purplecat

I recall being mildly disappointed by Let's Kill Hitler on first viewing (though looking back at my my review at time I see I loved it but thought it was a bit of an acquired taste). But it doesn't really continue on from A Good Man Goes to War tonally, even if it does carry the plot forward. I think that may suffer from the the burden of expectations. We'd had to wait over the summer before the episode aired and we were expecting more of the same epic scope and spectacle. Instead Let's Kill Hitler is primarily a frothy comedy.

We've jumped ahead several months in time. Amy and Rory have, apparently, grown tired of waiting for the Doctor and resolve to summon him, a la River Song, by leaving conspicuous graffiti somewhere. This is interrupted by their best friend Mels who more or less hijacks the Tardis, takes them back to World War II (allegedly in order to kill Hitler), regenerates into River Song and attempts to murder the Doctor. This is all played with a deft comic touch, particularly Amy, Rory and the Doctor's reactions to Mels and River. NLSS Child was genuinely surprised and delighted by the reveal of Mels identity, having been prepared for previous revelations by her "How to be a Time Lord" book. She also loved the flashbacks to Amy, Rory and Mels as children.

In continued arc plot nit-picking, I feel bound to note that it is strongly implied that Melody Pond is the result of the child's regeneration we saw at the end of Day of the Moon. This entirely fails to explain how, as a toddler, she got from New York 1969, to Leadworth in, presumably the early 21st century. It also doesn't tie in well with River's description of her first meeting with the Doctor in The Impossible Astronaut which implied strongly that she, like Amy, had been a child at the time. It is just about possible, I think, that the Doctor did actually find her in 1969 and bring her forward to Leadworth, but I think you have to read a lot into what we get to draw that conclusion.

There was a discussion in the comments to my review of The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon about whether it was the regeneration that triggered River's conditioning to kill the Doctor. I think it is difficult to say, particularly without knowing much of Mels' back story. It is true she doesn't immediately attempt to kill the Doctor, but she does point a gun at him, and apparently fires it within the Tardis, and River (like the Doctor) rarely takes the shortest path between two points. The flashbacks establish her interest in using time travel to meddle with history so it is plausible that she was waiting to make her move until the Doctor had brought her to Berlin. Again this is really not at all clear and adds to my feeling that River's story was presented in a very confused fashion.

daniel_saunders, I know, feels that the aftermath of the events in A Good Man Goes to War, particularly as they effect Rory and Amy, were never really dealt with. I think we do see the repercussions, particularly in the way Amy reacts to discovering she is now infertile in season 7. However I think it is fair to say that the production team shied away from ever explicitly showing us their distress. Let's Kill Hitler skips us forward several months from the events of Demon's Run, giving them time to start coming to terms with the situation, and then gives us a comedy in which any direct exploration of Amy and Rory's emotional state would be inappropriate. Like the Doctor's own awkwardness around human emotion, the show seems uncomfortable with actually confronting how Amy and Rory feel, preferring that we should infer this from small clues. I suppose, in a way, the whole thing is terribly British.

Like so much of this season, Let's Kill Hitler, is very good in isolation. I think a comedy was also the only logical direction to take after A Good Man Goes to War if the show didn't want to directly present Amy and Rory's grief. Whether that was, overall, a good way to drive the ongoing drama is less clear.

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metanews coding: <a href=http://purplecat.dreamwidth.org/167025.html>NuWho Rewatch: Let's Kill Hitler</a> (DW) <i>Discussion of the sixth series episode</i>

Oh dear!

( Under the Cut )

This was a nice but somewhat slight episode. The show clearly needed a pause after the excitements of Undone. Something that established the new status quo, and focused on the core "dinosaurs travelling through time" premise.

( More under the cut )

I thought this was a nice episode. The show needed a change of pace back to something more formulaic, straightforward and up-beat and Breakthrough provided that. Ultimately that does make it look a little like a filler episode, and I'm not convinced it was as well thought through as some of the others in the series, but it was nicely done for all that.

And... the military having geared up to full operational whatever-it-was they were doing are entirely conspicuous by their absense this episode.

( Which wasn't what I was expecting at all )

On reflection I think this was a really good episode. It was firmly in `monster of the week' mode, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially when, as here, it is used to have some fun and to quietly do some interesting things with the character dynamics.

A bit of an oddity this episode. It makes sense of some of the material that has come before, and does some nice work with the characters but, at the end of the day, felt a little disjointed.

( Definite spoilers under the cut )

Ultimately I think this episode is a failure. The shift in tone is too sudden and there hasn't been quite the necessary build up to it. However, it also highlights a lot of things that Primeval:New World does well and, as failures go, at least it's a fairly decent one and is still I think, a sign of a show on an upward trajectory.

It's interesting* that the very first season of Primeval included explicitly both underwater and airborne anomalies. After that (with I think one exception) all the anomalies were basically terrestrial. Primeval:New World seems to be attempting to mix-it-up in a similar way.

( Until, of course, it becomes clear this isn't an airborne anomaly at all )

*for a value of interesting that probably only applies to geeky types.

Yes, I know I shouldn't have access to this yet. What can I say? I was impatient.

( Review under the Cut )

Ah Lord of the Rings and your inability to decide where to end. Now I see thee in so many places!

( Cut for spoilers )

Season 5, as a whole, I think has been one of Primeval's stronger seasons. It suffers from many of the shows endemic problems: people widely acting in ways that would be deeply unprofessional given their position in life, characters (particularly antagonists) that could be interesting but are somehow short-changed in the execution and, despite a good set of female characters a horrible tendency to sideline them in favour of the men. Emily suffered particularly badly here, so much so that I wonder if bringing her back and integrating her with the team was an after-thought. She spent much of the last two episodes being being unconscious, captured or just not apparently doing anything in a situation where you would expect her to be doing something which reminded me of nothing so much as the confusion faced by 1980s Doctor Who writers when faced with the comparatively complex character of Turlough (their solution was generally to have him captured early on and then spend the rest of the story variously tied up). However the season also demonstrated many of Primeval's strengths, particularly those shown in the first two seasons. It had a good arc plot that didn't over-burden the individual stories, every story managed to be reasonably imaginative and stretched itself beyond "raptor in a shopping centre" plotting. While I've complained about Burton he did, in the end, manage to be a nuanced villain with his own agenda, even if I don't think the show articulated that very well. Abby and Connor were handled so much better than in season 4 that I boggle a bit that season 4 got them so terribly wrong. In fact, I think as a whole it was streets better than season 4 which is so very, very odd, given the two were filmed as a single unit.

That was a good episode, it benefited from being the first half of a two-parter. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that it is easier to set up a gripping situation than it is to resolve it, as can be seen in many two parters, in Primeval, Doctor Who and other genre shows where episode 1 is often considerably better than episode 2.

( More Observations Under the Cut )

In which we learn that creatures without backbones are undeserving of sympathy and that you are more likely to be condemned for doing the right thing, than for doing the wrong thing.

( Spoilers etc. under the cut )