"The Zygon Inversion" Grade and Discussion Thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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I said that while ignoring all political allegory this episode was attempting. The zygons are literally shapeshifting aliens who arrived on earth, after trying to invade it at least twice, and then had another random alien and a woman whose authority seems to reside in about a dozen soldiers worldwide saying they could make the Earth their home. I don't care what stuff the writer was trying to say about real world events, from a purely in universe stand point, the zygons are on Earth uninvited, and just shown that they could easily kill everyone, and humans wouldn't know because they were never given a choice.
The Doctor gave humans a choice over the stupid moon egg monster, but didn't allow anyone but some random military woman with practically no authority to say yes or no to the zygons. In the Doctor who universe, there has got to be dozens if not hundreds of planets suitable for the zygons. The Time War destroyed their planet, not humans. The Doctor might feel responsible for them, but he's dragging Earth into a situation it should never have been in.
Kind of like with the Gelth huh? And truely not all of the Zygons on earth want to conquer or destroy the planet. As we've seen on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures there's plenty of aliens living on earth doing no harm to anybody.
I enjoyed part one but it had its stupid and obvious moments. This one was all good though, and the Doctor's long monologue about war was an excellent moment.
My only minor complaint at the end is how the leader of Not-ISIS immediately becomes cute bubbly Osgood Mark III.
Speaking of, it's sounding like that airliner was destroyed by ISIS after all on 10/31, the day of the Doctor Who episode showing Not-ISIS shooting an airliner with a missile. I'm still surprised there was no controversy over this, no talk to censoring/delaying the episode.
My only minor complaint at the end is how the leader of Not-ISIS immediately becomes cute bubbly Osgood Mark III.
Speaking of, it's sounding like that airliner was destroyed by ISIS after all on 10/31, the day of the Doctor Who episode showing Not-ISIS shooting an airliner with a missile. I'm still surprised there was no controversy over this, no talk to censoring/delaying the episode.
No, this episode really didn't do it for me. The first half just felt completely off. Zygon-Clara causes another Zygon to lose control of his shapeshifting, causing ham to revert in front of humans, who don't react, and then Zygon-Clara uploads it to YouTube, but I guess it got overlooked by everyone else. Real Clara is stuck in a dream world which just felt like a retread of Last Christmas. The Doctor and Osgood stumble about, encountering cops who are either Zygons or just don't want to be disturbed.
From there things eventually escalate to a showdown in the UNIT black archives where the Doctor preaches about the horrors of war, effectively convincing Zygon-Clara to renounce her ways and Kate Stewart gets her memory wiped, apparently for the "fifteenth time." Showdowns in the Black Archives are that common, are they?
Really, this just felt like a response to criticism of the Zygon storyline in Day of the Doctor in that it was basically rushed and swept under the rug. And so this time we actually see a truce to the conflict hammered out as a means of making it up to us.
Predictably we don't get a straight answer as to whether this is the real Osgood or her Zygon double or which one was killed in Death in Heaven. But really, how much sense does this make? To begin with, like I pointed out last week it's obvious in Day of the Doctor which is which, but I concede that maybe after a few more times in the memory zapper it became very easy to lose track of. Still, shouldn't the Zygon still require a level of concentration to maintain a disguise? And if that concentration is broken, should they not revert? Of course, that should have been the way it went down back in Day of the Doctor and thereby avoiding this mess altogether, but hey.
Observation: UNIT has apparently been excavating in Norway given there's a Mire helmet in the Black Archives, it can bee seen behind the Doctor during his sermon. Perhaps more clues that Ashildr is the War Minister?
From there things eventually escalate to a showdown in the UNIT black archives where the Doctor preaches about the horrors of war, effectively convincing Zygon-Clara to renounce her ways and Kate Stewart gets her memory wiped, apparently for the "fifteenth time." Showdowns in the Black Archives are that common, are they?
Really, this just felt like a response to criticism of the Zygon storyline in Day of the Doctor in that it was basically rushed and swept under the rug. And so this time we actually see a truce to the conflict hammered out as a means of making it up to us.
Predictably we don't get a straight answer as to whether this is the real Osgood or her Zygon double or which one was killed in Death in Heaven. But really, how much sense does this make? To begin with, like I pointed out last week it's obvious in Day of the Doctor which is which, but I concede that maybe after a few more times in the memory zapper it became very easy to lose track of. Still, shouldn't the Zygon still require a level of concentration to maintain a disguise? And if that concentration is broken, should they not revert? Of course, that should have been the way it went down back in Day of the Doctor and thereby avoiding this mess altogether, but hey.
Observation: UNIT has apparently been excavating in Norway given there's a Mire helmet in the Black Archives, it can bee seen behind the Doctor during his sermon. Perhaps more clues that Ashildr is the War Minister?
There are good, even excellent moments, such as The Doctor's monologue. However this is the type of episode that I expect from Star Trek, not Doctor Who.
I am also uncertain how I feel about this two-parter as I am not sure the good moments in part two is able to compensate for how atrociously bad part one was.
As one of the Osgood said, "The day when nobody cares about the answer". As in, the answer isn't important. Imho, its one of the best lines of the episode.
I am also uncertain how I feel about this two-parter as I am not sure the good moments in part two is able to compensate for how atrociously bad part one was.
As one of the Osgood said, "The day when nobody cares about the answer". As in, the answer isn't important. Imho, its one of the best lines of the episode.
What's so special about the Zygons and why should we care about them? The only good Zygon we see in this and the previous episode is Osgood (who I believe is a Zygon) and she's been masquerading as a human ever since TDOTD. This is like VOY's "In the Flesh" all over again. It misses the point of why these conflicts arise in the first place, and settles the peace process with everyone at the table in human form.
Boring.
Boring.
Other than the doctors speech, nothing really happened in that episode, and it ended In a reset button. Also, the guy changing into a zygon and then killing himself really did feel like a way to bring this episode to its allotted time.
I just watched both back to back and I'm not really that enamored with this story.. It just irks me.
Jolly good they had those parachutes on the plane and the Doctors was 007's old leftover from one of his old adventures hehe. But how did they have enough time to put those on when the missile hit?
I think personally the Doctor was wrong to grant 20 million of them asylum on Earth given their past history with him and UNIT. If anything he has a TARDIS why not relocate them on another world?
Why Earth of all places?
Part 1 was actually a hell of a lot better then this 2nd part..
I voted the 2nd to last one, as it wasn't bad, but overall the story wasn't that good either.
Clara does irritate me as do the Osgoods.
Jolly good they had those parachutes on the plane and the Doctors was 007's old leftover from one of his old adventures hehe. But how did they have enough time to put those on when the missile hit?
I think personally the Doctor was wrong to grant 20 million of them asylum on Earth given their past history with him and UNIT. If anything he has a TARDIS why not relocate them on another world?
Why Earth of all places?
Part 1 was actually a hell of a lot better then this 2nd part..
I voted the 2nd to last one, as it wasn't bad, but overall the story wasn't that good either.
Clara does irritate me as do the Osgoods.
On the one hand, the Doctor hates the genocidal Sullivan's Gas. On the other hand, the Doctor, in The Macra Terror, genocides the native population of the planet Macros.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY20d_FYx-Q[/yt]
And nobody's batting an eye at the Doctor giving his first name as 'Basil.' I'm assuming we all think he's lying.
He pretended to be lying.
What we don't know is did he pretend to pretend to be lying, or...
Dr. Basil Disco. More Pertwee, than Capaldi?
And the Mire helmet in the background behind the Doctor as he talked about the buttons
I quite like Dr. Basil Funkenstein, myself.
“And who are you?”
“Dr. Basil”
“Dr. Basil who?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Basil”
“Dr. Basil who?”
“Yes.”
"Budget cuts"
Pure BBC whimsy to do that as they did it all through the 70s and 80s.
Trailer made me think of Babylon 5 as well, as others have said.
And nobody's batting an eye at the Doctor giving his first name as 'Basil.' I'm assuming we all think he's lying.
If he regenerates into Michael York you won't be saying that.
I liked the "five rounds rapid" line and I liked it that Clara seemed to have the upperhand against her doppelganger. But the speech about war was longer than the one in Battlefield and I have to wonder if it might've been more effective had Clara's double reverted back to her nature form.
It takes more than talking for both sides to come to a resolution.
There was a study conducted at the University of Chicago about empathy. One of the conclusions drawn from the study was that,
I learned about this study from Through the Wormhole, hosted by Morgan Freeman.
Though some Zygons did learn to live socially with humans, "Bonnie" and her group separated themselves from their own kind, and from humans, and attempted to bring about a revolution. I did not see where "Bonnie" developed empathy for those in its/his/her species and for humans.
My own personal experience, and from reading history, is that individuals who as warped in their thinking as "Bonnie" rarely ever developed empathy for those who they view as different.
I could relate to the monolog by the Doctor about tantruming children. In my opinion, those who ridicule the tantruming children are just as bad. Again, in my opinion, my country's politics is dominated by both groups, and my country is suffering terribly so.
As for the destruction of the plane, the BBC did respond to criticisms about the event. According to a spokesperson,
Okay. So, why was the beheading scene not kept in the Robin Hood episode, as that episode was clearly set in a fantasy/science fiction world as well? I would have preferred them to say, Unlike that episode, where the beheading was a few seconds and a trim could have been done easily, the destruction of the plane was a pivotal plot point and we did not have the time nor budget to change this point in response to world events. Sometimes honesty is the best course. (The comment by the spokesperson is merciless, when I think that only two of the people aboard the plane survived. Everyone else perished in the explosion.)
I did not see the Mire helmet. I was focused onto what was being said by the characters.
I am not terribly enthused for next week's episode.
There was a study conducted at the University of Chicago about empathy. One of the conclusions drawn from the study was that,
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...bce896-7ca7-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html)
I learned about this study from Through the Wormhole, hosted by Morgan Freeman.
Though some Zygons did learn to live socially with humans, "Bonnie" and her group separated themselves from their own kind, and from humans, and attempted to bring about a revolution. I did not see where "Bonnie" developed empathy for those in its/his/her species and for humans.
My own personal experience, and from reading history, is that individuals who as warped in their thinking as "Bonnie" rarely ever developed empathy for those who they view as different.
I could relate to the monolog by the Doctor about tantruming children. In my opinion, those who ridicule the tantruming children are just as bad. Again, in my opinion, my country's politics is dominated by both groups, and my country is suffering terribly so.
As for the destruction of the plane, the BBC did respond to criticisms about the event. According to a spokesperson,
Okay. So, why was the beheading scene not kept in the Robin Hood episode, as that episode was clearly set in a fantasy/science fiction world as well? I would have preferred them to say, Unlike that episode, where the beheading was a few seconds and a trim could have been done easily, the destruction of the plane was a pivotal plot point and we did not have the time nor budget to change this point in response to world events. Sometimes honesty is the best course. (The comment by the spokesperson is merciless, when I think that only two of the people aboard the plane survived. Everyone else perished in the explosion.)
I did not see the Mire helmet. I was focused onto what was being said by the characters.
I am not terribly enthused for next week's episode.
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