Live Review: S9.E8 - The Zygon Inversion

So the Zygons are back and the adventure is taking a darker, more grown up route than normal. The pre-titles recap reminds viewers that Osgood has been captured, Kate Stewart met her fate with a Zygon and Clara is dead and replaced by a Zygon firing a rocket at an aeroplane. It falls of reminding us that the Doctor and Osgood are on that plane or that Kate's fate was to be killed along with the rest of the UNIT troops and replaced. It also stops short of the rocket impact that was apparently heard (but not seen) in the last episode. New action begins with a close up of Clara's pod then suddenly cuts to her waking up in bed with panic. She looks at her clock which shows the time as 9:29, only the numbers are all back to front. She's confused, then we see the clock again and it now says 6:26, so the numbers were in fact mirrored vertically. She gets up and goes to the bathroom, has a brief flicker as she sees herself in the mirror then takes out the toothpaste... a plain white tube with "This is toothpaste" printed on it! She squeezes some out and it's a dark oily brown. She hears the Doctor calling from the living room but it's the TV with a snowy picture and the sound of her last conversation with him. Only it's not her conversation it's her Zygon replacement Bonnie's. Her front door is blocked up, the windows are just walls and she realises this must be a dream... flickers back to her pod tell the viewer that she may well be right. Clara carries out some 'dream checks', the newspaper is written in gibberish apart from the phrases "It's your decision Doctor" and "Truth Or Consequences" spoken by Bonnie. The TV flickers back to life to show Bonnie's gun-sight targeting the plane and Clara jumps to action and shakes the TV as if it might help. But it does! The rocket misses and the Bonnie's second attempt, Clara finds that she can influence her aim by tilting the TV, but she's not strong enough to hold it off. She tries something smaller, holds her hand out as if holding the rocket launcher and tries to hold Bonnie's finger off the trigger but again is not strong enough. The rocket is launched and this time it hits its target, the plane is in pieces... Roll titles.

Live Review: S9.E7 - The Zygon Invasion

Woefully over-due, but that's what happens when employment takes a hold. Anyway, catching up ahead of this year's Christmas special...

Terror Of The Zygons was, and still is a well loved serial from the classic era that was for a long time scheduled as the last complete story to be released on DVD (until the recovery of The Enemy Of The World and The Web Of Fear) so it was quite exciting when they were announced for the 50^th Anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor that same year. A clever piece of cross marketing perhaps but actually a bit of a let down when the anniversary episode finally aired. The Zygon presence flt somewhat fleeting in a busy narrative. Sure there was the duplicate Queen Elizabeth and Unit's Kate Stewart and Osgood, but the menace and tension wasn't quite there. In fact it was almost entirely booted out by the bubbly comedic nature of the celebrations. All that was about to be put to right when they returned for their own story. Or as the opening sequence of flashbacks put it "Once upon a time... there were three Doctors, two Osgoods and one Peace Treaty"