Which does raise the point that series 6 has pretty much confirmed that regeneration can encompass both gender (The Doctor's Wife) and ethnicity (Let's Kill Hitler!)
6.5x08 Let's Kill Hitler (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!!)
- Thread starter Samurai8472
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Which does raise the point that series 6 has pretty much confirmed that regeneration can encompass both gender (The Doctor's Wife) and ethnicity (Let's Kill Hitler!)
Oh yes, you're probably right. That doesn't make her a "token black", though. Just the right person for the job.
Yeah, just like Martha and Mickey were almost certainly always intended to be black (or, at least, there was a strong push for it). Doesn't make them a token black.
If that were the case, I doubt they would have given her the totally obvious name Mels.
Well, I think they referred to her as Mels instead of as Melody for that reason. It wasn't fair to entirely hide the ball, but they didn't want to entirely show their hand.
Thank you for not trying to twist my words.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother to post in here.
I guess, but frankly that went straight over my head anyway, and this despite the fact that when the car roared up I thought "This'll be River then"
I had the exact same reaction. I really felt like a dope looking at the beginning of the episode again, though. Mels getting turned on by the Doctor, and "You're going to end up in prison" should've been a dead giveaway.
... shape-shifting robotic Mossad assassin? What was so Israeli about the robot pilots?
You know, I really don't know what a show that's primarily aimed at children can really do with Adolf Hitler. That's such a huge, such a monumentally dark and weighty and horrible thing, I really don't know if it would even be appropriate for Doctor Who to make an earnest effort to tackle the Third Reich. You can't really do Downfall on a kid's show. That's the sort of thing that's more appropriate for programs aimed at adults.Like, I dunno, goatdamned Hitler in the cupboard?
Perhaps a reference to the Mossad assassins after the Munich bombing? Or since the robot was after war criminals, Adolf Eichmann.
We're not talking the Sarah Jane Adventures here. Doctor Who's consistently tackled darkness and horror and pretending kids can't deal with darkness and horror at their level and so they must be shielded from it is a patronizing disservice. Don't do Downfall. Do the diary of Anne Frank.
At least for myself, the best twists are the ones where my predictions are completely and utterly wrong. For example, I once predicted that The Silents will be creatures who only exist in the silence between audible sound. Boy am I so happy I got that totally wrong
That's indeed what I meant. If there's somebody cool enough to employ time-travelling shapeshifting robots in a war-criminal-hunting business, it must be Mossad. And I must say I liked the whole idea a lot, it's strong enough to carry its own series. The idea itself is awesome; it's just execution that sucked a bit.
Then possibly they shouldn't bring Hitler into play at all. Although I honestly believe there are ways to tackle it. The whole Nazi era is just delightfully creepy, scary and hopeless - and they end up using it as a backdrop for River Song running around in a SS jacket.
They could, for instance, continue with the whole idea of Doctor being forced to cooperate in the assassination of Hitler (and having to save Hitler in order to prevent the temporal paradox or something). Not exactly original, but it could be done.
Or they might take the whole thing a parody. Although that was actually already made - as you can see in this European time-travel flick from 70s (basically a bunch of Nazis come back from retirement and attempt to use the time machine to supply Hitler with a hydrogen bomb).
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I also apologize to anybody offended with the "token black" thing. I only meant to imply that the choice of actress (and, in extension, the whole idea of timelords being able to regenerate into different ethnicity) feels like a political decision, not a creative one - because they promptly killed Mels only minutes after arriving into the Nazi Germany, thus effectively wasting the immense coolness factor of a swashbuckling black woman in a SS jacket running around Nazi Berlin with a machine gun. Which is something I'd gladly pay to see.
Hitler was there for two reasons.
One, "light-hearted Hitler fun" aka Hitler getting punched in the face, the Doctor upset that he accidentally saved Hitler's life, etc.
Two, some kind of metaphor with a comparison between Hitler and River.
The episode did not need to be set in Berlin, 1938. However, it also didn't need to avoid being set in a historical period simply because it wasn't going to focus on the period.
One, "light-hearted Hitler fun" aka Hitler getting punched in the face, the Doctor upset that he accidentally saved Hitler's life, etc.
Two, some kind of metaphor with a comparison between Hitler and River.
The episode did not need to be set in Berlin, 1938. However, it also didn't need to avoid being set in a historical period simply because it wasn't going to focus on the period.
Hitler was there so that the Time Police can turn their attentions to Melody Pond as they consider her a worse criminal than Hitler.