Series 9 has really been celebrating the ten year anniversary of the new series without directly stating it as we are yet again treated to archive footage of an earlier episode, this time being 'The Day of the Doctor'. That also means this is the third time in seven episodes we see the tenth Doctor pop up on our screens again, because he just will not go away. I really like how they are doing it as giving us a whole anniversary special this soon after the last one would not really fly.
While kind of being on the subject of Kate Stewart, she has barely gotten anything to do recently as she was pretty much useless in 'The Magician's Apprentice' and 'Death In Heaven'. Here however she finally gets to do something that seem to be leading to something significant. She is actually holding a gun for once and doing some research instead of standing around while the Doctor and/or Clara does everything. I really hope she will be part in saving the day in the next episode because she has yet to even come close in doing so. But yes, it was also rather silly how she was the only one they sent to Truth or Consequences to investigate. I mean come on, not even one dispensable soldier?
There are some rather obvious political subtext in this episode and for the most part I believe it works. Yes, it is a bit on the nose but they do not spend a whole lot of time on it and it never derails the episode (*cough* 'In the Forest of the Night'). At least for me, it was not distracting as the focus was still on the story at hand. The story by the way, is really great. It picks up all the pieces that was left loose after 'The Day of the Doctor' regarding the Zygons and it also feels like they waited the appropiate amount of time to tell this story. My only wish is that they at least mentioned the whole peace treaty once between this episode and the 50th anniversary and not just have it come out of nowhere. I also really liked the way they explained Osgood's return after being killed by Missy in 'Death In Heaven'. It was very satisfactory and made perfect sense. I doubt anyone can have a problem with it which is great. I also loved how well it ties into the hybrid story arc which again makes the reason they held on the story until now make even more sense.
Oh, and let us talk about that cliffhanger. Peter Harness was not joking when he said he wrote the biggest one he possibly could. This was really well handled and definitely the best part of the episode. I loved the Clara reveal - not because of her being evil as I most definitely saw that coming - but because of the rather morbid plan she had throughout the episode. Remember, she is the one who figured out that Truth or Consequences was a town in New Mexico - and then that is where Kate Stewart was sent and "killed". She then also got Jac to follow her to her apartment building, which then lead them both down beneath London to find all the eggs/pods with a bunch of citizens of London inside. She then orders all the U.N.I.T. soldiers to destroy them before they "hatch". This legitimately makes sense and I almost bought it myself before Jac thankfully stepped in to remind us just how Zygons actually work - which is of course when we get the brilliant reveal of Clara being a Zygon. They also did not wimp out on the cliffhanger here as they just went ahead and murdered all the soldiers AND Jac. Then only to make it worse we also have Zygon-Clara shooting a rocket launcher towards the plane that the Doctor and Osgood are on. BRILLIANT cliffhanger.
Overall, 'The Zygon Invasion' is a return to the huge scale alien invasion story and you can tell that we are no longer dealing with the Daleks or Cybermen as the Zygons offer a very different type of invasion - which of course makes for a very different story and for the most part it worked like charm. The episode looks great, it sounds great, the Zygons are very threatening despite their comical voice and look. There is definitely a lot of possibilities for a real cracker of a second part and the episode did not skimp out on the cliffhanger as it went all out and delivered the best one since 'The Magician's Apprentice'. Bring on 'The Zygon Inversion'!
9/10
- Lucas
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