Terror of the Zygons

You've got to come out on to the balcony sometime and wave a tentacle.

Like much of the Philip Hinchcliff era, Terror of the Zygons is based on earlier material, in this case: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was originally slated to close Season 12, which is very apparent in the goodbye scene with Harry and the lingering acceptance of Sarah to continue with the Doctor, but problems behind the scenes pushed it back to the start of Season 13. It also is somewhat notable for being the last story released to DVD (baring any missing episode discoveries) supposedly just to screw with someone the 2Entertian execs didn't like and had said that this was his favorite story.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Sarah and Harry land in Scotland after being summoned by the Brigadier. They land in the moors and are given a lift to UNIT headquarters by the local laird, the Duke of Forgill. The Brigadier informs them of several oil rigs that have been destroyed around the area in perfect weather with only a strange signal captured over the radio. The Doctor is a bit put out over being summoned for such a trivial matter but agrees to help. The three split up with the Doctor and the Brigadier heading to see the oil drilling company manager, Sarah to interview the locals and Harry to explore the seashore looking for other evidence.

Sarah interviews the local innkeeper, Angus, who warns Sarah of strange things on the moors and also claims to have a bit of "the second sight." Meanwhile, Harry spots a man stumbling around the shore and rushes to him. The man survived the destruction of the latest oil rig and tells Harry what happened. While talking, they are spotted by a bearded man in Scottish dress who produces a rifle and shoots them both. The rig survivor is killed but the second bullet glances Harry's head, only wounding him.

The Doctor and the Brigadier return from speaking with Mr. Huckle, the oil company manager who told them of a fourth attack. They also find a section of concrete with large holes poked into it. They receive a call from the hospital and drive over there with Sarah to check on Harry who is sedated. Knowing that he will recover, the Doctor and the Brigadier return to the inn while Sarah stays at the hospital.

Back at the inn, the Doctor makes a plaster mold of the holes to reveal two very large teeth punctures. They receive a call from Sarah stating that Harry seems to be coming around and is eager to tell them something, although he is still too groggy to articulate it. Sarah is suddenly attacked from behind by a Zygon. Overhearing her scream, the Doctor and Sargent Benton head over to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, they find both Sarah and Harry missing with the nurse suggesting that Harry escaped through the open window. The Doctor sends Benton out to search the grounds while he looks through the building. He finds Sarah in a decompression room and the Zygon who attacked her seals them in and activates the chamber. The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah into a minimal breathing state to preserve air while he goes into a trance himself. Benton and another soldier return to the hospital, find the Doctor and Sarah and pump air back into the chamber. The Doctor then brings himself and Sarah out of their trances.

Mr. Huckle arrives at the inn and finds the Brigadier and his staff passed out due to gas. When the Doctor, Sarah and Benton return, they rouse the Brigadier and the rest of the village, suspecting that they were gassed to hide the movement of something. Huckle produces an alien object that was recovered from the latest oil rig destruction and the Doctor recognizes it as something to lure the creature that is attacking.

The Zygon leader, Broton, observes all this through a camera hidden in the inn and sends one of his men to recover it, having morphed into the form of Harry. Benton calls the Brigadier and the Doctor away, having found one of the soldiers crushed to death outside the village, leaving Sarah alone. The fake Harry enters, takes the summoner and runs off. Sarah runs after him and finds him hiding in a barn. He attacks her with a pitchfork but he falls off while attacking her and is impaled on a hayrack. Broton, detecting the death of the Zygon, vaporizes the body remotely, leaving Sarah unable to show the Doctor the alien's true form.

Fearing discovery, Broton activates the summoner and sends the large mechanical plesiosaur-like creature towards the village. Suspecting what's happening, the Doctor grabs the device and drives out on to the moors. His car breaks down and he runs on foot, the creature steadily catching up to him. The Doctor dives out of the way as the creature lunges at him and the lunge knocks the tracker from the Doctor's hand. Thinking that the Doctor has been killed, Broton recalls the creature. Having triangulated the creature's origin to Loch Ness, Sarah and the Brigadier ride out after the Doctor. They find him walking the moors and they drive onward to the castle of the Duke of Forgill.

While they are away, Benton runs a search of the inn looking for the bugging devices. Broton becomes worried and orders that the camera in the eye of a mounted deer head be removed. After Benton leaves, Angus notices the camera and works to try and dismount the head, which was a gift from the Duke of Forgill. A Zygon in the form of the nurse, Sister Lamont, arrives, kills Angus and takes the camera. Benton hears Angus cry out and rushes to the scene to find Angus dead. His men fan out and see the creature fleeing through the woods. They open fire, wounding it. The wounded Zygon transforms back into Sister Lamont, knocks out a soldier and steals his jeep.

At the Duke of Forgill's castle the Doctor, the Brigadier and Sarah fill in the Duke with they Doctor's theory that the creature is a cyborg creature which allows the Zygons to control it. The Doctor suspects the aliens crashed hundreds of years ago and are making moves know as the oil drilling threatens to expose them. The Duke is skeptical but allows Sarah to stay behind and research his books while the Brigadier and the Doctor head back to the inn after receiving a call from Benton about the attack.

Sarah reaches up for a high book and accidentally triggers a door to a hidden passage. She sneaks down and discovers the alien ship with holding slots where the real Duke of Forgill, Sister Lamont and the Caber are in suspended animation. She also discovers Harry in a holding cell. Sarah rescues him, though they are forced to hide when the Zygons return helping a wounded comrade disguised as Sister Lamont.

The Doctor and the Brigadier learn of what happened from Benton and the Doctor realizes that the Duke has been taken over as well. They return to the castle just as Sarah and Harry emerge from the hidden passage. The Doctor heads down but is captured by Broton and taken into the ship. Broton warns off the Brigadier but the Brigadier gives his own warning.

They leave the castle and the Brigadier has depth charges launched into the loch, alarming Broton. Broton then orders the ship to launch and it rises out of the loch and into the sky. It flies south and lands in an abandoned quarry outside of London, jamming all radar instruments to aid its camouflage. Despite this, the Brigadier orders Benton to keep an ear out for any signals while Sarah and Harry comb over the Duke's library for any information.

The Doctor is placed in a cell and learns that the ship has cut it's power to half to avoid detection. He observes Broton resume the form of the Duke and head out on a mission to implement the next phase of the plan, which will terraform the Earth over the next several centuries before the Zygon refugee fleet arrives. The Doctor then forms a short link between two terminals using himself as the bridge. This sends out signal from the ship but also electrocutes himself.

Benton picks up the signal, triangulates it, informs the Brigadier and the whole group drives down from the inn to the ship. The Zygons manages to break into the Doctor's cell but think he has been killed by the electric shock. He revives after they leave and sneaks through the ship, freeing the real Duke, the Caber and Sister Lamont. The Doctor then sets off an alarm to pull the Zygons off the bridge and the group barricades themselves in there. Once on the bridge, the Doctor sets the self destruct and they flee the ship in the escape hatch. They run away just as the Brigadier's column arrives and they all dive for cover as the ship explodes, killing all the Zygons except Broton.

They receive word that the Loch Ness creature, called by the Zygons a Skarasen, has been swimming down from the sea and is now moving up the Thames. Pooling their information, they deduce that Broton is heading to a major energy conference disguised as the Duke and will attack the multitude of dignitaries there. The Doctor and UNIT head to the conference to stop him.

The Doctor and Sarah discover Broton planting the luring device for the Skarasen in a storage room. Broton attacks the Doctor and Sarah runs for the Brigadier. The Brigadier and two of his men enter. Broton turns his attack towards one of them but the Brigadier shoots Broton down. The Doctor scours the room and finds the luring device. He runs to a balcony just as the Skarasen emerges from the Thames. He throws it out over the river and the beast catches and eats it. With it's summoning device destroyed, the creature drops below the water and swims back up to Scotland.

The entire group returns to Scotland and the Duke helps the Doctor locate the TARDIS in the marshes. He offers Harry, the Brigadier and Sarah a lift back to London but both the Brigadier and Harry decline. Sarah hesitates for a moment, asking if he can get her back to London. The Doctor smiles and assures her he can. The two then enter while the other watch the TARDIS disappear.

Analysis

I had been avoiding this one for a bit as I had this odd feeling that I wasn't going to enjoy it as much as it's reputation stated I would. I'm not sure how I got that in my head because I know I enjoyed it the first time I saw it and this time I enjoyed it just as much. In a way, I had actually forgotten how well filmed and performed the story actually was.

First, all praise and honor to Douglas Camfield who does excellent work here. There is a lot of nice location footage on film and a really good use of lighting and mood to give this story a profound sense of creepiness. It would have been very easy to overexpose the Zygons and make them look rather silly, but this story keeps them as monsters in the dark and it does wonders. Kudos also goes to his work with the Skarasen in keeping it to the minimum of exposure. It could easily have gone into Invasion of the Dinosaurs territory with too much shown of the stop motion. Here you get just enough, leaving the majority of the action to be filled in by the viewer's imagination. It's just good work all around.

The Doctor is very good in this story with a very nice balance of comedy and drama. He shows annoyance at being called in for what seems a trivial matter but then gets very serious when figuring the real threat. When drama and tension are called for, such as the decompression scene, you can feel the tension coming from the Doctor. But at the same time, he's not so grim as to not crack jokes on occasion. His near mocking of Broton is quite funny and deflates the Zygons from the scary monsters they had seemed over the first three episodes to just another batch of aliens the Doctor needs to dispatch. The drama gets you invested but the humor gives you little payoffs while you wait for the overarching story to reach its climax.

Sarah is of course her normal proactive self and actually shows a bit more moxy than the Doctor, given that she is able to sneak on to the Zygon ship and rescue Harry without being caught while the Doctor is caught as soon as he walks into the tunnel. Ultimately it’s a nice balance but Sarah does get some dramatic action here and there and is very enjoyable to watch.

I wish the same could be said for Harry. Harry is his normal, affable self but with being injured halfway through Episode One and the Zygon using his body print killed in Episode Two, Harry is left without much to do. He serves as a small fount of exposition in Episodes Two and Three but just stands around and watches before deciding to stay at the end of Episode Four. It sums the problem the writers clearly had with Harry for most of Season 12 in that he was designed to be an Ian-like man for an older Doctor but the Fourth Doctor was young enough to make him superfluous. Harry really only shines when Sarah is cut off (like in Genesis of the Daleks) but here, Harry is the one who is cut off and he plays the damsel in distress for a short period of time.

The Zygons are pretty good villains with an interesting character trait of taking on the forms of others. However, there were points where they were written oddly. In both Episode Two and Episode Four, there's no good reason why Broton should go on expositionary rants to either Harry or the Doctor. It's useful for the audience but hard to imagine that any character would do such a thing to an enemy. There is also the question as to why they keep Harry and the Doctor alive. The other three prisoners and Harry initially make sense as they are using their body prints to disguise themselves. It could be argued that they intend to go back and give a different Zygon Harry's blueprint and they are keeping him alive for that purpose but what about the Doctor. Broton still thinks the Doctor is human at the start of Episode Four and the launch of the Skarasen attack on the nuclear conference renders the need for subterfuge irrelevant. So why keep the Doctor alive if you don't believe he has useful information or intend to use his body print to make a disguise? It's just one of those things that niggles in the background.

As far as the overall plot goes, the story works fairly well. There is some runaround but mostly in a tension building way. I actually appreciated that the Zygons were susceptible to conventional weapons as that made their dependence on deception more necessary. I also liked how there was a certain amount of paranoia that started to creep in, especially with Sarah and her reaction to Harry. Had this been a six-part story, I would imagine that paranoia would have been a high feature but there just wasn't time to incorporate it further. But as a thriller it does quite well. There are some genuine scare moments and the reveal of the Zygons at the end of Episode One is rather impressive.

What I would have liked developed a bit more is what Broton's ultimate plan was. They way it left off, it seemed as though Broton expected the Skarasen's attack on the nuclear conference to kill or scare enough people to cow the governments of the world into giving their authority to him, allowing him to terraform the planet. However armored the Skarasen was, there are things that would be able to destroy it and unless Broton had a fleet of these things on standby, just one was not going to be enough to subjugate all the peoples of Earth and sheer volume of numbers would have crushed Broton eventually. So there is an element of the story falling apart at the end, but it's still a good ride up to that point.

Overall, there is a reason this is one of the classics. It is well acted, well directed and a pretty good thriller of a tale. There are some small holes here and there and the technology of the day definitely does limit things with the Skarasen (much like the dinosaurs in Invasion of the Dinosaurs) but those are small points compared to the quality of the overall story. It can easily be watched at any time and actually would make a decent story to introduce someone to the Fourth Doctor.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5