12.20: The Zygon Invasion

In which, for once, we learn what happened next.

Broadcast: October 2015

Watched: March 2022

“It’s not paranoia when it’s real.”

Stunning. It’s the sort of big budget UNIT story Barry Letts could only have dreamed of – classic Pertwee-era themes of the backwash from British imperialism and fear of the other, but with loads of settings and a huge cast. Harness clearly has his own voice – fewer jokes, more didactic, etc. – but his stuff does feel very Pertwee era. (Strange, in some ways, as he was born in 1976.)

That said, there are ways in which he’s clearly subverting that template, too. For one thing, part one is all about raising the stakes so they can throw us by making the next one a talkie rather than the action-y one you expect.

For another – not sure if this is script or production – it’s an almost entirely female UNIT, except for the grunts. But it’s very much the slightly scary UNIT of season 7, not the cuddly UNIT family one that comes later. At one point, Kate channels her dad by promising a bombing; there’s a weirdly unnerving bit where UNIT soldiers are marching in slightly fash lock step. Rebecca Front is brilliant, playing it completely straight. Also, the suggestion that Harry Sullivan developed a weapon of mass destruction for a giggle is an interesting twist.

Best of all, this story is playing with a setup that era never tried: the aliens are already here, the Zygons are people instead of monsters, the story’s about co-existence. There are elements of that in Silurians and Ambassadors, I guess – perhaps this is the sort of natural extension of those stories for a country that isn’t just starting to receive immigration, but is already clearly multicultural?

All of which raises the question of why it’s called The Zygon Invasion. Is that title a deliberate ironic commentary on the racist view of the world, or a sort of cock up? (The “No British” signs in New Mexico are a nice way of reversing our idea of who the immigrants are, by the way.)

As with all the best allegories, it doesn’t *quite* map onto reality, leaving room for interpretation. The Zygon terrorists are clearly based on ISIS – the tricks with the videos etc. are very 2015 – but the Bodysnatchers-style “they can literally replace us” stuff prevents it from suggesting that the Zygons are in any serious sense meant to represent Muslims or even migrants. Which is probably for the best.

The trick of looking like the soldiers’ family makes very little sense – don’t they need body patterns? – and the scene where one soldier can’t shoot his “mother” should by all rights clunk. But it’s actually really powerful. Although I still can’t understand why they’d go into the church – not shoot, yes, but walk merrily to their deaths? 

Anyway, this is nitpicking. It’s thoughtful and clever and progressive, all the while being a sequel to Day of the Doctor AND Death In Heaven; it starts with Osgood explaining the back story to camera while dressed as the 4th and 7th Doctors, AND we get a clip of John Hurt. Like I said: stunning.

Other thoughts. 

• The kids in the playground bring to mind Amy’s Choice, though that might just be because I know Amy’s Choice inside out so everything brings to mind Amy’s Choice. Anyway, LOVE the chief Zygons being a pair of little girls called Jemima and Claudette.

• LOL, Clara is still in her shitty flat, the big house at Christmas really was a dream, I was half-kidding with that. Oh look, it’s another magic alien lift.

• The scene with “parents” disposing of a screaming child is *incredibly* dark, and surely far more traumatic to a child than Skype granddad. [We’ll get to that.] I wonder if the screams were added on as otherwise it would imply the kid was dead and that’s too much?

• Oh they’ve repaired the plane, that’s nice.

• “I’ve got question mark underpants.” “Makes one wonder what the question is.”

• The Doctor describes Osgood as a hybrid. I think that’s the third possible explanation this season, after the regenerating Daleks and Ashildr? (I googled to check this and discovered that the hybrid myth is mentioned in the eighth Doctor novel Unnatural History. I wonder if Moffat knows where he got it from.)

• Jenna is clearly enjoying, and is very good at, playing evil. Three questions, though:

    1) When she says, “Kill the traitors” – how are they traitors? They’re just... the enemy.

    2) Why does Bonnie have a name? Do any other Zygons get their own names that aren’t just those of their originals? (Obviously the answer is “it makes it easier to script and perform”, but still.)

    3) How exactly does she get from London to the Channel in the time it takes for a plane to cross it?    

• Anyway, once you know she’s a baddie, she’s very obviously both pumping Kate for information about human defences and nudging her towards the trap in New Mexico, which is pretty neatly done.

• Obviously that’s the real Kate faking it at the end, I seem to recall we all assumed that at the time. Apart from anything else it’d be a bit twisted to do the whole cyberbrig thing and then kill her in her next appearance but one.

• By episode count, that’s the Capaldi era half done. Which feels like quite a good moment for it. Funny that the first half contains one Xmas special, while the second half contains three.