"This is a scale model of war! Every war ever fought, right there in front of you! Because it's always the same! When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die! You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn! How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning: Sit — down — and — talk!"
Episode #268: The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion.
Companions: The 12th Doctor and Clara Oswald.
Air Date: 31st October to 7th November 2015.
A long time ago, the Doctor made a deal in the Tower of London. 20 million Zygons walk among us, in human form, living undetected in peace and harmony. But cracks are showing in this delicate peace. Humans and Zygons are disappearing. In city apartment blocks, lifts are going missing, and far below the streets of Britain, alien pods are growing in secret caverns. To top it all off, UNIT's scientific advisor, Osgood, sends a desperate message to the Doctor - but since Osgood is long dead, how is that even possible?
This is a two part story with which I have a bit of a love hate relationship and I find it hard to balance that out. On one hand I enjoy the general storyline and The Zygon Inversion has one of my favourite new series Doctor's speeches ever. But on the other hand I find the story itself somewhat weak and I find I strongly dislike how the story changes the nature of the Zygons. They go from a race of conquering invaders in previous stories to being happy citizens and then the story provides us with a weakly added "teenage" separatist group which is never really explained. Something about it ruins the Zygons for me. Maybe because The Terror of the Zygons was such a childhood favourite story of mine, and so far the best adventure featuring them.
As I say the story is fairly weak, especially The Zygon Invasion. It jumps about and never gives us anything to really get our teeth into. The Zygon Inversion does better but does so with much more emphasis on the Doctor's dialogue and how he pushes the situation to make everyone see reason. But it isn't enough to fully save the story.
The adventure has some nice moments. The Clara/Zygella dynamic is good, and the Osgoods always make me smile (she's a Who geek just like the rest of us). If you pay attention there are some nice throwbacks to the classic era but blink and you'll miss them. I always enjoy it when the show drops something in for us fans of the classic show.
Ultimately I think this was a nice try in bringing the Zygons back but I don't feel that the writers were able to come up with a suitable continuation for them after the events of The Day of the Doctor. A much better idea, in my opinion, would have been a story set in space on a station or starship where the Zygons were intruders pretending to be crew. A murder mystery in space maybe? I would love to see that as a Zygon story in the future.
This two part story unfortunately is just subpar for what I expect from the show. 2 out of 5. Could have been better.
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