Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 8 : The Zygon Inversion
Shapeshifting Zygons are everywhere, and there is no way of knowing who you can trust. With UNIT neutralised only The Doctor is what stands in the way from war breaking out.
SPOILER ALERT: This review is going to be contain spoilers.
After last week your lead into a chain of events from which anything can happen after the cliffhanger, which leaves a matter of uncertainty in the mind of the viewer watching, as a sense of security when watching Doctor Who, the viewer usually feels insured that they have a sense of what is going to happen or what might happen due to lead suggestion that is left off in the episode previous. In the case of this story, its one of those rare moments when you don't get that.
We get the recap from last week and then from here on in, the viewer is on their own. Going into a little detail about what happens it is vital for the success of the zygons to complete their mission to populate the earth and they've already started to do that by copying members of the population of earth, so no one really knows who's who. Even Clara is a zygon. The zygons want the Osgood box, so they can start the war and in the episode it all reverts back to the Osgood box, questions that keep the audience interested. What is the Osgood box? what does it do? why is it called an Osgood box? etc.
The Doctor's role in the episode is to prevent war from happening and create a peace between the humans and the zygons. The trick here is you got a situation which categorically speaking can't be stopped, earth is on the brink of disaster and the question here is 'how can the doctor stop it?' 'how can he talk them out of it?'
The episode as an episode was really good indeed. It was a lot better developed than last week. It does a consistent job at keeping the pace going, tension levels are quite high in terms of keeping things on edge I mean the scene with the Osgood boxes, that's a prime example of showing dramatic tension. Peter Capaldi's speech in that scene is just brilliant, its relevant to what the doctor himself had to do in 'The Day of the Doctor' you're faced with a big decision what should do? kind of thing. As it turns out war doesn't happen because there is nothing in either of the boxes.
In the end, there is a peace. And shock horror... two Osgoods? about the whole Osgood theory. Who knows which is zygon and which is human? did the human Osgood die? or was it the zygon? or are they both zygon? its too confusing for my brain to comprehend or care about that much. The thing I do like about the zygons and indeed the whole Osgood thing is the play on identity and how you get a buzz of excitement of not knowing who's who and trying to depict one from the other.
Peter Capaldi's performance for me, is inverted. He's sort of gone back to the jokey way he was in Series 8, a part of his Series 9 seriousness has gone away for a majority of this story. Not saying his performance was necessarily bad, just quite peculiar in how the doctor character is portrayed. He's at his strongest in this episode when he's giving the big speech about the consequence of living with a big decision. Apart from that, yeah... not his best performance this series for me.
Jenna Coleman excels in this, she's marvellous as both Zygon and Clara. Probably the best performance in this story for me.
There are some noticeable reference to other stories such as 'The Day of the Doctor' and 'The Girl who Died' if you noticed it there is a Mire robot head in the black archive. We know of the black archive because it was first referenced in 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' and its used again in 'Day of the Doctor' and in this story.
The zygons themselves are really menacing and prove to be an effective threat. I liked how everything did revert back the zygon subplot in 'Day of the Doctor' because it makes that part of that story make more sense to me. I have been waiting for a proper zygon story for a very long time and I'm pleased to have got a fair decent, well executed story that is worth watching and really enjoyable. I can't really think of that much to say really. Other than just 'very good story' and well done Steven Moffat and Peter Harness for combining together to make the idea come about. 4/5 again.
8/10 in total.
NEXT WEEK : Sleep No More.
