The Zygon Invasion

[daibhidc]

Woah.

First off, the obvious real world parallels. They started out seeming a bit forced, but by the end it was just, yes, the Zygon attacks work a lot like terrorism, that's just how it is, rather than "Look at the point we're making!"

And it's a tricky thing to get right. There are all sorts of potential ways an analogy like that can go horribly, horribly wrong. But we've already had the set-up of "Zygons are people, not monsters, and most of them want peace", and this gets emphasised with the Osgoods and their insistence that it doesn't matter which of them is which. (And it also works in another reference to hybrids.) So it's not "a race of terrorists", which would have been terrible, but a race with terrorists. Like Discworld dwarfs or Marvel mutants. Fair enough.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who spent the scene where the Doctor is lambasting the Zygon leaders wondering if he'd got the right girls or was just making an idiot of himself again. It turns out to be the former, of course, and when I thought about it of course he knew who they were; he didn't just think "Weird kids, must be Zygons".

I vaguely wondered if Clara had been replaced near the start, then I forgot about it, so it still came as a shock. The sheriff, on the other hand, I was pretty suspicious of all the way though.

Very disappointed to learn Harry Sullivan spent his time mixing up nerve gas, although given his own experience with Zygons, I suppose it's understandable. (Speaking of which, I suppose there's no chance the Skarasen is going to be in part 2? Presumably they've found a substitiute for its milk.)

Osgood, of course, was brilliant, as was Jac/Ros-from-Bugs. (I really hope they haven't actually killed her, although I can't see any way they haven't.)

And that cliffhanger! I'm calling it now, that's the real Kate who reported she'd been neutralised. The thing about "they're shapeshifters and could be anybody" works both ways. But I can't imagine how the Doctor's going to get out of this. (Not even an after-credits "Next Time"!) Doubtless all will be revealed next week, at the regularly scheduled time of "whenever"...

Comments

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

So -- do I understand correctly that you liked it? Or are you reserving judgment until you see how it's resolved?

(I'm one of those people who prefer to be spoiler'd)

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I definitely liked it, although I'm reserving a little bit of judgement; I liked "Under the Lake" as well and then (IMO) it all went wrong...

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

*Nod*

Indeed. After the second half, I basically rewrote the whole thing in my head, and now have an alternate version I like much better. :-)

[Edited to add: which is at least a better result than "Kill the Moon," and "Forest of the Night," which I ended up just wanting to forget]

[pedanther]

You were indeed not the only one wondering that about the scene with the Doctor and the girls.

I was suspicious of the sheriff from the start, too, and a bit disappointed in Kate that the possibility didn't seem to have occurred to her. (I'm also very disappointed in the troop of soldiers. Even if they decided it was worth seeing what their maybe-relatives wanted to show them, there was no reason for them all to go in.) I didn't think of the possibility of Clara being a duplicate, because I was too busy worrying that Jac was.

If that was the real Kate reporting in at the end, they're going to have to explain how she knew what to say.

My suspicion about next week is that it's going to come down to Osgood setting off Harry's nerve gas (out of the last resort box from the video prologue) to kill the terrorists and save the peace, with herself in the lethal zone and us still unsure whether it's going to kill her too.

Although there are several other options they could go with if they decide to unambiguously declare that this is Zygon Osgood, like having her transform into a duplicate Doctor to help keep the bad guys confused. (You could make it into a meaningful wossname, too, by saying that if she ever stops being Osgood she can't ever start again, now the original's dead, so she has to decide if that's a sacrifice she's prepared to make. Or is that too esoteric?)

I have no idea how the Doctor's going to get out of getting shot down by the missile, though. I just hope it's not a five-second sonic handwave type of solution.

[scarfman]

Uh ... Define "real Kate".

[pedanther]

I don't understand the question. As far as I can see, there's substantially only one definition available.

[scarfman]

I meant to imply that the Kate who went to New Mexico may not have been a human Kate in the first place, and that an implication that she was not human for the radio call is not the same thing as an implication that she must have performed clever trickery to have known what to say.

[pedanther]

I got the implication, but if she was a friendly Zygon I don't think it makes a substantial difference, and I don't believe in the other possibility.

I don't believe she was a radical Zygon duplicate all along the way Clara was, because if she had been there would have been no need to get her out of the way by sending her to New Mexico, and no reason for the "North America secure" message to be dependent on the outcome of her encounter there. (Unless the New Mexico Zygons are a third group who are also opposed to the radical Zygons, and her call at the end was really reporting that she'd successfully completed her mission to wipe them out. But I really don't think that's where the story's going.)

That leaves the possibility that the Kate in this episode was a friendly Zygon like Zygon Osgood, but if that's the case we're still faced with the same questions we were asking about Human Kate: Has she been replaced by a radical Zygon at the end? If she hasn't, how did she know what a radical Zygon should say?

[sabremeister]

"Unit neutralised" sounds like a pretty standard thing to say about having encountered a potential threat, then rendering it unable to threaten. Presumably Kate introduced herself to the sheriff at some point to establish authority, and if there was a need to report in, then that presumably meant that the Zygon had reported that someone was there in the first place. "UNIT neutralised" is also, therefore, a reasonable assumption to make about what needs to be said in this case.