Sexy Sweaters and an Inspired Monster: Why Terror of the Zygons Works
The Zygons' first outing my overload on Scottish stereotypes, but it's not Nessie we should be afraid of.
Plot Summary
The Doctor must find out who, or what, is attacking North Sea oil rigs, leading him to an expeditionary force of alien invaders who can change their shape.
Notable for:
First appearance of the Zygons.
Last appearance of Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier until Mawdryn Undead in 1983.
Harry Sullivan stops being a companion.
Originally the story was supposed to be the season ender for Season 12, wrapping up Harry’s story and UNIT.
Location shots were not in Scotland, but rather West Sussex.
The Brigadier can “call” the Doctor with a psionic beam.
The Brigadier calls the prime minister “madam” while on the phone with her. At the time Margaret Thatcher had just been elected leader of the conservative government, and many were predicting the party to win the next election.
New writer Robert Banks Stewart pitched the Loch Ness Monster idea. He later wrote The Seeds of Doom.
John Woodnutt (the Duke) also played Hibbert in Spearhead from Space and the Draconian Emperor in Frontier in Space.
Pete commentary:
Holy cow are they ever in Scotland! That seems to be the theme of this story, with the Doctor sporting a Scottish tartan scarf (Harry’s got his regular one), the Brigadier in a kilt, and bagpipes blasting in episode 1. You also get Scottish moors substituting for corridors as people run over hills away from Sea Monsters, and UNIT jeeps constantly speed through dirt roads that are supposedly right by Loch Ness.
Oddly there aren’t that many authentic Scottish accents heard, the main exception being Angus, the landlord.
Scene that didn’t age well: Sarah’s is a bit childish about the Brig’s kilt. Surely she’s seen a man in a kilt before? Why is it so funny to her?
So the Brigadier’s ancestry is Scottish, is it? May as well be, I suppose. Does he count as the second Scottish companion after Jamie?
This is a pretty good episode for Sarah: She gets to do some actually investigating, and Lis Sladen continues to impress with her ability to ground scenes that are quickly going too far into hard sci-fi: Her reactions to the Zygon ship, and her carefulness with the automatic doors show how smart she is without any dialogue. I wish they had given her more dialogue with Broton and the Zygons themselves — it would have been good contrast, and probably better than Harry’s blundering.
Some fun James Bond situations, like when the sole survivor is shot, then Harry(!) is shot.
The bit where the Doctor says he’s practicing “orthodontology” is a cute, if on-the-nose way to foreshadow the monster, but shouldn’t it be “orthodontics?”
The Zygon as Sister Lamont does well — she’s creepy, but not so absurdly so that you start to wonder why everyone doesn’t suspect her.
The whole idea of the Zygons replacing people is a cool idea. They don’t use it to its fullest, though: The Doctor finding the replaced people is done so badly as a scene. For starters, you can’t see any of their faces, which is a massive fail because you’re wondering who’s who and if you’ve seen them before. You also don’t get a good sense of horror here, of how violative it is. You also feel it should just be “grosser,” considering the Zygons’ organic tech.
The Zygons themselves are a great design. The enormous heads lean into the disadvantage of needing to pile on makeup and/or masks to depict aliens. The barnacles/suckers are inspired, and go well with the “organic” tech.
Beautiful Tom Baker lines throughout this one. He’s really coming into his own here in his second season:
“You can't rule a world in hiding. You've got to come out onto the balcony sometimes and wave a tentacle.”
“Well it’s the only way to learn”
“And what are you going to do with it when you've got it? Isn't it a bit large for just about six of you?”
So Broton is a warlord of the Zygons, and he lives for centuries? And he suddenly decided it was urgent to reveal himself and the Skarasen to the world because he needed to get terraforming in anticipation of a “refugee fleet” that will take “many” more centuries to arrive? Hm… it’s not terrible, but it doesn’t really add up. Why do the Zygons have the most primitive of space drives? And, as the Brigadier questions, it’s hard to understand the “why now” part of it. Surely it would have been better to start the terraforming earlier. Maybe they were waiting for a certain level of technology before getting underway? Broton does say he needs human labor to help do it.
So the Zygon homeworld was destroyed centuries ago? Feels like they’re taking their sweet time finding a new one. The Day of the Doctor retcons this by saying their world was a casualty of the Time War, but would that really echo back to this story? Time-wimey, I guess…
It’s interesting that the Skarasen is cybernetic, but nothing is made of it. What does it do that’s clearly mechanical, apart from maybe the signal control?
The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah so she doesn’t have to breathe? Somehow this works, though, and Baker sells it who his strange yell as he goes into the trance.
The Brig and UNIT are gassed, and they also seem to get their memories screwed up as he seems to be fooled when the Doctor says he fell asleep. But overall, this betrays how much the Zygons are dithering over how lethal they want to be. They don’t kill UNIT when they have the chance, or Sarah, or Harry, or the Doctor. I suppose if they just killed UNIT soldiers en masse, it would provoke a conflict they might not win, though they seem confident that the Skarasen can withstand even a nuclear missile! Seems unlikely, but they would need to massive power to even have a chance of subjugating the entire planet.
Lots of location shooting and chases in this one. It’s pretty fun early on, but it gets a little tiresome by episode 4. Still, the Doctor running up and down the hills around Loch Ness away from the Skarasen makes a change from corridors.
Likewise, Sarah’s showdown with the fake Harry in the barn is pretty fun. Could have used more shots of the pointy end of the pitchfork, though.
I like the UNIT soldiers going on a Zygon hunt! Very cool when Benton gets a shot at one — good reminder that the Zygons are not “immune to bullets” and it’s nice to see our heroes on the attack for once.
The hunt does highlight a missing scene, though: the soldiers getting briefed about the Zygons’ ability to change form. We just get some dialogue from Benton that the one soldier approached “didn’t know” — which is a bit convenient, for the writer.
It’s hard to judge the Skarasen as an effect, but I think they could have done better. The evidence: Carnival of Monsters, which created a more convincing monster by using a real animal skull and thinking through things like the eyes and the noise it made a lot better. The Skarasen constantly sounds like it’s burping.
The Zygon ship is impressive as a model, and it ALMOST makes for a decent cliffhanger, but its design is totally incongruent with the interior. If the Zygons are all about organic technology, why does their ship look like a 1970s art deco project, complete with Tetris pattern on the hull.
Still, an impressive model effect when it blows up.
Why are Sarah and Harry so thick in episode 4, still at the castle researching while everyone’s chasing the real threat, and Sarah doesn’t even seem to remember which book triggered the secret door.
“Was that bang big enough for you, Brigadier?” Uh…
Most of the last episode happens in London, but then everybody comes back to the TARDIS, which is presumably back on Scotland? (otherwise, why is the Duke of Forgill there? So they all just drove 9 hours to get back to Loch Ness by car?
Final confrontation with Broton feels a bit muted. Can we see anything to do with the conference? All we get is a basement. No panicked delegates, no sea monster smashing windows. Just a quick disposing of Broton and the Skarasen popping its head up.
“Well, a fifty foot monster can't swim up the Thames and attack a large building without some people noticing, but you know what politicians are like.” ← doing The Next Doctor get-out-of-jail-free card, 30 years early. Not that it makes it OK.
It’s too bad Nick Courtney/the Brigadier didn’t get a proper “final” episode for this era, but it’s pretty clear from this adventure that he simply didn’t have the same chemistry with Tom Baker. This is right before the Doctor laments to Sarah (in Pyramids) that he must “walk in eternity.” Freed from his exile, he’s grown beyond the UNIT-driven concerns of 1970s Earth. People change, and they grow apart. It’s good they didn’t force it going forward, and the lack of a proper goodbye meant that they could return to the well in anniversary stories.
What did Pete’s family think?
Grace liked it, but she felt like it was two different stories: One monster mystery with the Zygons, and one with a silly Loch Ness Monster.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete
Why did the Randomizer take us here? Keeping us in the radius of Pyramids of Mars. Also, you contrast one of the most heartbreaking companion leaving scenes — Ruby telling the Doctor she loves him — vs. one of the most blasé: Harry simply saying he prefers InterCity to the TARDIS — a subtle way of saying he doesn’t want to travel with the Doctor anymore.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Say, Broton is a little more bloodthirsty and kills the Doctor instead of imprisons him. Then the ship is never found, and Broton’s plan to have the Skarasen destroy parts of London happens. He tells the Earth he’ll let the Skarasen loose unless the world does what he says. UNIT, Sarah and Harry team up with Torchwood to take on the Zygons, and you get something like Turn Left universe, where humanity deals with alien threats that the Doctor would have, with much more sacrifice.
Where's the Clara splinter? It’s her barn that Zygon-Harry and Sarah end up in, and she’s conveniently left a dismantled picket fence right under the hayloft.
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, or Lady Cassandra? For Scot-con alone, it’s a Dalek. Sure, plenty of scenes could be better, but Baker and Sladen are a joy to watch, and there are enough ideas here (the Zygons’ shape-shifting, Loch Ness monster attack on London!) to make it memorable.