Terror of the Zygons

Chapter The 201st, which features a Cheviot, a stag and some black, black oil. And shape-changing orange embryo people. And the Loch Ness monster.

Plot:

Called back from his travels by the Brigadier using a space-time (plot) device, the Doctor along with Sarah and Harry arrives in Scotland. Something is destroying oil rigs in the area, and UNIT are investigating. A cast taken of damage to a recovered fragment of a rig seems to show it was inflicted by a giant sea monster. Harry is down by the coast looking for any survivors from the latest rig disaster, and finds someone washed ashore, but he is shot by a kilted sniper before he can tell Harry anything. Harry is grazed and knocked unconscious by a second shot, but is found and taken to the sick bay in the oil company's shore base. Sarah's at his bedside when he starts to come round; she phones the Doctor, but is attacked by a Zygon (who was disguised as a nurse - Zygons can transform into a copy of any human that they capture). Harry's abducted and taken aboard the Zygon space-ship, and learns that their plan involves a huge creature from their planet, the Skarasen, that lives in Loch Ness and has over the years been mistaken for the monster.

Disguised as Harry, one of the Zygons attempts to recover an organic homing device found on the remains of one of the rigs, and when they fail the Zygon leader Broton sets the Skarasen onto the Doctor, but Harry interfering with the ship's controls allows the Doctor to escape. Broton is disguising himself as the local Lord, the Duke of Forgill. When researching in the Duke's castle, Sarah and the Doctor discover a secret passage into the spaceship under Loch Ness. They rescue Harry, and the Doctor is then imprisoned in the ship for a while as it flies off for a new location (a quarry - where else?!). The Doctor sends a signal from the ship secretly, allowing UNIT to track him down, and sets off the self-destruct after freeing himself and the remaining captives that the Zygons held for duplication. Broton still lives, though, and his plan is to plant a homing device at an energy conference in London while disguised as the Duke, and get the Skarasen to attack the building in which will be many VIPs from around the world. The Doctor and his friends cleverly defeat Broton by having a fight with him, then shooting him. The Doctor throws the homing device into the Thames, the Skarasen eats it and satisfied swims back up to Loch Ness.

Context:

The Summer Bank Holiday towards the end of August in the UK is never far away from my birthday, which is nice - I get a state-sponsored long weekend to celebrate. I half remembered that 'last year' I chose a favourite Doctor Who to watch with the family as part of my celebrations, overriding the random choice and using a fair amount of emotional blackmail on the fam to make them watch with me or else spoil my big day! I was keen to turn this into a regular thing. However, when I checked, it turns out that it wasn't last year but three years ago that I last did this. On that occasion, I chose a new series story so this time I wanted a classic era one. I scoured the remaining stories and finally settled on Terror of the Zygons. It's not necessarily an overall favourite of mine, but it was the one favoured in that moment. Sat down to watch with the whole family (Better Half making a rare appearance in the living room for a Doctor Who watch, and all three kids - boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9) from the DVD. We split the story in two, watching two episodes a day. We coincidentally finished on August 30th, the 46th anniversary of the debut broadcast of the story's first episode. Early on, the eldest child asked "Is that the Downs?" about the filming location, and he's not far off: all the Scottish settings were filmed in Sussex, with the quarry where the Zygon ship hides being as near to where we live as the previous record holder for filming close to the family home, Brighton beach (as seen in The Leisure Hive and Mindwarp).

First Time Round:

I can't remember the exact circumstances of getting the VHS tape (though that is definitely how I first saw it). I often forget the specific action and emotion of watching more recent Doctor Who stories, and even some of the tapes that came out in the mid to late 1990s when the VHS range was going strong. Terror of the Zygons, though, was released very early on in the late 1980s, before regular and effective distribution seemed to have been established, and when each tape stumbled across in W H Smiths or wherever was like a gift from the heavens. The Zygons story would have been the 8th or 9th tape in my collection. The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which came out at the same time (November 1988) I remember very clearly getting as a Christmas present that year, but I'm pretty sure I didn't get the Zygons story at the same time. As such, I probably bought it for myself, either just before or just after Christmas (maybe the latter, funded by some cash given to me by another relative). It most likely would have been purchased in Smiths in Worthing (my regular home town supplier later, Volume One, had not opened then) or it could have been in Bognor Regis, if I saw it in a shop when visiting my Dad. I remember the feeling of the first watch, if not the details, enjoying the great visuals and its evocative score. As all stories were at that time, the VHS presentation of Terror of the Zygons was edited together as one feature length piece. The full version with end credits, re-establishing the magnificent cliffhanger of episode 1, did not come out until over a decade later in August 1999. I remember getting that (I was living in Brighton by then, so would have bought it in MVC), and remember watching and feeling a bit disappointed: I'd watched the old version so many times that just having the beginning and end credits re-inserted didn't feel that special. There was a nice little contemporaneous clip of Tom Baker on Disney Time included though. 

Reaction:

I met Dan Hall in a pub once, back when he was commissioning editor of the Doctor Who DVD range and I was still screenwriting. It was a writers and producers' meet-up, but a lot of those present were fans and talk turned before too long to Doctor Who. I believe, though it was a reasonably beery night and a long time ago, so I may be misremembering, that he confirmed there something that I'd heard rumoured, that Terror of the Zygons was being held back to be the final DVD release of the range. I've mentioned a few times in previous blog posts how the VHS release concentrated on the most popular stories upfront to such an extent that the final couple of years of the range were disappointing for a great many collectors. Obviously, they wanted the DVD range instead to go out on something more of a bang than a whimper. It came to pass, sort-of: it was the last complete story released of the planned range - a couple of stories that needed time-consuming animations or reconstructions to bridge missing episodes followed on after, and then there were a couple of previously missing stories recovered and released later too. The release of the Zygon story was in October 2013, though it was available slightly earlier in a limited edition luxury box "The Fourth Doctor Time Capsule" accompanied by a lot of old tat. Clearly, the story was thought of as something popular and special to merit this treatment. Indeed, that's what I thought too when I selected it for my Birthday watch. I was half right.

The first two episodes of the story are excellent. The script is solid, despite depicting an excessively twee, shortbread tin lid version of Scotland; the very first line of dialogue mentions haggis, someone called Willie, and someone else who "doesnae ken" something; a few minutes later there's bagpiping, kilts and talk of tossing the caber, and it carries on in that style. Perhaps there's no other way to script a story centring on the Loch Ness monster. Focussing on an oil company's rigs and shore base at least was a more up-to-date topic North of the border in the 1970s. What makes this story and particularly the first section atmospheric is the direction by Douglas Camfield and the score by Geoffrey Burgon. The combination of both can be seen in the incredibly effective sequence where a sniper aims at Harry and the man he's rescued on the shore, and the music and the tension builds and builds. Camfield gets some particularly spine-tingling moments in the can elsewhere too: the hayloft pitchfork attack by the vicious Zygon-Harry, and the wonderful studio moment where the bagpipe drone cuts out just as Sarah is mocking the landlord's extra-sensory powers, before the Doctor tells her that they'd been listening to a lament for the dead. The sudden shocking cliffhanger for episode one too: an abrupt first glimpse of a Zygon before the credits roll, only there for an instant but seared into the imagination of every child watching.

Costume designer Jim Acheson delivers one of his many many iconic Doctor Who designs, and perhaps his best, with the Zygon suits. All production departments are giving their maximum, in fact, which creates a consistent visual identity as seen in the globby organic sets and props depicting the spaceship technology. All the performances are top notch. It's Ian Marter's best work, in both his two roles, and up there for Tom Baker too - enigmatic and brooding, but also witty and fun. Liz Sladen has less to do, but does what she's given very well. Nicholas Courtney and John Levene provide stalwart support as ever. The guest turns are great too. Lillias Walker as the sinister Sister Lamont ratchets up to Nurse Ratched levels. Broton is a great character, and John Woodnutt is great at playing him, as well as the subtly different takes on the Zygon-Duke and the real Duke. All of this quality, though, is masking a logical flaw in the story's set-up, at least at first; but, it can't be concealed as the piece develops and more details come to light. From episode 3, as good as are the direction, sets, score and everything else, it still starts to fall apart. The body-snatching Zygons are conceptually spies - quiet, gradual stealthy infiltration their stock in trade. Their Skarasen pet on the other hand is a weapon of mass destruction. It can chew through oil rigs and can't be stopped by nuclear weapons. The script tries very hard to create a plan that can involve both these very different approaches through the clumsy creation of a homing device that needs to be planted on a victim, but it's not very convincing.

The Zygons key power of impersonation is simply not needed when they have a monster that can eat buildings. They want to terrorise some bigwigs meeting for a conference, so Broton assumes the Duke's form to get in to the building. But he could just drop the homing device on the doorstep, and the creature would destroy everything around. It didn't leave much of the oil rigs unscathed after all. The focus on the oil company, which seemed so important in the first two episodes, is dropped instantly that the second half of the story starts. A key character Huckle is helping UNIT with the investigations, but from episode 3 disappears and is never mentioned again. The destruction of the oil rigs turns out to be a red herring, just a test of strength for the Skarasen, If so, why on Earth destroy more than one if it's going to put the humans on red alert? Why bug UNIT? Why pretend to be a nurse in the oil company's base, or a ghillie, or a lord? Why shoot the survivor of the rig? You have no need for stealth, Zygons, get down to London and use your unstoppable cyborg to take over the planet. The effects work of the climax in episode 4, with a puppet Skarasen head in front of a photo of the Thames, is rightly criticised, but the real shame is the premise running out of steam rather than the production finally running out of money. A tussle with Broton in a dingy basement was not the grand ending implicitly promised by the earlier scenes of his and the Doctor's confrontations. It's a shame as there are so many possibilities in both the Zygon concept, and in a story explaining the truth of the Loch Ness Monster. Trying to do both in the same story meant the potential of neither was realised.

Connectivity: 

Both Terror of the Zygons and Planet of the Dead were stories broadcast after a short gap since the last regular run, and both feature UNIT battling creatures - the Skarasen, the "Sky-rays" - that are armoured cyborgs (or at least part metal, the origin of the Tennant story's monster is unclear) with tough exteriors that are difficult to penetrate with Earth weapons.

Deeper Thoughts:

Predictive Textual Analysis. Terror of the Zygons famously contains a scene in the final episode where the Brigadier answers a phone call from the Prime Minister, and says "Yes, Madam". The story was made and broadcast in 1975 just after Margaret Thatcher had become leader of the opposition in the UK, but was supposed to be set later than that (in 1980, if one believes the dialogue in Pyramids of Mars, two stories later). It would be four more years after Terror of the Zygons was broadcast before Thatcher had won a general election and become the UK's first ever female PM, and so she was in power in 1980. Whether the writer or production team had this particular politician in mind or not, it was a good guess. Unfortunately, in a story a couple of years earlier the Brigadier had a phone call with a different Prime Minister called Jeremy, and that has not proved correct (at least not yet). It's somewhat rare for Doctor Who to predict the future with the accuracy demonstrated in Terror of the Zygons, though it got off to a good start. In the very first episode, An Unearthly Child, the Doctor's time traveller granddaughter Susan tells her suspicious teachers that she thought the UK used a decimal system of currency, but then remembered that it hadn't started yet. Decimalisation would eventually come in for the UK in 1971. It was probably an educated guess: a committee of enquiry had been set up by the government and reported on the feasibility of decimalisation in 1963, the year that An Unearthly Child was made and shown. From then on, though, the show's hit rate became decidedly variable.

The UNIT stories normally ignored their setting a few years in advance of broadcast altogether (and sometimes contradicted it, e,g. a price in pounds, shillings and pence being mentioned in dialogue in Doctor Who and the Silurians); when they did, they got it right about as often as they got it wrong. The Daemons predicted that the corporation would eventually stretch to providing a BBC3 channel, but alas imagined its output would be documentaries about archaeology much more suited to BBC4's remit (and both those two channels would have struggled to get a programme budget to cover a live outside broadcast at night). Battlefield predicted a five pound coin, car-phones and that a round of drinks in a bar would get very expensive, but also imagined that the UK would have a King before the end of the millennium.  Different stories over the years have predicted more general things that would eventually come, again extrapolating from the thinking of the day: The War Machines in 1966 presaged the internet, The Green Death in 1973 predicted Quorn products, Vengeance on Varos in 1985 depicted something not a million miles away from reality TV. Fear Her looked a few years ahead from its broadcast to the London Olympics in 2012. Characters watch TV on their laptops a lot in that story, which looked odd in 2006, but was exactly how I consumed my Olympics coverage when the day finally arrived. Had an unauthorised someone bent to pick up the torch and run with it to the stadium as the Doctor does, though, they'd have been jumped on by security before they'd made it as much as a metre.

As with continuity errors, areas where Who differs from the real world's events give rise to all sorts of fan and official creativity to explain them away. The main proposed theory for the near future depicted in the UNIT stories is that it is a parallel version of our own world, where the interference of aliens has impacted. Technology from the Cybermen in The Invasion, for example, was harvested after their defeat to accelerate the UK's space programme such that our little country can send multiple rockets into space c. the mid-1970s (as seen in The Ambassadors of Death). This theory fits neatly because, well, it's the truth, isn't it? What are stories except descriptions of parallel worlds like our own, but where something more interesting is happening? Since 2005, the new series has generally followed this theory, going as far as to depict Earth people or institutions (Torchwood, Henry Van Statten in Dalek) salvaging alien tech for gain, and ordinary punters becoming more and more aware of alien invasions. Too much divergence risks the audience's empathy, though: who cares about the events on a world that's too different from our own?  The series tends to periodically clear the decks to avoid this; Steven Moffat created a crack in time that undoes previous events, so Amy has no memory of the Daleks recently invading her world; the events of Terror of the Zygons ("the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster") are hinted to have been covered up such that Ace and her generation are oblivious to them - as established in Remembrance of the Daleks). The point of Doctor Who is ultimately not to predict the future but to depict the present with just a little bit of exaggeration, adding monsters that wreak havoc, be they Skarasens, Zygons or the UK's first ever female PM (little bit of politics there for you, ladies and gentlemen!).

In Summary:

Either have the Terror of the Zygons or The Loch Ness Monster, don't try for both or you'll split the difference. It's testament to some excellent work done by everyone on the production that the story almost achieves greatness despite this.