I just watched this again and I never thought about asking this but didn't Missy kill Osgood in a prior episode last series?
"The Zygon Invasion" Grade and Discussion Thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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Yes she did. The episode Death in Heaven.
So where did the Zygon Osgoods come from?
The Day Of The Doctor. During the Matt Smith Era in Series 7.
An Osgood dies in Series 8. Death in Heaven.
The Zygon Invasion/Inversion is Series 9.
A loosely tied and clumsily executed trilogy of sorts.
Two Osgoods were definitely Zygons and one was Human. The thing is, we don't know if the one Missy killed was the human or a Zygon. The Doctor asks...repeatedly. She won't answer, as it is better for the treaty if she is just Osgood. Next time the Doctor runs into her, she could still be either of the two, and could be either human or Zygon.
And they were inconsistent as to whether the original human needs to be alive for a Zygon copy to continue.
It is rather silly that there never is an answer which Osgood is which. I don't care what advances are made, a Zygon should have some give away tell. It must exert some effort to maintain a disguise, what happens should the Zygon's concentration slip thus causing them to revert to natural form? Do they actually sleep disguised? Won't a disguised Zygon still need milk from the Loch Ness Monster? And if it was indeed the real Osgood Missy killed, making it the Zygon we see in this story, at the end when Zygon Clara becomes the replacement Osgood Twin, she's basically just a copy of a copy, and should be a less perfect recreation as a result.
Yeah it's best not to think too hard on that. Even I have decided not to induce a headache thinking on this.
I think the whole treaty thing was stupid anyway since the Doctor had a TARDIS and could have found the Zygons a planet of their own instead of lumping them on Earth.
Hold on if 20 MILLION Zygons are living here what happens to the people they copied?
Also it's a pretty heavy handed story with the Zygon flag looking just like the ISIS flag.
I think the Osgood character was a bit of a misstep anyway - it sort of worked for the golden anniversary when you expect to see stuff like that, but to keep her on for later (more normal) episodes stretches the joke too far. She's essentially a walking in-joke.
Using her as the basis for the treaty is especially unwise given that there's a 50% chance they're both Zygons (making this a coordinate bonding arrangement where the humans contribute nothing). I'm also sceptical of the weight of any diplomatic agreement that's supposed to bind a whole planet even though the vast majority of people have no idea it exists and that the UNIT personnel who negotiated it can't really claim to represent the whole of the human race.
In terms of the story and it's message the whole two-parter felt like it could quite easily have been a story from TNG. Perhaps the set-up and the elements involved would more logically lend themselves to DS9 but the execution tended towards the elder show.
Using her as the basis for the treaty is especially unwise given that there's a 50% chance they're both Zygons (making this a coordinate bonding arrangement where the humans contribute nothing). I'm also sceptical of the weight of any diplomatic agreement that's supposed to bind a whole planet even though the vast majority of people have no idea it exists and that the UNIT personnel who negotiated it can't really claim to represent the whole of the human race.
In terms of the story and it's message the whole two-parter felt like it could quite easily have been a story from TNG. Perhaps the set-up and the elements involved would more logically lend themselves to DS9 but the execution tended towards the elder show.
If you put every Zygon inside the TARDIS for transport to another planet, how can you be sure every one of them gets back off?
Brought to you by the same writer from Series 8's Kill The Moon, aka Abortion is Bad, Don't Do It. All his episodes have been poorly executed and hamfisted in their messaging.
I want to see the Doctor subjected to that same mind screw he keeps doing to everybody else: having to deal with a Zygon duplicate of himself with neither one knowing which is which.
"The real me gets in the TARDIS and flies off for more adventures. The Zygon duplicate finds a nice quiet place and stays out of the way of history."
"Screw you. Or maybe not. Depending on which one I am."
"The real me gets in the TARDIS and flies off for more adventures. The Zygon duplicate finds a nice quiet place and stays out of the way of history."
"Screw you. Or maybe not. Depending on which one I am."
I don't think that was actually supposed to be the point of "Kill the Moon." It's a really weak analogy if it was. (For one thing, pregnant women don't have to deal with the unknown possibility that the child, once born, might try to literally eat them!)
For "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion," it's a nice story with some great scenes at the end but I don't know that it really sustains itself well enough to be a 2-parter. It feels like there's a lot of filler in the first half. Granted, it's not as bad as "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" but it still feels like it's kinda treading water for much of Part 1. Yet there's probably just barely too much story here to make it a regular 1-parter without it feeling rushed.
Also, when Clara gets replaced at the beginning of the episode, it's just a little too obvious. It's a shame because I think Jenna Coleman does a great job of playing Bonnie/Clara in just the right way so that she just barely clues the audience in that there's something off about her but doesn't make it so obvious that it makes the Doctor look like an idiot for not noticing.
For me series 9 is bloody fantastic. Only one bad episode "sleep no more" which I just don't want to watch at all. Series 8 had 4 episodes I really liked. Peter's Doctor is fantastic and I just loved series 9.
Only UNIT what the hell gives them the right to do what they did with the whole treaty thing and basically Earth has no idea. Unless other governments know about the Zygon relocation and I'd be surprised they would be happy to go along with that. it's annoying.
Again what happens to all the people they copied?
Only UNIT what the hell gives them the right to do what they did with the whole treaty thing and basically Earth has no idea. Unless other governments know about the Zygon relocation and I'd be surprised they would be happy to go along with that. it's annoying.
Again what happens to all the people they copied?
Nothing. These Zygons don't need to keep people to maintain a copy, so the people they copy live in blissful ignorance of having an alien doppelganger.
I'll try to hit all the bullet points of Kill The Moon from memory. See if I can't change your mind.
Ok:
The plot of the episode involves seismic disturbances from the moon. The moon is breaking up and when it does the chunks will be brought crashing down on Earth and kill all life due to the Earth's gravity.
The Doctor discovers the moon is not actually a lifeless hunk of rock, but actually an egg with an alien life form in it. Instead of dealing with the problem in a usual investigative and problem solving manner, he leaves it up to Clara, Clara's teenage student and an astronaut from the current (future time) of Earth to decide whether the unborn creature will live or die. The man leaves, while 3 women of child bearing age are left ponder the morals and ethics of the decision.
Clara uses language like "can't blame a baby for kicking", to describe the creature in the egg. This invokes the the innocent baby narrative of the pro-life advocates.
Clara, the astronaut and Clara's student decide to hold a vote with the people of Earth. The vote comes back with the majority of the people on the Earth voting to kill the moon. Before countdown hits zero, Clara asserts her decision over the votes of the people of Earth and "aborts" (literally that is what shows up when Clara rejects pressing the detonator) killing the moon. The life and concern of the "̶M̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶"̶ Earth be damned.
- Keep in mind, Clara is not from this future Earth. She has not lived through the destruction caused by the moon's altering gravity. Thousands had already died and the female astronaut's mission was to prevent billions from dying when the moon broke apart. Clara's convictions and morals were placed ahead of the suffering of the people who experienced the moon's effects and voted for it to be destroyed. *HAMMERING IT IN* Pro-life always, all ways!
But alas! It was all a big fake out. The shell of the alien turned to dust, so the Earth wouldn't face and Armageddon (1998) apocalypse, and the alien somehow managed to lay an egg several times it's mass and size to be the new moon, right after it's birth.
So yeah, that was Kill The Moon. Subtle as a flying brick when it comes to it's abortion is wrong/pro-life message.
The Zygon Invasion and the Zygon Inversion were equally terribly handled IMO. The biggest fault of the Zygon episodes is that they seemingly kept making excuses for the Zygon's ruthless and murderous behavior. When in fact, no one except UNIT and the Doctor even knows their own Earth. So them being "oppressed" and "losing their culture" bit was rubbish. Also, unlike the Sirlurians, the Zygons have no claim to Earth. They aren't from their and are basically invaders turned refugees. They could settle someplace else. Nothing was stopping them.
Ignorance maybe but how does that work? Where are the humans living? Is this all inside the UK with 20 millino "new people" that look just like 20 million existing people?
20 million people who are moved to somewhere on the other side of he planet. They will likely never encounter each other if they are lucky or take precautions. British people can fill in almost anywhere given how large the Commonwealth is. Plus UNIT is basically the UN's planetary defense arm since the late 1960s, and the Doctor was elected President of Earth (for whatever reason).