The Zygon Inversion

The Zygon Inversion was about as good as it was going to be considering it had such a weak opening half (last week's Zygon Invasion). That is to say it was not very good at all. The desire to create a tense, creeping atmosphere misfired. This was likely attributable either to Peter Harness not being a good enough writer or the show simply not lending itself well to the thriller genre. Or, very possibly, both.

The whole thing felt off. It was slow to get going and chugged towards an obvious and clichéd climax in which the Doctor talked Kate Stewart (representing humanity) and Bonnie the Zygon (representing the rebel Zygons) into calming down and seeking peace over war and destruction. This was a fine message and obviously one that the character and the show should be seeking and propagating but the scene fell flat. Capaldi and Coleman (who was pulling double duty as Bonnie) were both very good while Jemma Redgrave (Stewart) was a little bland, but performances weren't the problem.

The problem was the Doctor's speech. It was very clearly written as the centrepiece of the episode and a Big Character Moment, something that was meant to make people take notice and add to lists of Capaldi's greatest moments in the role. I didn't think it was very good. I thought it was trite and forced and had very little substance to it. It was written less as a man trying to kep control of a dangerous situation and more as a speech we should be impressed by. And when you have a scene like that, that's very much the crux of the episode, having it fall flat and feel lightweight obviously reflects badly on the entire thing.

On top of this the episode just didn't feel very good. Too much time was dedicated to resolving (and partially rewriting, never a good thing) the cliffhanger and establishing the rules of the Zygon-human link that were "needed" for the plot's resolution. Effort that should have gone into giving people interesting lines or understandable motives (the rebel Zygons wanted a war just because, is that really the best that could be dreamt up?) instead went into tricking the audience into Moffat-esque alleged cleverness. Things happened rarely and didn't amount to much when they did. What we got in between were dry attempts at humour, character and mystery. We also saw Mysterious Boxes make a return to the show after previously featuring heavily in The Power of Three and The Day of the Doctor, establishing themselves on the Moffat Tropes List. And the Black Archive was a huge wasted opportunity. It could have been packed with background props. The closest we got was the head of one of the robot warriors from The Girl Who Died.

There was nothing to like here. Not even Evil Clara was fun. Last week's brief appearance was exciting. Given more time she quickly degenerated into a generic baddie. And to make things worse she simply turned good at the end of the episode and was accepted as the new secondary Osgood, with nobody batting an eye even though she had been a rebel leader trying to start a war. Ingrid Oliver was good at least, but that's not much consolation.

This was the worst episode of the current series.