of backwards references, than a Davies style everyone meets everyone else finale.
The Daleks and the Cybermen are as much a part of the public's folk memory of Doctor Who as the Doctor and the Tardis are. Similarly people can easily recall companions from two to three years ago without necessarily needing to recall every detail of everything that happened to them in their time with the Doctor.
Let's Kill Hitler on the other hand is clearly part of the puzzle box Moffat is creating surrounding River Song and the Doctor's apparent death in The Impossible Astronaut and it relied, critically, on remembering details of who said what to whom at what point in interleaved time lines. In short, it required people to be on top of the detail in order to feel included in the plot.
I loved it but then I'm quite a puzzle boxy detail sort of person. I thought the joke about temporal grace was funny, and I had to explain that to B. so I assume it completely passed most people by. But I also enjoyed the sense of fun the episode seemed to have and the way Rory just gets better and better. I laughed at the miniturisation ray joke as well.
I fear that this story was a bit too much of a fan pleaser or perhaps, given the way it is slotted into the middle of season arc, a fan teaser. You can see that this episode is attempting to be a bit of a fun run-around, presumably in the hopes that non-fans won't worry too much about all the River Song baggage and will simply enjoy the ride. But I suspect that River Song was far too much in the foreground to be overlooked.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-06 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-06 06:57 pm (UTC)