Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E08 Let's Kill Hitler/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


It's a metaphysical question

The title

  • Jossed

It isn't

Well, there are filming shots showing WW 2 Germany.

  • Confirmed

It's both

Taking the themes of Genesis of the Daleks and sticking them in their historical inspiration.

  • Jossed

Hitler is going to be Melody's first target.

She'll probably fail.

  • Jossed -- NOT. That was Melody's plan, it just didn't succeed.

Its at the end of the war

They kill Hitler on April 30, 1945, everyone just assumed it was suicide.

  • Jossed

Winston Churchill will appear in the episode.

OK, not too wild of a guess (hasn't it been confirmed he'll be showing up again this season?), but c'mon, Hitler and Churchill never met in real life, it's time to throw history to the wind and have some awesome showdowns. Also, the Doctor will complement Winston's bowtie.

  • Jossed

It's going to be about fixed points in time

Especially since Amy's mantra seems to be 'Time can be rewritten,' Amy and Rory are probably going to want to get baby Melody back, but that's probably impossible as it will create endless paradoxes involving little girl!Melody (especially during the events in Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon) and grown up Melody/River Song. The Doctor will probably have to demonstrate to the Ponds how you can't change timelines by screwing with fixed points in time, and will do so by showing them the most famous fixed point of all: Hitler. I mean, Hitler really sounds like someone who would be on The Doctor's hit list. Genocide? check. Trying to rule the world? check. Trying to rewrite history (in a sort of mundane, textbook way) check. Evil army of normal people 'just following order?' check. So why hasn't the Doctor gotten rid of him already? Fixed point in time. Can't do it.

  • Confirmed - But in a round-about manner: The Tesselecta takes targets shortly before their death and replaces them with copies in order to avert paradoxes. However, they came too early for Hitler, and it is never stated if his alleged-suicide in 1945 is a fixed point or not. At the same time, The Doctor's death at the lake in Utah is explicitly stated to be a fixed point in time.

The Silence are behind it in some way

WW 2 accelerated/caused the space race and eventual moon-landing... and we know how well that turned out for them. So now they're trying to avert it. Somehow.

This is the episode when we finely found out how the Valeyard came to be

The Doctor somehow snaps and does something REALLY bad(with Hilter and history thrown in) then the Valeyard is born in the end The Doctor is turned back to normal(or normal as The Doctor can get) but the Valeyard is now his own person and runs of to get Sixth in... you guessed it, The Mysterious Planet.

  • The Valeyard is between his 12th and 13th incarnations or something of the sort.
    • That's twelfth and final incarnations. Recent changes imply that the Doctor will at least be able to have 14 or more incarnations. Whether he does or not is still as of yet unconfirmed.
    • The Valeyard is the living personification of the Doctor's dark side. For all we know, this is the episode where he is "born." The 12th Doctor could be when he becomes an Enemy Without.
  • Jossed

River kills Rory.

She killed "a very good man", and this isn't the first time the show tried to trick people into thinking a character's referring to the Doctor when they're actually referring to Rory.

  • Jossed

Hitler will die, and bad things will happen.

Going by the above WMG that the story is about fixed points in time, this story will show the effects of actually defying time. By killing Hitler, of course. It could invole either one of the Doctor's companions(they don't know about fixed points yet), or the Doctor himself(in a toned down version of his Time Lord Victorious attitude). What effects this will have on the timeline won't be the obvious "Nazis rule the world," but it will still be very bad. Involving Fridge Horror.

  • Jossed

They accidently save Hitler

Thus seriously raising the question as to if WW 2 as we know it is a fixed point in time.

    • Given one of the preview clips, it *appears* that they may have crashed the TARDIS into Hitler's office while one of his officers was attempting to assassinate him.
  • Confirmed

The Silence's Question is...

Doctor Who?. Moffat likes the mystery of the Doctor's real name, after all, and River knows/knew/will know it.

  • I like that, it's a bit Meta. It's pretty much the oldest question in the series. Also, that question has been answered- not to us, naturally, but to River and, near as I'm aware, no form of Silence has yet Fallen as a result. Then again, Timey Wimey, so who knows?
  • And the records did say the question is in plain sight. What's plainer than the title of the show we're watching.
  • Thing is, he asked it in that very episode... and nothing happened. And that question's been asked a LOT in the show's history. Now, if silence were to fall if the question is answered, that'd be something else entirely...
  • "What is the Matrix?" Just Rule of Funny.
    • Confirmed

The Doctor whispered his name to River

He was on the verge of dying (again), so maybe this is the "only time [he] could" tell someone? Coupled with the above WMG, This may link the whole wibbley mess of River, the Silence, and the Doctor's other death from this season together (up to and including why River's first episode was called "Silence in the Library").

  • It seems unlikely, judging from her reaction of (paraphrased) "I think she already knows," but I've been wrong before.
  • "I'm sure she knows" could easily make sense as "if you're that close I'm sure she knows your name".