In the seventh episode of the ninth series of Doctor Who, a familiar enemy tries to conquer Earth. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Doctor Who.
Trigger Warning: For talk of xenophobia and immigration.
Oh, I never expected this, but I’m so glad to have gotten it.
The Zygons were already a creepy alien, but they’re so much more terrifying here. The idea of a bodysnatcher or a creature who can hide amongst humanity is common in science fiction. Hell, I recently met the Founders on Deep Space Nine, so I’m VERY AWARE OF HOW FRIGHTENING THIS TROPE IS. Yet “The Zygon Invasion†goes to an increasingly dark place by the final cliffhanger, so much so that it feels more grim than I’m used to for the show. That’s not a bad thing; the show routinely leaves us feeling hopeless and tense with their two-parters, and this episode is no exception.
But there’s an undeniable metaphorical commentary within this episode that touches on xenophobia. At times, it’s a stinging indictment of the horrible ways that immigrants are treated in Britain, and it impressed me. However, like many metaphorical representations of real-life issues, it has an unfortunate implication that isn’t really addressed. At heart, the peace treaty between the Zygons and humanity is one based on an acceptance that everyone deserves a place to live. The Zygons maintain their human appearance so that close to 20 million of them can exist on Earth without trouble.
But what if you started feeling exhausted by constantly having to assimilate into the dominant culture? What if you weren’t allowed to celebrate aspects of your culture because it would frighten other people, or make it clear you were from somewhere else, or because it was “isolating†or “self-segregating� What if you had to disguise yourself so that you made it easier for other people to look at you? In that analogy, I can see a lot of the current immigration struggle! The Zygons are not allowed to be seen as are. They must constantly assimilate and live in another culture or risk… what? Expulsion? Bodily harm? Death?
That’s what I saw in Osgood’s opening monologue. Yes, there are always going to be violent people, radical people, within a group or a race or a culture. That doesn’t mean that all of them are that way. While much of this metaphor hits the issue squarely on the mark, it also falls apart once you acknowledge that the Zygons have literally tried to invade the Earth like… what, four times now? Three at the very least? And now, they’ve successfully replaced a huge portion of the UK with copies. How many others have they killed? How many people will they eventually kill? So yeah, that’s the weird unintended consequence of this metaphor. Some people – probably a lot of them – believe that immigration is invasion, that immigrants are stealing jobs and replacing them in the workforce, so making a literal manifestation of that isn’t exactly helpful.
So! Let’s also talk about CREEPY THINGS. “The Zygon Invasion†is constructed in a way to make us (read: me) think that this is very much a traditional Doctor Who adventure in terms of plotting. I thought that perhaps this would be the first standalone episode of the season and that all three plotlines would converge, and Osgood, Kate, Clara, and the Doctor would all find a way to defeat their respective foes. However, at each turn, the Zygons reveal that they are a billion steps ahead of their adversaries. How long had they all been planning this coup? The truth is that they didn’t even need that many radicalized Zygons to pull off what they did. (Which touches back on Osgood’s monologue.) They just needed enough to continually trick people.
The church scene in Turmeszistan is a great example. Well, it’s also such an eerie and tragic sequence that I’m still blown away by it. With just ten or so Zygons, the splinter group was able to diffuse an entire group of soldiers without a single weapon fired. But that’s why this is so insidious. Over the course of the last year, the Zygons slowly kidnapped people from London, hid them in pods underneath the city, and grew their populace. That means there were more workers, more Zygons willing to kidnap and replace others, more Zygons sympathetic to the splinter group’s goal.
God, what’s going to happen to all the Zygons who want nothing to do with this? I’m guessing that another faction will play a huge part in this. But what of Kate??? I hope that since we didn’t see her die, that means she found a way out. I’m not terribly thrilled about Clara being replaced because it takes her character out of the action. She hasn’t gotten much development this season, and she was completely absent in the last episode. As for the Doctor… WELL, I DON’T KNOW HOW HE’S GONNA SURVIVE HIS PLANE BEING SHOT OUT OF THE SKY, BUT HERE WE GO.
The video for “The Zygon Invasion†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
Mark Links Stuff
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