An Hour of Who a Day: July 24: "The Zygon Inversion"

July 24: "The Zygon Inversion"

Stuart Manning's poster for "The Zygon
Inversion" (from Incredible set of retro
Doctor Who series 9 posters)

The thriller vibe continues with this second half, although now we're done globe-hopping, in favor of zeroing in on the London area, dealing with the next phase of Bonnie's plan. And what's immediately clear is just how much we hate Bonnie and loathe her, with her superior, cruel smile and her smug sense of self-righteousness, even as she destroys innocent lives in her plan for conquest.

In other words, holy hell is Jenna Coleman good in this.

The most impressive part is the confrontation between Bonnie and Clara, who's trapped in a dream state inside her Zygon pod but still subconsciously connected to Bonnie. At no point (even ignoring the different setting each character finds themselves in) is it ever unclear which character is which. Clara is so much warmer and kinder, even as she fearlessly faces down her doppelgänger, that there's no question that she's not the same person as Bonnie. Bonnie may control Clara's bodyprint, but she can't control her soul. It's a fabulous performance, one that Coleman justly deserves heaps of praise for.

Of course, since the real Clara is out of the way, that leaves Osgood to take the place of the companion surrogate this episode, which she seems to be a natural at -- helping the Doctor work through the clues (such as the fact that Clara is still alive) while providing him with the sounding board he needs to work through things, to figure out what Bonnie's plan is. There are some lovely moments here, from the early scenes ("Why do you have a Union Jack parachute?" Osgood asks the Doctor, after they land on the beach, walking from the wreckage of the plane Bonnie blew up. "Camouflage," the Doctor replies. "Camouflage?" Osgood responds, no less confused. "Yes, we're in Britain," the Doctor explains) to their exchange about names ("What's your first name?" Osgood counters, after the Doctor asks her the same name. "Basil," he replies, after a hesitation) all the way to the final scene ("Oh, and you should know, I'm a very big fan," the Doctor tells Osgood before he leaves). Peter Capaldi and Ingrid Oliver have such good chemistry that it's a bit of a shame she doesn't take him up on his offer of TARDIS travels at the end.

Now the focus of "The Zygon Inversion" is narrower than the first half, but we still get pointed comments about Bonnie's group. "Don't think of them as rational," the Doctor tells Osgood. "They're different. They don't care about human beings, they don't care about their own people. They think the rest of Zygonkind are traitors." This is an obvious comment on radicalized groups in our world, but the more telling exchange comes later, between the Doctor, Osgood, and the half-converted Etoine: "I'm not part of your fight," Etoine tells the two of them. "I never wanted to fight anyone, I just wanted to live here. Why can't I just live?" "We're on your side," the Doctor assures him. "I'm not on anyone's side!" Etoine replies in anguish. "This is my home." In other words, the Truth or Consequences group don't care about how anyone else might actually feel about their positions or what they're saying; they know they're right, and that's all that matters.

This of course all leads up to the climactic scene, of Kate Stewart and Bonnie, each at an Osgood Box that could either give them everything they wanted or destroy it -- in Kate's case, one button releases Sullivan's gas, which turns every Zygon inside out,²⁶⁶ while the other sets off a nuclear bomb under the Black Archive; for Bonnie, one button changes every Zygon and starts a war, while the other prevents them from ever changing back. The confrontation between the two sides, with the Doctor in the middle trying to convince Bonnie (and, to a lesser extent, Kate) that it's better not to press either button than to take a chance, that it's better to talk your way through your problems, is really good. Peter Capaldi is rarely better than in this scene, as he alternately goads and pleads with them not to press a button. It's frankly so good that you just want to quote the whole thing, as the Doctor asks Bonnie what the world will be like after her group wins, or explains that the boxes are a scale model of war, ultimately there to show just how futile it is, how much easier it is to talk instead. It's a tour de force performance, but perhaps the best thing about it is how the direction and the music get out of the way to let these actors perform -- there's almost no incidental music through this entire scene, which is an excellent (and somewhat unexpected) choice. This is one of the all-time classic scenes of Doctor Who. Is the underlying argument perhaps a bit simplistic? Sure. Does it really matter? Not at all. And does Bonnie get off fairly easy and make a sudden change in her thought processes? Well, yes, but that's the point: as the Doctor says, "Well, here's the unforeseeable. I forgive you," and later, when Bonnie asks how he can forgive her, he says, "Because I've been where you have. There was another box. I was going to press another button. I was going to wipe out all of my own kind, man, woman and child. I was so sure I was right." "What happened?" Bonnie asks. "The same thing that happened to you," the Doctor replies. "I let Clara Oswald get inside my head. Trust me. She doesn't leave." And that's the point; that's why Bonnie goes off to become a new Osgood. Because she stopped to think, and found redemption as a result. That's not a bad message at all.

So this two-part story has an absolute knockout scene as its resolution, but the preceding 75 minutes or so are no slouch either. With its willingness to take one of Doctor Who's classic monsters and use them not as standard aliens but as a way into a much more interesting, nuanced story, "The Zygon Invasion/Inversion" is a fabulous tale from start to finish. Definitely one of the standout tales of not just series 9 but Steven Moffat's entire tenure.

²⁶⁶ This and the mention in the previous episode is a subtle reference to fourth Doctor companion Harry Sullivan (who, as those who remember Terror of the Zygons would know, has a vested interest in stopping the Zygons), as well as explaining an offhand reference in Mawdryn Undead that Harry was "doing something very hush-hush at Porton Down" -- now we know what that something was.