Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler Review (5/5)

I'm going to be brutally honest here for a second: although I enjoyed the first seven episodes of this sixth season of Doctor Who, particularly Day of the Moon, The Doctor's Wife and A Good Man Goes To War, as a whole they seemed to indicate that this series would not match the generally high standard of last year's run, with the ambitious story arc creating a jarring feel when it was hastily chucked in to the climaxes of what should have been standalone stories. However, based on tonight's episode, Let's Kill Hitler, standalone in many ways yet inevitably answering questions from Part 1 and posing more for Part 2, if the standard remains at that set in Episode 8 then this season will easily match or top Series 5! We opened with a recap of Part 1, then were thrust straight into crop circle mysteries, the introduction of 'Mels' (I'd copped onto who she was before her reveal as River, but nevertheless it was very satisfying!) and the TARDIS crash landing in 1930s Berlin. Yes, the title was a blatant attempt to gain publicity and controversy rather than an important element of the storyline, but I was still very pleased with the interpretation of pre-war Germany, and despite the rumours Hitler was indeed regarded as amongst the most terrible villains in history- the Doctor's statement that "It really was an accident!" with regards to not killing Adolf really strikes a chord, and the Time Lord can barely look Hitler in the face before having Rory land a punch and shut him in a cupboard. Quickly, we moved on to a flurry of regenerations, revelations about River's timey-wimey teenage years and surprising arc developments (so those creatures in Episode 1/2 weren't the Silence as a whole...then who was the voice in the exploding TARDIS in The Pandorica Opens?), all of which were handled brilliantly both by Steven Moffat's hugely intelligent script- the scene where River tries to kill the Doctor and we see him plot out his survival was very remniscent of Sherlock- and the cast as a whole, with Matt and Alex Kingston giving their best performances so far as the Doctor and River. It really felt gratuitous to actually get some concrete answers on key questions like what the Silence is , what 'Silence will fall' means and how River learnt to fly the TARDIS, plus possibly how she learnt the Doctor's true name (did he whisper that too when he was dying?), and that the episode was so focused on that helped. Of course, this did make the 'monsters of the week' feel a little rudimentary, only really serving to stop River long enough to confirm that she seems poised to kill the Doctor by Lake Silencio in America in 2011 and to relay this information to the TARDIS' control screen. The CGI Terrelacta bots looked decent, even if like Prisoner Zero in The Eleventh Hour they were just acting as some evil/comedy filler and reeked of Meet Dave, but that they were realistic enough added to the cinematic feel common in this season. I could go on about why this episode managed to so easily overshadow its shortcomings, but you've seen for yourself tonight- this is one of the best pieces of television I've seen this year, easily the best episode of 2011 Who so far and a perfect set-up for the remainder of the series!