Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler (review with spoilers)

Team Tardis are back after their Summer break and are instantly flung into one of the craziest Doctor Who episodes yet. Which is really saying something for the Mad Moffatt Era.....

Amy and Rory summon the Doctor ( in snazzy, new green coat ) back from his quest to find Melody Pond, by tearing up a corn-field and spelling out "Doctor" in a crop-circle stylee. They are going to be poular with local farmers. The Doctor, of course, reads about this in the next day's local paper and then pops back in time to meet up with the Ponds and their previously unmentioned, tearaway best mate, Mels. ( Incidentally, it's nice to see that Leadworth is far more racially inclusive than comparable Gloucestershire villages in the real world, although it still can't seem to produce any inhabitants with actual Gloucestershire accents. ) Mels, being chased by the police for stealing cars, forces the Time Trio at gunpoint to take her back to Berlin in 1938 to - seemingly on a whim - assassinate Hitler. And she puts a bullet in the Tardis console for good measure. Have we got the hint yet? She's a baaad girl.....

"Shut up, Hitler!"

The long-awaited appearance of der fuehrer is actually a red herring as Hitler is quickly taunted by the Doctor ( "...the British are coming" ), punched out by Rory and locked in a cupboard for the rest of the episode. It turns out the sudden crash-landing of the old blue box has inadvertently saved Adolf from the murderous intentions of the Teselecta, a Terminator-style, time-travelling robot, controlled by miniaturised people inside its head... and not anything to do with Bo' Selecta! or test cricket.....

As this borderline-insane story twists and turns like a twisty-turny thing, Amy and Rory find themselves miniaturised and trapped inside the Teselecta, being menaced by its lethal antibodies, Mels is shot by Hitler but regenerates into ( SPOILERS! ) Melody / River who, obeying her conditioning by Eyepatch Lady, promptly fatally poisons the Doctor with lethal lipstick ( good name for a band! ) and then goes on a shopping spree in 1938 Munich. But it's the kind of shopping expedition that involves shotguns and semi-naked Germans.....

Mad enough for you yet?

Amidst all this craziness, Moffatt gives us more information on River's past ( or future? ), deepens the mystery of the Silence and provides some unexpected cameos from hologrammatic versions of former companions. Matt Smith is a delight as ever, whether playing cat-and-mouse with a temporarily homicidal River, sprawling across the Tardis floor in his death-throes, or playing the long game by providing a certain someone with a Tardis-blue diary.....

At the end of this cheese-dream-with-extra-pickles of an episode we are somewhere closer to understanding River's timeline ( from Melody to Mels to big-haired archaeologist with no remaining regenerations ) but still asking questions about the Silence and the Doctor's imminent death ( again! ) and probably in need of an aspirin :-)

4 out of 5 Bow Ties