The Zygon Metaphor

The whole Science Fiction and Fantasy genre works best when, at its core, it is asking fundamentally human questions. On the face of it, it may be about fantastical worlds, bizarre aliens, space-ships and lasers, gods and monsters; but this is a façade for the more intriguing questions of what makes the world tick. The Zygon two-parter (Invasion/Inversion) harks back to the shows 1970s heyday with a strong, allegorical, political message only slightly masked by the fancy effects and monster-of-the-week conventions.

I was a little anxious about this story as it was written by Peter Harness who’s previous episode, Kill The Moon, was the only one from last year’s run that I didn’t particularly like. In fact there was much to like about that story and a great deal has been made of its metaphorical take on the abortion debate but it did niggle with me in a way I could quite articulate. Someone pointed out on a Sci-Fi Forum that they couldn’t quite connect with it as it required such a large suspension of disbelief from a plausible alternative universe that they couldn’t accept it at face value and I think that is how I felt. However, with the Zygons, Harness has created a world that is not only believable but so close to current anxieties about refugees, extremism and fear of “the other” that making his world any closer to reality would have detracted from the themes being examined.

If I had to pick out quite why I found the whole thing so brilliant, it’s that it seems to stand an entire genre on its head. We are used to seeing stories and characters built up over an hour or so only to have the whole thing quickly brushed aside in a blaze of CGI enhanced special effects but here the build-up used all the SFX budget up to give way to the real on-screen fireworks: the Doctor, and essentially a role-defining moment for Peter Capaldi, to deliver a breath-taking 10 minutes of single-scene, dialogue-driven action in which he not only resolves the situation but also dismantles the futility of war, the infantilism of radicalism and the eternal cyclical nature of the struggle between civilisations to boot.

Aside from the finale there was much to like about the rest of the episodes. Jenna Coleman actually had something to do this series and her dual role as both Clara and her evil Zygon clone is probably one of her best performances to date. Ingrid Oliver managed to upgrade her character of Osgood from being merely a fangirl to a fully-fledged character with ideas and motivations of her own and Jemma Redgrave managed channel the late great Nicholas Courtney with his famous “5 rounds rapid fire” line. In fact looking closer at the episode it looks more and more like an early 70s Who adventure but with 21st century budgets: the best of both worlds if there ever was.

So, overall I would put this as close to a 10/10 as could reasonably be expected. The only one criticism I would make would be in regard to the Zygon costumes themselves. They are very Nu-Who, which is to say that the prosthetics and makeup are excellent but this is still, most definitely, a bloke in a costume whereas the original 1975 Zygons really did look truly alien: humanoid, yet obviously not of  this world. It’s a minor point but it does show that the mid-70s series was not just the wobbly sets and bubble wrap that it is often accused of (OK – I’ll not mention the Loch Ness Monster…)