well, you’ve touched on my main problem and criticism of the episode. it’s got some british nationalism and some pretty inaccurate ideas about the role britain played in the war, but for the most part i can get past those issues because, like I said, they aren’t the main focus of the episode. (and, well, doctor who is a television show made by the bbc. i usually have at least a couple of eyerolls per episode in regards to its politics)
Let’s Kill Hitler, however… well, the first time I watched it I felt so physically ill I stopped watching the show for several months, and nearly gave up on it entirely. so that should tell you how I feel about it. i read your review, and I understand the point you’re making about propaganda, but i would argue that while that served a purpose at the time, and in context made Hitler seem less terrifying, which made a difference for people currently fighting that war & gave them confidence, we don’t live in that time anymore. these days, it’s the opposite. when before, the nazis were seen as a real threat, it benefited us to knock them down a peg and make them seem less powerful, now, nazis are seen as a joke or a bland, faceless, fictional villain like stormtroopers, when they DO still exist and they DO still pose a threat to people. we live in a different context to when something like that would have been appropriate and what LKH ends up doing is making a joke out of the suffering of millions of people.
before anyone calls me out for hypocrisy, i mentioned Jojo Rabbit in my original post – a comedic movie about a little boy whose imaginary friend is Hitler. the movie makes a joke out of Hitler for two hours, and yet it’s one of my favorite films. why that is is actually pretty simple: the guy who made the movie is Jewish. jewish comedy is often quite dry and dark, understandably so, and that’s how we end up with movies like Jojo Rabbit. i vastly prefer a comedic take on Hitler from a Jewish person than a gentile. it’s a question of when it is appropriate and who has the ability to tell those stories, and I really don’t think Doctor Who or Steven Moffat are the right place or the right person to make that joke, if that makes sense – especially when it’s basically being used as a backdrop for character drama that could have taken place anywhere. the other thing is that Jojo Rabbit, despite making the nazis look like bumbling idiots, treats the threat they pose very, very seriously, and focuses on a.) a young boy unlearning the propaganda he’s been fed his whole life, and b.) a young Jewish girl fighting fiercely to survive. Jojo Rabbit is also not a perfect movie, I have my criticisms of it, and I wholly disagree with the director on several political issues, but, like TEC/TDD, the positives outweigh the negatives for me. these two things, despite ostensibly looking very similar, are actually incredibly different when you look at the context. does that make sense?
i would also push back against the idea that Doctor Who doesn’t touch Nazis until the 80s. they might not involve them outright, but the Daleks are famously a (thinly veiled) allegory for the Nazis, most notably in their first story in The Daleks, and later in Genesis of the Daleks. lots of people working on the show in its early years were involved in one way or another, and you can definitely feel that impact when you’re looking for it. a lot of third doctor stories are very much about fascism, for example.
spyfall is an interesting case. because no, i guess there isn’t anything “aside” from the master being a nazi officer, but to me that is such an upsetting and glaring plot point that i really cannot get past it in any way shape or form. i don’t think anyone working on the show did this to intentionally hurt anyone, and rather did it out of ignorance, and this is all symbolic of a larger problem we have with our general society, which is dismissing antisemitism as a thing of the past. i really think it’s a problem to have what is essentially a beloved supervillain with fifty years of history on this show wear the uniform of the people responsible for the deaths of millions of people. it’s a problem to have him work with them. it’s a problem to have him help them with raids. it is disgusting that they made a man of color wear that uniform and it’s disgusting to have your hero, portrayed by a white woman, expose him as nonwhite to the ■■■■■■■ nazis. it’s a problem that that moment is not treated as a fucked up exploitation of racism but rather as a heroic #girlboss moment.
that episode did not need to be set during world war ii. it was completely irrelevant to the plot. it could have been set during literally any other time period. they chose that time period because it felt like a cool backdrop or whatever for the fight between the doctor and the master, rather than a real event recent enough that people who lived through it are still around today. and they chose to make the master be a nazi because they see nazis as generic disposable bad guys and not a real group of people who committed genocide – a group that, like I said, is very much still around today.
i also just simply don’t believe that the master would work with nazis in the first place. they are an opposite to the doctor, a narrative foil, and they do terrible things, but they are not a mindless force of evil. and even if they WERE evil enough to be down with nazis (they’re not.) that doesn’t make it any less triggering and disrespectful to include. like yes they kill people but there is a marked difference between fictionally killing indiscriminately and. nazism. ethnic cleansing for the purpose of hatred. hell, the doctor herself says “this is low, even for him”, which just makes me think of the regina george meme “so you agree? this is out of character for the master?”
having the master assist the nazis is crossing the line from campy, silly evil into real life evil. chibnall is hardly the only writer to cross this line, for the record, simm master enslaving martha’s family comes to mind in particular, but Spyfall is a far more recent example and one that I feel doesn’t really exist in the minds of most goyishe fans as something that should not have been in the show in the first place, if that makes sense.
the fact is that the episode is set in nazi-occupied france with hardly a reference to that outside of a character based on a historic spy (they actually apparently filmed a scene where Noor gets sentenced to death and is killed, but cut the scene because they thought it was too much. which is hilarious to me because, okay, you recognized you crossed the line there, but not until wayyyy too late). in the commentary for the episode, chibnall says something like “oh i wasn’t sure I could get away with this”, which to me is like. ok so you knew this was too far, and you did it anyway, because…? why? it doesn’t have to be in the episode, it’s there for shock value and that’s about it.
one of the funniest (
) parts of it to me (and the part that proves ignorance rather than malice) is the four beats on the telegram scene. it’s a nice callback to the four knocks and everything, but. four short beats in morse code is the letter H. the doctor repeatedly sent “HH” to the nazis 
i understand the urge to highlight someone like Noor Khan in your story about spies, but, like a lot of Chibnall historical figures, she doesn’t do much other than say “i’m Noor Khan and I am a spy”. if she was the only reason they set that section of the episode, i really don’t think they utilized her very well. or at all. i also think it’s kind of upsetting that the doctor erases her memories. i know foreknowledge is dangerous and everything, but this woman has to die at the hands of the nazis because she dared to resist against them. why not leave her with some hope for the future, the knowledge that everything she did amounted to something?
i’m sorry this got so long, i really have quite a lot to say on the subject I appreciate your perspective and everything, thanks for sharing. i hope my argument here is at least somewhat coherent, and can maybe help people understand my viewpoint a little bit more
