Timelord Thoughts 7 - The Zygon Invasion

An ambitious story this week, being a follow on from the anniversary special of 2013 *and* a kind of sequel to the original Tom Baker classic from forty years ago.
Trust no-one it's:

The Zygon Invasion

• The "Once upon a time there were three Doctors" conceit is a nice alternative to the more normal "previously on..." - and we need it. It's been two years  since "The Day of the Doctor" and this story is apparently a direct follow on from elements of the anniversary special. The recap does serve to remind me though how much I still miss Matt Smith in the lead role. Having said that, I am hugely looking forward to John Hurt reprising his role as the 'War Doctor' for Big Finish.
• Two Osgoods. One wearing McCoy's question mark jumper, the other Smith's bowtie and Tom Baker's scarf.

• Surely they could have come up with a more exciting name than "Operation Double"? That's the military mind for you.
• "Remember that. It'll be important later". That sounds like a quote from something but I can't place it. In any case it's a lovely way of pointing out the whole idea of foreshadowing (which has become synonymous with Doctor Who is recent years), hiding things in plain sight and of course the original 'Chekov's Gun' trope ("Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there)". Incidentally, there are all sorts of fascinating TV tropes that have been newly named in recent years, including 'Epileptic Trees' (Lost's wild off-the-wall theories), 'Scully Syndrome', 'Schrodinger's Butterfly', 'The Untwist' and of course 'Wild Mass Guessing' and 'Fan-disliked Explanations'. Start here if you want to see what I mean, but be warned you could lose hours of your life.
• Twenty million Zygons? That's an awful lot of alien shapeshifters. Still only around 0.3% of the Earth's population though. I think 'Men In Black' got there first with their alien repatriation programme. I'm still not sure about John Travolta.
• It almost sounds like the Osgoods could foresee that something was going to go wrong with the peace treaty. It's also clear that in the last two years they have become very close, referring to each other as 'sisters'.
• So even accepting that *this* bunch of Zygons might want to 'live in peace and harmony', has everyone forgotten that Broton and his gang wanted to restructure Earth to make it more habitable for the occupants of their refugee ship? That wasn't very harmonious.
• Ah, so apparently Broton was a radical. The message here (although delivered somewhat heavy handed) is "don't tar everyone with the same brush". 
• It's a *very* unstable peace if only one human or Zygon going rogue can break it.
• I wonder what could possibly be inside the 'Osgood Box'  - and which Doctor gave it to her / them? I can't imagine it's a superweapon. Remember that box. It'll be important later.
• Hiding under a desk while a snarling rampaging monster is hunting for you is a classic horror scenario. Quite apt that all this is being transmitted on Halloween.

•  A nice idea that she tries to text the Doctor rather than phone him, but sorry - first thing I would have done is turn off those keypad tones. Does anyone still use them?
• Unless the Zygon has appalling peripheral vision (which wouldn't be a first for a Doctor Who monster) you *knew* that it would find Osgood.
• I don't remember Zygon's having that electrical charge power before. Poisonous barbs on the palms, and venom sacs in their tongues maybe, but this is a new one. Convenient for the plot too.
• I guess the guitar is here to stay and okay, it's growing on me. A nice touch that the Doctor is playing 'Amazing Grace' -  a world famous hymn that has a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins committed.
• I get the feeling that we are going to be hearing the phrase 'Nightmare Scenario' a lot this week.
• An oldish man sitting on the swings in a kids playground wearing dark glasses. That's not creepy at all is it?
• Sorry - what? "Doctor Disco"? Where has that come from?
• "Some of the most dangerous creatures imaginable". He's met my god-daughter then.
• "Operating under deep cover. Trying not to attract suspicion". Yeah, right. Okay, I get that this is meant to be slightly humourous. *He* thinks he is being clever and *we* know he isn't. Maybe it's just in the delivery.
• Cinderella is obvious, but I had to look 'Monster High' up. Ah. A range of hideous looking fashion dolls launched in 2010 based on classic fantasy, SF and horror creatures. No wonder I had never heard of them. Maybe the writer has a daughter who is obsessed with them?
• A sudden jump cut and a crash of music. That's going to be a regular occurrence this episode.
• Lovely to see a portrait of Hartnell hanging in the UNIT safe house, even though he never came into contact with any version of the taskforce (as far as we know : fan fiction authors - go!). It's a reversal of a famous image. Is it from Marco Polo? Does it herald the announcement that those missing episodes are back? (Hint - no it doesn't)
• Hang on - you have an operation repatriating 20 million alien shapeshifters and all the information is held by one / two persons? I know the military can operate in silos and on a need-to-know basis but that's just a huge risk. It's like me knowing loads of really important stuff about my job that no-one else does. Oh wait... Damn.
• I'm not sure I like the way the Doctor keeps referring to the Zygons as 'blobs' ("concealing your blobbiness...") It's a call-back to "Remembrance of the Daleks" when Ace described the two Dalek factions as "blobs" and "bionic blobs with bits added", but the truth is Daleks *are* basically blobs in tin cans. Talking about Zygons in the same terms is just a bit... insensitive, if not outright racially offensive. 
• It's also very, very silly. Capaldi breathily whispering at the two girls calling them "the big blobs". I really didn't enjoy that. Maybe it's just in the delivery (yes I know I'm repeating myself, this is going somewhere I promise).
• I did like it when the Doctor went down the slide, although Capaldi pulled a very odd face. At this point you do slightly begin to worry that he's got it all wrong and these are two innocent little girls trying to play while a crazy old man talks nonsense at them.

• And then the two child actors surprise by giving a lovely performance of alienness. Very 'Children of the Damned'.
• Who hasn't accidentally rang someone by sitting on their phone in their pocket?
• Nice alien tech and red smoke as the Zygon rebels kidnap the leadership duumvirate. Although they run away initially, I'm sure people would stop and stare if hissing orange aliens with sharp teeth and suckers grab two little girls and cart them off in a parks maintenance van. They would think it was some kind of stunt. I'm surprised they didn't all get their phones out.
• It's not quite the Anarchy symbol, but the Zygon graffiti with it's three fingers and a sucker pad is a good shorthand for showing the scale and reach of the rebellious faction.
• A lovely cross fade on that symbol to then pan down and see Osgood having to deliver the prepared statement from her captors. It's a deliberate echo of the indignities suffered by prisoners held by real world terrorists and fanatics, and quite chilling.
• That's a very "Doctorish" coat Clara is wearing isn't it?
• I wonder why she scoffs at the 127 missed calls? Either she doesn't take the Doctor seriously or he regularly does this for some incredibly trivial reason.
• No, Sandeep's parents aren't acting at all wierdly are they? Luckily Clara got out of there in one piece...
• If 20 million UK residents have been duplicated by newly hatched Zygons, what happened to the originals? That's a large amount of people to have a double wandering around. Does the terms of the treaty mean that they have to settle far away from each other?
• Hmmm, the Doctor leaving people with "an impossible siutation" to clear up. I wonder if Ashildr might have something to say about that.
• The ISIS analogies are coming thick and fast now with talk of radicalisation amongst the young. I wonder if they look up to the teachings of the great Broton?
• The Zygon command computer is a suitably organic and nasty looking piece of kit. The Doctor looks like he knows what he is doing but "titivating the fronds", while humourous, just sounds a bit...odd.
• What is good is the low lighting in this scene, which adds an eerie atmosphere. If the production team is trying to evoke "Alien" then they are not doing too bad. It's a shame that the Zygons themselves are not only seen at night, as that would make them more terrifying. In broad daylight they do look just a teeny bit too much like men in rubber suits - fantastically grotesque rubber suits mind.
• Another reference to "Day of the Doctor" and snogging a Zygon. What? There's a ten year anniversary?
• That's a bit of revisonist scripting right there I think - so if you are copied by a Zygon you experience a two way telepathic link?
• Kate must really have thought highly of Osgood to let her go undercover alone. That's if she had a choice. It seems that Osgood has become a lot more proactive since the ceasefire.
• Freedom to do what they want. To be who they want to be. These radical Zygons are comparing themsleves to slaves / the opressed now. They don't want to fit in.
• Is that what a Zygon looks like if you kill it  and remove it's shape changing ability? A ball of electrically static neuron fibres?
• It seems that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart has inheritied a love of bombing things from her late father. He resorted to large explosions to destroy the Silurians. It wasn't the correct solution then and it isn't now.

• That's not a made up fact, there really is a town called Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. It changed it's name from "Hot Springs" back in 1950 to that of a popular radio game show. Only around 7,300 people live there but it has 10 spa facilicities. It also has the first visitor centre for Virgin Galactic.
• The plan is to send Kate (alone) to New Mexico and the Doctor (alone) to made-up-place-ending-in-stan. How about some backup?
• Why is the Doctor talking about himself in the third person and acting like he is some kind of gang "homie"? It's cringeworthy.
• See what I mean? Since when does the Doctor "ponce about"?

• Oh god I don't even want to remember the appalling double V-signs on the plane steps. Okay, look, this is the issue I have with the way the Doctor is being portrayed lately. It's like he want's to be "cool" and "down with the kids" when really he's like your dad or a dotty uncle who is trying just a bit too hard and is faintly embarassing. As a character tic it can work - Matt Smith managed the "socially awkward" image really well - but with Capaldi it just doesn't gel and I really want it to stop. It's putting me off his portrayal of the Doctor in a big way. Play to Cazpaldi's stength's as an actor, not have him deliver Tennant / Smith lines in an unconvincing funny voice with some gurning to go with it. The Twelfth Doctor can be acerbic and witty sure, have him play mournful electric guitar in the TARDIS if you must, but don't have him trying to be a "dude". The more I see it, the more I think that he's just acting like a dick. I'm really, really sorry about this as I have huge respect for Capaldi as an actor but I'm not liking this element of his Doctor at all.
• Clara is really pumping Kate for information isn't she?...
• Another outing for the running gag about when the UNIT stories took place. Subtle enough that it will pass the younger fans by, but we old fogies get it.
• "...a naval surgeon". That has to be a reference to the wonderful Harry Sullivan. Looks like he became a bit of a biochemist too.
• No Kate, you're British - it's ZED-67 !!
• Is Kate just being funny when she says the nerve gas was taken by "someone with a TARDIS", or is it possible she means someone other than the Doctor?
• Now we have two Chekov's Guns - the Osgood Box and the Z-67.
• That sack Sandeep's parents are dragging looks very large and heavy to contain just a small boy doesn't it? I know we hear his yell, but even so...
• The Zygon bio-tech in the lift is lovely and squelchy. Lucky Clara pressed it in the right place...
• You'd think she would have noticed the huge tunnel system under her apartment block. I like the way she uses her phone camera flash as a torch. I do that all the time myself. Mine's nowhere near as bright though.
• Another quick cut to the UNIT base in Turkeymechastan or whatever it's called - which has been built in a municipal car park - and time for more generally crap dialogue from the Doctor. I understand that the "Funkenstein" reference is to George Clinton and the 70s funk band 'Parliament' (or I did once I had googled it) but are we to believe that the Doctor now thinks it's funny to give himself increasingly stupid surnames? Please. Make it stop.
• "Yes. We know who you are". Shades of Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North?
• Seems like Kate's instructions have not filtered through the chain of command. Or they've been ignored by a gun-go Colonel.
• The Zygon's in the village taking the form of loved ones is very 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers'. Lull you into a false sense of security, paralyse the opposition because of emotional ties and then leave them paranoid as to who they can trust. It's an effective war strategy. It also is evocative of the McCarthy era Communist witch-hunts of 'reds under the bed'.
• Cut to New Mexico and I have to say that the locations used are excellent. It's totally believable.
• The "No British" sign reminds me of the recently watched "Remembrance of the Daleks" and the "No Coloureds" sign Ace sees in the B&B window. Looks like everyone's a little a bit racist.

• It's an eerie feeling as Kate wanders round the deserted town. That tumbleweed isn't accumulated grass is it? It's probably got an electrical spark...
• I like the idea that the Zygons might be turning themselves into dogs to escape detection. Why should humans be their only usable form.
• Blimey the Colonel is a bit bloodthirsty. I bet she wouldn't like it if the "enemy" tried to rip her inside out.
• "It's not paranoia when it's real". Hmmm good point.
• Not sure why Scotland Yard would have access to CCTV in lifts but let's go with it.
• I presume SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies based in London. I had to look that up so perhaps they should have explained it on screen or used something more familiar to the general public.
• Strange phenomenon underneath London harks back to "Web of Fear" or even " Quatermass and the Pit".You could even throw in Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" if you like.
• Let's hammer home the real world parallels. The supposed British fear of mass immigration becomes transposed to an American town. The fear of the "unlike". So much for "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses...".
• Back once again to Turmezistan and a village that looks incredibly green and well kept compared to the rest of that part of the world in which it's meant to be set. In fact it's a little confusing because it looks more like an American small town. Where are we again?
• Picky I know, but shouldn't it be "This is our objective"? Object sounds like she is a piece of furniture.
• Also, wouldn't it be a mosque rather than a church? Maybe storming a church is less of an issue for the production team to depict on screen.
• I almost had an issue with the fact that Hitchley is an American soldier in a British show, but then I remembered that UNIT is an international organisation, so why wouldnt he be?
• It's easy to sit in our homes saying "Oh I wouldn't have been fooled by the Zygon imposters coming out of the church", but let's be honest here - if it was *our* family they looked like, *our* loved ones, would you really be able to just gun them down? I don't think I would.
• Having said that, any soldier might not be able to kill what looked like their own family but I doubt they would so meekly enter a building apparently full of alien hostiles. It makes them look a bit foolish.

• The Colonel *really* doesn't like Zygons does she? Perhaps a couple of lines of backstory would have fleshed out the reason for her attitudes. Maybe she lost her father in the previous Zygon invasion attempt? Saying that the place is "infested" dehumanises (dezygonises?) the aliens into nothing more than bugs that need to be squashed. Like the tabloid press calling Syrian refugees a "swarm"...
• Now the location has started to look like the kind of place ISIS fanatics might hold their prisoners. A suitably grim and grotty underground cave.
• Yet again the Doctor's unfunny self-appreciation ruins the scene. This incarnation is turning into a bit of a smug egotist.
• The idea of scores of people reduced to nothing more than crackling straw dumped in waste disposal containers is pretty horrible.
• The "Middle East" to New Mexico to London. It's becoming a whirlwind of quick cuts. I'm just about keeping up, although I'm not seeing the three strands heading towards a convergence at this point.
• What was the point of the "middle-aged" joke? Was it an unsubtle dig at ageing old-school Doctor Who fans who can't deal with change? Or maybe it's foreshadowing and the world really is going to come to an end later in the series.
• Did I miss where UNIT and the Doctor captured a Zygon? Ah, I see - it's meant to be the one that was buried by the rockfall in Osgood's cave. I thought it was dead.

• I *loved* the bit about the question mark underpants. A nod to the infamous Y-fronts with Tom Baker's face plastered all over them and maybe even the 'Doctor Who Magazine' comic strip "The Glorious Dead" (and if you want that to be canon go right ahead). This is the kind of humour that works with the Doctor, not pratting about thinking he's Bono.
• Even though Osgood asked it, I don't think we are going to go back to the big question of the Doctor's name. However, we might be heading to the question of why he left Gallifrey. There are still a myriad of mysteries around the Timelord(s). I personally donlt need to have them all answered though.
• So Moffat neatly sidesteps the question of which Osgood died last series by saying "it doesn't matter". I can live with that. I'm just happy she is still in the show (But if you want to know, I think "Zygood" is the one still alive.
• Now the Doctor is seeing hybrid's everywhere. A bit like the various options for how the Eleventh Doctor was going to escape death at Lake Silencio, Moffat is trying to bamboozle us with multiple red herrings. The answer is probably none of them are true.
• That's an important change to the way Zygons obtain their body prints and means that now you can't be sure who is who, because there is no guarantee that the original is being kept alive. It increases the tension massively.
• The Zygon hatchery under London could only be more of a homage to "Aliens" if the Alien Queen slithered out of the shadows and Clara called her "Bitch". It's very impressive.

• To reinforce the filmic parallels, here comes the UNIT version of the Colonial Marines.
• Clara is captured and the one we have been following must be a Zygon. Now *that* I didn't expect. (despite me hinting at things earlier, it was a huge surprise on first viewing and it's only later than you can spot the clues).
• The penny starts to drop and "Clara's " story starts to unravel. That slow turn to camera and the half smile as she reveals herself is just brilliantly evil looking.

• Nice to see more than a couple of Zygons, even if some are CGI. What's the right name for a bunch of Zygons? A cluster? A brood? A squelch? Inquiring minds need to know.
• Just like that Jac is vapourised? A shame as I really liked her character.
• By this point we don't really need the flashback to show when Clara was replaced but I guess it gives it a place in the story timeline.
• The quip about "They'll think you're going to pinch their benefits" is the most heavy handed of all. Yes Peter, we get your allegory.
• Kate really should have seen that the sheriff was a Zygon from the start. She's cleverer than this, but the script had to drag it out. Did anyone else spot that the paperwork Kate was looking at referred to ‘Made-Up Crescent’ and ‘Fictional Close’? Looks like the Zygons have taken to replicating more than just humans.
• So now there is another duplicate Kate (what happened to the old one?). It was all a trap to divide the team and replace them. UNIT isn't just three people though. I know times are tough and there are cuts to every dept but even so there must be a few more soldiers tucked away somewhere. Geneva maybe.
• I like a girl with a rocket launcher. It's another similarity to 'Remembrance' but in that the rocket wasn't pointed at the Doctor.

• I still dont know what truth or consquences actually means.
• Of course Clara is not dead. (otherwise they would have vaporised her - they said as much five minutes ago). Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is not dead either. It's becoming a bit of a recurring theme this series - some or all of the characters have apparently died and then miraculously survived in almost every episode. It's very old-school Who but does anyone really believe it nowadays?
• The fact that the supposed explosion of the aircraft was off screen either indicates that they ran out of money for the special effect or that something else was blown up. Or maybe it was the wrong plane. Or maybe the Doctor created a hologram of the plane using the sonic shades. Who knows. The Doctor has survived - we'll have to wait seven days to find out exactly how.

Conclusion:

It was a brave choice to create an episode around such a current hot real world topic, married with the well-worn SF conceit of the alien being in disguise as someone you know well. While it largely succeeded with its message and the homages to many films of this type (even if the references were unintentional, some were bound to be unavoidable when telling this kind of story), there were times when it was very choppy and a bit all over the place. The disparate plot strands and locations were going for a global threat feel, but didn't really create a cohesive whole. Some of it may have gone over the heads of the smaller children too.

Clara was very good but the Doctor was just annoying in places and I don't want that. I don't want to dislike my favourite TV character. I was pleased to see the Zygons back, but it did feel a bit like they had been repurposed to fit the story - with new abilities and motivations - rather than the other way round. I think more than any episode this season it feels like part one of a Classic Series multi episode story with a proper cliffhanger. I'm hopeful that part two can provide a satisfactory resolution.