No more, please, no more. As much as I love and cherish sections of the story of “The Zygon Invasion” & “The Zygon Inversion,” I can’t take any more of the Zygon stories. Knowing my luck, by the time this is out we’ll know Jodie’s final episode in October for the BBC’s centenary will be a Zygon extravaganza (it’s not!). Chibnall’s horrible like that, trotting out all the old stuff just so he can play with the beige toys of his beige childhood. If I haven’t made it clear enough, I’m tired of dull rubbery men trudging about doing nothing interesting. I guess it is time to talk about the Zygons.

Before I even touch my usual gripes, I think the pacing was dull. Even the action scenes later on are dull, including the 10th beat in the story where the Zygon/bloke is contemplating suicide to avoid living in fear of himself, or rather what others would do to him. There is an overall sense of deflated pacing. Something makes a noise, but the noise it makes is not a pleasant one at all. I’m looking directly (shifting to my usual gripes) at Peter doing comedy bits that just don’t flatter him. Threatening a couple of seven-year-olds and talking about their “blobby-ness,” just isn’t hitting the mark at all.

I think Peter and Steven’s shift following Matt’s departure attempted to pitch the show further into an adult theme without doing the full Torchwood. So when Peter, himself not a very young man or known for being youthful, is doing these Comic Relief-esque, Noel’s House Party, light entertainment show bits, they feel off. We’ve established this Doctor is a misanthrope and a curmudgeon, which makes this frivolity in tone snap your neck at high velocity. I’m not saying he can’t do comedy bits, “London!… What a dump.” is an excellent line and delivery!

I love Petronella, she is such a strangely wonderful character. Why are we replacing her with Jaye Griffiths’ Jac? I’m just going to say it, she works better as Elle Gardner in Casualty, and that’s the second time I’ve mentioned that program in a number of stories. I’ll make it clear. Jac has had nothing to do, she looks bland, she is bland, and using her to replace the colorful and effervescent Osgood doesn’t work. The hierarchy of good/interesting UNIT characters goes as thus: Sir Alistair, Kate, and Osgood, the rest are idiots with guns. Why did I get onto that tangent? Characters and casting I don’t like.

Rebecca Front, why in all that is compos mentis in this horrid little world does the casting of Doctor Who during this time keep taking people from The Thick of It? First, it was Chris Addison, and Peter didn’t go on to abuse that skinny little man the way he should be abused when Peter is in the room. Then there’s Nicola Murray with a gun, and a man that really doesn’t like guns, yet somehow, he doesn’t verbally pin her against the far wall with a multi-layered insult that will make her cry? I could excuse one casting from Peter’s storied past, however, this time it is a wasted opportunity.

The thing is, Peter was quite possibly the Doctor for a minute. Yes, a whole minute, maybe even two. I enjoyed those few moments where was berating Kate for plain stupidity based on nothing but the apprehension of the unknown and rage, something based on a primal, sub-human emotion. Where is that Doctor? Where is the man willing to ponce about in a room for a bit taking everyone with a gun down a few pegs? The man that has rightful rage and anger for being stuck among the almost inconsequential squabbles of these small-minded people, unknowing of the scope of what they are doing. Oh yeah, he has a speech at the end and a beautiful one at that.

Shall we get to the Clara bits? I always thought she was a rubbery cow with suckers, she’s even a Zygon this episode. I have a number of issues with the whole Zygon Bonnie thing. Here is a scene full of faux tension because we’ve already established memories are transferred between Zygon and body-double. This is both thanks to The Day of the Doctor and “The Day of the Doctor,” just as the tension was ripped out of the scene in the second part with Kate too. We know Zygons can’t tell if the human is actually human or Zygon, that’s kind of the point.

I think the bit about lying and connected heartbeats lands flat, mostly because we as humans are fantastic liars to ourselves. We lie to ourselves all the time, either through a promotion getting the best of us, telling ourselves something tastes great, or Chibnall telling others he’s actually a good writer. The whole thing felt off because if you can’t lie to yourself, you can’t lie to others. We’ve seen Clara lie, we know that woman will lie like no other on the planet. Disguising the truth about a memory shouldn’t be that hard, especially from/to herself.

I felt more tension in the bloke that Bonnie unmasked from Human to a blend stuck between. He didn’t want to do it, he was forced into his situation and he was unwilling to trust anyone ever again, which is far more interesting than knowing Bonnie gets to the Osgood box. Or I should rather say, the Osgood Boxes. The same could be said of the whole jet thing with “the President of the World.” By the way, in terms of rank, that’s above US President. Why didn’t that jet have protection? Not only does it store two lead characters, but the common sense of a VIP of such caliber suggests some kind of protection.

As I’ve said multiple times in the run-up to this very story, it isn’t all doom and gloom. As I said earlier, there are bits of Basil’s comments I like, for example, when he says his first name is Basil and drops the “Doctor Disco” nonsense. The bit about London, the “I’m old enough to be your messiah!” and other little teases of character, but it still feels like we’re searching for who this Doctor is. One minute he’s coming up with Basil and the next he’s making a “joke” about browser history, it is Steven and Peter’s pitch towards that Torchwood thing. The problem is, we definitively saw Class fail on its own, so this push to make things more “adult” doesn’t work for Doctor Who.

The shining light of the episode and easily one of the greatest speeches in Doctor Who history, is the “It’s not a game Kate!” speech. Entangled not just in lore, but basic truth, the speech towards the end of “The Zygon Inversion” is nothing short of beautiful. Peter’s ability to wring every bit of emotion out of it makes you understand that he believes every word of it, it is magnificent. The bit about “thinking, it is just a fancy word for changing your mind,” and “what will you do with the people like you, the trouble makers?” That is Moffat at his best, either writing or giving enough direction to weave such beautiful simplicity into a fantastic speech.

If I am ever stuck trying to showcase the core essence of what Doctor Who is, this is the speech I run to find. This is the speech I’ve often used when testing microphone levels, just as something to make sound, but also because it has such a brilliant rhythm of emotion to it. It is anger, pain, sorrow, loss, and above all else, it is the undying hope that is in nearly every Doctor in nearly 60-years of the show’s lifespan. The story that gets us there might not be equivalent to the opening of the Pandorica and “I am talking!” It might not have all that “I don’t want to go” had. It’s not “Have a fantastic life” or “No weapons! No defenses, no plan,” not even Dr. Black’s “Pain is easy to portray.”

This stunning piece of dialog is something on its own. The story itself might not support the speech but the decades of the show and what we see day in and day out do. We see it in the results of war and decisions made by individuals. He himself is unwilling to let another soul have to make that decision, especially one with such scope and consequences. It may be a button and a single decision, but it sets in motion such pain, self-hatred, a wish you had the chance to never do it in the first place, and a desire to have someone stop you.

As a double-bill, one following on from the epic that was “The Day of the Doctor,” it may not live up to its mark. In fact, without the final speech, it was a somewhat familiar story we’ve seen several times, with different set dressing and aliens. Ultimately, with very little in the way of having the willingness to make the story stand above the noise of so many other invasion angles, it lacks that spark otherwise. Eventually, it feels like someone attempted to squeeze in all the characteristic beats without finding room to let this Doctor talk for themselves outside of that magnificent speech.

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Doctor Who "The Zygon Invasion" & "The Zygon Inversion"

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• "It's not a game Kate!"
• Basil and his sometimes funny lines.
• The always wonderful Petronella.
• Peter even had a Doctor moment early on.

Cons

• A deflated pacing.
• Peter not accosting Rebecca Front often.