The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion [TV/2015.10.31 ~ 11.7]

★★★☆☆

  Steven Moffat's co-writing credit makes so much sense, looking back. I've always found his speech writing skills to diminish somewhat depending on length, and it just so happens that the most well-known part (perhaps the only well-known part, apart from Jenna Coleman's amazing look) of this two-parter is the incredibly long speech by the Doctor, pleading for peace amongst two races in the brink of war. An impossible situation where even one wrong word could mean the end of the world... and the Doctor decides to don a naff American accent? We've had Doctors deflect stressful situations with comedy before, but something about how Peter Capaldi is forced by the script to suddenly wrench out of the tension and make that silly face is distracting. Ultimately something I wish they'd left on the cutting floor, that is. 

  The Zygon Invasion two-parter is something I've always meant to revisit. I remembered vaguely liking it in 2015, and upon rewatch I can more or less agree with my past judgment. This thing bugs me out on so many fronts (why did the soldier immediately drop the very good question to a question about teddy bears, for instance?), mainly because Bonnie and the radical Zygon splinter group turn up out of nowhere and the narrative is way too focused on them and their motives, specifically... when we don't really get to see their horrible situation, do we? It doesn't help that the first episode, which already has its hands full trying to introduce every single thing that some of these situations end up feeling undercooked, is actually the better paced episode out of the two. I used to think The Zygon Inversion was the better, but now I think it ultimately serves as an underwhelming coda. I say coda specifically because I didn't feel any impending doom, like I probably should have. The drama was never really there to begin with.

  All this begs the question, then... why do I ultimately like it? I love the ambition of trying to tell an immigration politics story in the guise of a Zygon two-parter, I love the detailed look we get at this human-Zygon Earth for most of the runtime, and I love Peter Capaldi's performance. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't fellate the long shaft of Peter Harness (or Steven Moffat) for the entire famous speech, but I really appreciate the second half of it. The Doctor can stop a war from even beginning by talking, without any violence, and that's a really powerful message to kids. Clara doesn't get much of an outing at all (no, I don't think her nightmare sequence is a particularly remarkable moment for her character), but what we do get is Bonnie. I love Jenna Coleman as Bonnie, the flawed and confused Zygon rebel leader, and it's a bit of a shame she decides to shed Clara's look and don the Osgood form by the end of the story. Then again, Osgood is the more interesting character of the two (though her constant "I am me -- not human nor Zygon" statement was getting stale), so I guess it was the lesser of two evils if keeping both individually was not on the table. I get the fans, I get the detractors -- and I raise you my opinion: The Zygon Invasion / Inversion two-parter is a good Dr. Who adventure. Not shallow, not deep... somewhere in the middle.