Review - The Zygon Inversion

The events of The Zygon Invasion come to a head in this story's quite brilliant conclusion, The Zygon Inversion.

Season 9, Episode 8 - The Zygon Inversion

After last week's missile-laden cliff-hanger, we pick up this week with Clara trapped in her own mind watching helplessly through the Zygon mind link as her duplicate, Bonnie, tries to shoot The Doctor's plane down. Of course, Clara is made of stronger stuff, and is able to hijack Bonnie's body through sheer force of will. Not only does this allow her to foil the initial missile attack, giving The Doctor and Osgood time to escape, but eventually she also manages to blind-text The Doctor.

As The Doctor and Osgood determine that Clara is still alive, Bonnie begins fostering conflict between the humans and the Zygons. To this end, she forces a Zygon to revert to his natural state in front of humans and uploads video of the event to the web. She then sets about trying to secure the Osgood Box which as we learned last episode, is the ultimate sanction should the Zygon treaty fail. Having learned from The Doctor that Clara knows where the box is kept, Bonnie uses their mental link to interrogate her. Despite Clara's best efforts at double-talking around the questions, Bonnie learns the box is in the Black Archive.

Bonnie threatens to kill Clara, but is warned that she will soon find out why it's called the Osgood Box, and will then want to talk to her again. Clara's pod is packed up and Bonnie trots off to the archive, but not before telling her freshly returned US counterpart, now disguised as Kate, to deal with The Doctor.

The Doctor and Osgood have meanwhile found the place Bonnie filmed her video. Here they discover the Zygon she reverted who is now terrified he has destroyed all hope of a peaceful life for Zygons on Earth. In a scene that reinforces the opening of the previous episode, we see a good and peaceful Zygon just wanting to live his life in his new home. Unable to live with what he may have done, the poor bloke elects to kill himself.

Kate catches up with The Doctor and Osgood, taking them to the Zygon base. When they get there they realise that Clara's pod has been removed. Kate's UNIT guards transform and advance menacingly only to be cut down by Kate, who turns out not to be a Zygon. She reveals she escaped by the excessively complicated method of blowing the attacking alien away with the gun she was shown to have on her earlier. Crazy, I know. At least she apologised to The Doctor for killing them.

It's not Sonic, but it gets the job done.

The real meat of this episode comes in the final act as Bonnie enters the Black Archive and finds not one, but two Osgood Boxes, each with two activation buttons. Turns out this is The Doctor's plan all along. The buttons of one box will either revert all Zygons on Earth to their natural forms, or make their human forms permanent. The other box will either release a Zygon-specific nerve gas, or detonate a nuclear warhead large enough to destroy England.

As both Bonnie and Kate struggle to decide which buttons to push, The Doctor tries to convince them not to push either. Capaldi delivers a fantastically impassioned speech, which could have been made directly to the heads of most terrorist organisations worldwide (and a few governments too) with barely a changed word. 

Of course it all works out in the end, and as a bonus twist, The Doctor reveals this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Bonnie, now reformed of her radical ways, takes the place of the missing Osgood and the pair get on with the business of keeping Earth safe.

All whilst rocking some epic cosplay.

This one was pretty much a near perfect episode. I seem to recall one small In-Who-Endo at one point, but it obviously wasn't bad enough for me to remember what it was (EDIT: Oh that's right, it was the winking thing. Fairly harmless I suppose). The pacing was perfect, the resolution was wonderful, and it really gave Capaldi time to shine with a solid monologue to sink his teeth into. 

The one thing that didn't happen which I hoped would, was some kind of justification for changing the Zygon rules last episode. With a big room full of people in pods, it seems like there is no solid explanation about when they do or do not need to keep the humans alive. I really feel like this change was made so that we could be faked out about characters being dead when they weren't. Previously we would know they were still alive somewhere if there was a Zygon version of them.

Despite that, I'm ranking this one the best of the season, and definitely the best from Capaldi's run.

10/10

Can we fix it?

Nope. Nothing to fix here.

Review - The Zygon Invasion

The Doctor revisits the events of the 50th Anniversary Special as he and Clara team up with UNIT to deal with The Zygon Invasion.

Season 9, Episode 7 - The Zygon Invasion

We begin this episode with a little recap of The Day of the Doctor, confirming there were two Osgoods and showing us that The Doctor had a contingency should the Zygon colonisation ever go bad. It's apparently called the Osgood box. Then we catch up with Osgood desperately fleeing a Zygon and attempting to contact The Doctor. She is caught, but not before getting a message off. The Doctor receives the message in the TARDIS while he is yet again randomly jamming on his guitar. I'm going to go ahead and call that as his version of an annoying catchphrase.

This must be the only thing he does in his down time.

The Doctor goes out to find the Zygon High Command and find out what is going on. I tried to ignore the creepy undertones of an old man hanging out in a playground watching the kids before doggedly pursuing two young girls through the play equipment. Happily for The Doctor, so did every other adult human in sight. I suspect that scene would have ended very differently in real life. Before The Doctor can get any information from the Zygon girls, they are kidnapped by some other Zygons.

Meanwhile, Clara finds her neighbour's kid sitting in the stairs of her building. He says he can't find his parents. When Clara goes into his house to investigate, she is confronted by some creepy people who assure her everything is fine before forcing the struggling child into another room. All of this doesn't appear to phase Clara though, as next thing she is seen exiting the flat and tying her hair back. This struck me as a very deliberate act, and whilst my first thought was that it was a "things are about to get real," move, I now suspect it will become an identifying trait later in the story.

After finally calling The Doctor back, Clara meets him and Kate Stewart at UNIT HQ. There they are filled in with all the details of the Zygon situation. A splinter group of younger Zygons is discontent with remaining in hiding, and is demanding the truth of their nature is revealed. The whole thing plays out as a nice allegory of the whole Islamic State situation we have going on now, where disillusioned young people are being radicalised to the cause. The Doctor even warns that bombing the factional Zygons will only help to radicalise the rest of them.

After visiting the site of the Zygon High Command and some completely unnecessary In-Who-Endos around the way The Doctor operates the Zygon computer, this episode takes on a nice international feel. The Zygon threat is present across the world, with main plot points occurring in the UK (naturally) as well as the US and a fictional Middle Eastern country called Turmezistan. The group divide their efforts amongst these countries, with Kate going to the bizarrely named town of Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, The Doctor leading the UNIT strike team in Turmezistan, and Clara staying behind in England.

These multiple fronts allow each character to shine nicely. It was particularly fun to see Kate out in the field. She certainly seemed capable as a field agent, as befits the daughter of the great Brigadier. She meets a beleaguered town Sheriff in the now deserted Truth or Consequences who reveals some info on the Zygon uprising there. 

Not just a bureaucrat.

Meanwhile, The Doctor manages to stop UNIT from bombing the Zygon compound in Turmezistan, but during a ground operation the Zygons manage to fool the UNIT frontal assault team and wipe out the lot. The Doctor finds the captured Osgood at the last minute, and manages to capture a Zygon prisoner to boot.

Everything is looking good until we figure out that Clara is a Zygon, and the British contingent have captured and replaced a large portion of the population. Not only that, but the sheriff that Kate has met in the US is also revealed to be a Zygon double, and attacks. Zygon Clara speaks to The Doctor on the phone and reveals Clara and Kate are supposedly dead. Then she shoots a missile at his plane and we get a face full of "to be continued."

"Say hello to my little cliff-hanger!"

This was a top notch episode, only mildly tarnished by a tasteless joke near the start. Despite my early fears that moving to glasses form seemed to have yet again upped the power lever, they have avoided hitting the Deus Ex Screwdriver thing and only used them for opening locks.

The same can't be said for the Zygons though. They've only appeared once before since the reboot, but somehow they're already suffering from power-creep. Osgood even mentioned their previous restrictions as "the old rules." I've said before, if an established monster needs changing to stay scary or whatever, maybe reconsider using it.

In this case it could just be that this was changed to keep things mysterious around which Osgood still exists, or make it more believable that Kate and Clara could be dead. If so, there are better ways of going about it. More likely it was an excuse to make another Hybrid reference. I kind of respect that they are trying to keep the nature of the Hybrid obscure, but this is starting to look clumsy. 

Anyway, this was enjoyable, and I really am loving the large crop of double-parters we have this season. It really gives the story room to breathe and helps avoid the issue of Go, go, go, Geronimo! I look forward to the next part.

9/10

Can we fix it?

First and foremost, drop the sex jokes in the Zygon HQ. They were just too much of a jump at that point considering things are quite serious until then. If we absolutely need something light-hearted there, cut the joke in half. 

"Should we give you some privacy?"
"This is a bio-organic interface. This is how it works."

That's it. The follow-up joke about him enjoying it is unnecessary and dragged it out too far. The word "titillating" was chosen for The Doctor's response even though "stimulating" is almost as suggestive with the bonus of being more appropriate. The fact they went with the slightly more obscure term speaks volumes here.

I was going to offer a solution to what I see as an unnecessary change to the Zygon canon by tweaking the "new rules" scene with Osgood. On reflection though, I'd rather wait until part 2 to see where they are taking it before going down that path. 

It could all turn out to be a fake-out and Osgood is another Zygon decoy made from the surviving Osgood who is the human Osgood who is being kept somewhere like Clara is, and she spun all that to The Doctor to lead him astray. 

Anything is possible.

Review - The Day of the Doctor

Well there was a whole bunch of hype leading up to this momentous event. It could have gone either way, but I'm glad to say it lived up to the hype, and I very much enjoyed The Day of the Doctor.

The 50th anniversary Special - The Day of the Doctor

Starting with the original credits and a reference to both Coal Hill Secondary School and the I. M. Foreman scrapyard where we first encountered the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child, right from the off you can see we are set for a whole flood of references to the past 50 years of Doctor Who. We had a couple of references to Omega, a big scarf, some nice bits and bobs in the Black Archive, and to my great pleasure, a reversal of the polarity. Sure, it wasn't of the neutron flow, but obviously The Doctor has sharpened his physics knowledge in recent years.

Nostalgia ahoy!

The Moment was sort of interesting, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it choosing Rose/Bad Wolf as it's interface form. This essentially boils down to getting Billie Piper into the episode somehow, really, but that's fine. It would have been good to see the Interface shift a few times to take on other forms using file footage. Maybe just flicker between them at times, or when first settling on a form.

When Ten and Eleven get together the interplay between them is truly awesome. Matt Smith and David Tennent have a clear chemistry on screen that gives a wonderful energy to the episode. I was worried John Hurt's War Doctor would end up being all dour and sombre and kill the buzz, but he only made things better. I loved every second of Hurt's interplay with the other two Doctors. In a way he was an in-show avatar of me expressing confused bewilderment at where Doctor Who has ended up, commenting on everything from the age of the other Doctors to the use of the phrase "Timey wimey".

They're scientific instruments, not water pistols!

Despite making fun of many of the things that usually irk me, we still had a whopping great In-Who-Endo added when Ten and Eleven compared Sonic Screwdrivers. We had plenty of other bits of funny banter between them without resorting to a tired old dick joke, thanks very much.

Hur hur hur! Willies.

Some of the scene transitions seemed to be a bit weird. I recall one wipe came in far too soon, whilst Kate Stewart was still talking, which seemed a bit sloppy to me. That said, the morph effects on the Zygons were awesome. Really smooth and natural looking. The 3D paintings looked really cool too. I imagine seeing it in 3D would have been quite the treat at that point, but I feel it would have been wasted throughout most of the rest of the episode.

The episode did have some pretty glaring continuity issues though. I'm still struggling to see how this whole thing fits with the events of The End of Time. The Doctor is clearly now looking to find Gallifrey and restore it to the galaxy, but he was previously determined not to let the Time Lords return because they planned to destroy reality. Is the Time Lock the same thing as the Stasis Cube, or are Rassilon and the other Time Lord high council trapped somewhere else? Hopefully subsequent episodes that build on this story and fill in the gaps, because I am rather confused at the moment. I may have to re-watch The End of Time again and see if that helps. It would have been awesome if they got Timothy Dalton back in to play Rassilon though.

There were also some internal story issues with Elizabeth and the Zygons. She would have had to be remarkably quick thinking to be able to replace the Commander and subsequently find out all of the details of the Zygon's plans without arousing suspicion. Overall I found that to be a tad clumsy even with the offhand "they never considered I would survive" line. It was fun to see the gap in Ten's life just previous to The End of Time filled in there. Of course you have to feel bad for Liz because you know she's going to end up bitter and hateful towards The Doctor. I'm also left feeling The Doctor is a bit of a dick for following through with the wedding when he wasn't actually interested. And how is he able to tell Ood Sigma about it? Doesn't he forget? Either way, John Hurt made that little bit of Hunka hunka burning Doc tolerable.

Is there a lot of this in the future?

It does start to happen, yeah.

The Zygon plot was sort of left unresolved. I don't think it would have taken too much to make mention in the closing scenes of whatever resolution they came up with. It felt a little unfinished, or that Steven Moffat decided it wasn't important any more, as we'd moved on to resolving the Time War plot, which was far more interesting and important. In a way it was always just a secondary plot that provided the vehicle for plot exposition as well as the final solution, but it got so much screen time that I feel it deserved more of a resolution than it received.

Throwing Capaldi in there at the end was inspired. I only wish that was the first reveal of him in the role of Twelve. The fan reaction would have been insane, especially if it was just that short flash of his eyes. There would have been so much discussion about who it was. Such a missed opportunity.

Do you recognise these eyes?

Overall I'm excited about how things were left, even if I was a bit annoyed at throwing Tom Baker in there with a weak "reusing old faces" line. Seeking out and freeing Gallifrey is a great way to go, assuming the aforementioned plot confusion is addressed. Most excitingly it gives us an opportunity to resurrect a sorely wasted foe.

The Master is waiting!

10/10

Can we fix it?

No. All we need was a bit more exposition on some of the minor plot points and the removal of a rogue wang reference. It was a perfect homage to the 50 years, encapsulated in that epic final shot.