Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler review

Sometimes being a Doctor Who fan is a bit like being a parent: Obviously you are very fond of - indeed, love - your little one, but every time he/she/it does something you have two fingers crossed and a high-pitched little voice in your head going 'Please don't let me down, please don't embarrass me and please don't disgrace the family name. Please be good,' over and over again.

But, deep down, you know you're - metaphorically speaking, that is - going to find he/she/it has done something really rather unpleasant where really rather unpleasant things shouldn't be done. Or eaten the neighbour's cat. Or something like that. In short, you are doomed to be disappointed, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Which brings us on to Let's Kill Hitler, or as it was originally titled, 'Let's Come Up With An Absolute Humdinger Of A Title, One That Has The Potential To Take on That Old Philosophical Chestnut About Whether If One Had a Time Machine One Should Go Back And Kill One Of The Most Evil People Who Ever Drew Breath, And The Implications of That For The Flow of Time, And Tackle It In A Saturday TV Programme For Kids, Like, And Then Not Bother To Do Anything With It'. (Or LCUWAAHOATOTHTPTTOTOPCAWIOHATMOSGBAKOOTMEPWE-DBATIOTFTFOTATIIASTPFKLATNBTDAWI for short.)

I don't want you to run off with the idea that I didn't think it was any good (if only because the last time I did that I risked ending up under a Whovian fatwa. Honestly, if you think the Krauts were bad you should try upsetting some of the Doctor Who faithfull), but it really wasn't very good, was it?

Steven Moffat's name was on the title, and as usual narrative sense and logic were immediately thrown out of the window. Let's Kill Hitler went down the predictably unpredictable route, and not long after the Tardis crashed into Hitler's office in the centre of Berlin (alerting absolutely nobody), Addy was locked in a cupboard and forgotten about. I felt cheated.

I'm not saying there wasn't anything in the episode to enjoy - I imagine Alex Kingston's breasts will be given their own spin-off series at some point - and I did like the Teselecta, the little people piloting the human-shaped robots from inside (Moffat clearly read The Beezer's Numskulls cartoon as a boy) , but, honestly, what a wasted opportunity.

And considering who he was, Hitler appeared to have put his entire security operation in the hands of Group 4. Never has a head of state - and a paranoid lunatic at that - had less security. There are parish councillors in south Shropshire with better protection than the Fuhrer. And the Berlin restaurants weren't much better. Surely if somebody had gone in, shot up the place and forced the clientele to run outside in their underwear, someone in authority might just have - you know - popped his head around the door to see what was going on?

I suppose Steven Moffat's too powerful now, but somebody somewhere in the bowels of the BBC really does need to take him to one side and tell him a few truths about what he's doing to the series. It's great that he's bursting with ideas, he just seems to have lost his grasp of what makes a coherent narrative. It's - dare I say it - getting a bit silly. Absolute power and all that...

So on to next week which, judging by the teaser trailer, appears to feature mini-Mick Hucknalls frightening some poor child. It certainly looks interesting.

Let's hope Moffat didn't write it.

By Andrew Owen