DOCTOR WHO:  TERROR OF THE ZYGONS

commentary by Judy Harris

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#6: TERROR OF THE ZYGONS (4 Parts) 
ORIGINALLY AIRED: 8/30/75 to 9/20/75
WRITTEN BY: Robert Banks Stewart 
DIRECTED BY: Douglas Camfield
PRODUCER: Philip Hinchcliffe 
SCRIPT EDITOR: Robert Holmes

The TARDIS lands in Scotland (actually Bognor Regis in Sussex). The Doctor, wearing a plaid tam with red pompons and a plaid scarf, strides off, followed by Sarah, wearing the Doctor's hat; and Harry, wearing his scarf. They are given a ride into town by the Duke of Forgill; when they arrive at the inn where UNIT has set up headquarters, they find the Brig in a kilt of the clan Stewart.

The Brig tells the Doctor of the destruction of some offshore oil rigs. The Doctor asks if the Brig used the psyonic beam (space-time telegraph) to call him back 270 million miles "just to sort out a little trouble at sea." The Doctor feels "To be dependent upon a mineral slime just doesn't make sense;" but agrees to help.

It is determined the attacks are always preceded by a radio blackout, although weather conditions were perfectly normal. "The sea may be calm but it's never empty," the Doctor observes.

The conversation at the inn is being monitored by Zygons. These are one of the most cleverly conceived of all DOCTOR WHO monsters. The costume is pinkish, with a sort of seahorse shape, accentuated by the actors who pull their shoulders up and back in very alien body language. Their whispery voices enhance this otherworldly impression, along with the disturbing sucker shapes on their cartilage and fingertips. Makeup around the actors' eyes and lips blends very well with the costume.

The Zygon spaceship, with its technology of "organic crystallography" is likewise pleasingly different. It is easy to accept these aliens as the creators of this ship. Even the controls, which consist of knobs, tubes and strange protuberances, seem to pulse with life of their own. This successful visualization of alien technology preceded by 3 years the "biomechanical" look of ALIEN, dreamed up by H. Giger.  From Tom Baker's autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER?:  "Douglas Camfield was an excellent director.  He ran the whole film unit like an army unit.  His second-in-command was one of his favourite PAs, Edwina Craze.  Douglas had plenty of bottle and wasn't at all anxious that the Zygon computers looked like abandoned pizzas.  He also had the excellent idea of having the monsters whisper their threats.  This made a change from shrieking Daleks.  We filmed in Sussex, though we were meant to be in Scotland, but the Loch Ness monster connection got us a lot of publicity and, with a really astonishing performance from John Woodnutt as the duke and a monster, we were watched by more than eight-million people."

The Zygons have planted a bug in the inn and, on a veined and organic looking screen, observe UNIT's every move. The Doctor plans "a little experiment in orthodontology" with the cast of a tooth taken from some wreckage.

Harry discovers a survivor of the last oil rig disaster, but they are both shot. Harry is hospitalized in shock, the bullet having grazed his skull. When Harry starts to come round, Sarah phones the Doctor but is attacked by a Zygon before she can complete the call.

The Doctor and Sgt. Benton go off to find Sarah; Harry is missing as well, but the Doctor finds Sarah cowering in a decompression unit. A Zygon locks them in and turns off their air. The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah, telling her "You don't need to breathe," and puts himself in a trance, a trick he's picked up from a Tibetan monk.

Sgt. Benton rescues the Doctor and Sarah and they head back to the inn, where they find the Brig passed out; the whole village has been gassed. When he wakes up, the Brig asks, "What was I doing on the floor?" The mist has come down on Tulloch moor to disguise the passing of the Zygons' ultimate weapon, the Skarasen, an armored cyborg. This giant sea creature was brought to Earth in the Zygon ship as an embryo and has grown up to be the Loch Ness Monster! It is impressions of its giant teeth the Doctor has cast from the wreckage.

The Skarasen is played by a puppet and is the least acceptable part of this story; however, it is used sparingly and, in the sequence where it chases the Doctor across Tulloch Moor, the camera angles minimize its artificiality.

A device called the target reciprocator has been found in the wreckage; it is a signal which, when activated, lures the Skarasen, who is compelled to destroy it; it was placed on each of the rigs to get the cyborg to demolish them.

Harry, who has been taken to the Zygon ship, is told about "body prints." The Zygons have captured the Duke of Forgill, his gillie (the attendant to a Highland chief) Caber, and Nurse Lamont; and have transformed themselves into duplicates. In one of DOCTOR WHO's best special effects sequences, the transformation is demonstrated; while not as elaborate as the state of the art mechanics in today's movies, the optical dissolve used here seems very eerie and believable.

Back at the inn, Sarah sits down at a typewriter to file a story. A Zygon duplicate of Harry comes in and runs out with the Skarasen signal device. Sarah and some UNIT soldiers give chase.

"Harry" hides in the loft of a barn. Ian Marter was not given much scope in most of his DOCTOR WHO stories, but gets a rare chance here to broaden his range. The shot of him--his face half in shadow--peering evilly out from behind a haystack is one of the scariest and most effective moments in the show. He comes at Sarah with a pitchfork but falls himself, turning back into a Zygon as he dies. His cohorts back at the ship detect his death and cause his disappearance through "molecular dispersal."

Sarah returns to the inn with the signal device; she speculates the Zygons seem to know in advance everything UNIT does; the Doctor suspects a bug. While they are searching for this listening device, the Zygons activate the target reciprocator, so the Doctor snatches it up and takes off in a landrover to lure the Skarasen away from the village. However, he runs into engine trouble, and when he takes the signal device out of his pocket, it adheres to him painfully.

Harry momentarily gets loose and turns some dials in the Zygon control room, accidentally deactivating the Skarasen signal and saving the Doctor's life. Back at the inn, the Brig determines the signal came from Loch Ness.

The Doctor, the Brig and Sarah pay a call on the Duke at Forgill Castle to ask his permission to set explosive charges in the Loch. While there the Brig gets a call; an alien has been spotted in town and has killed Angus, the psychic landlord who discovered the Zygon bug in the stuffed head of a deer. The Brig and the Doctor depart, leaving Sarah behind to do research in the Duke's library, where she discovers a secret passage into the Zygon ship. Inside, she stumbles over Harry and frees him.

The Doctor and the Brig return to Forgill Castle, just as Sarah and Harry escape through the secret passage. The Doctor goes off to explore it and is captured by Broton, the head Zygon. The Brig sets off his explosions but the Zygon ship takes off anyway. This was a very good miniature; although the exterior did not conform to the organic look of the interior, the design was interesting and authentically extraterrestrial; even in the sequence where it rose from beneath the waters of the Loch, it didn't look too much like a miniature.

Broton notices the Doctor checking out the ship and asks, "You admire our technology, human?" The Doctor smiles: "I'm not human and I've seen better." When Broton transforms into the Duke, the Doctor grins and claps, exclaiming: "Very good, very good. Almost impressive."

Broton observes of the Doctor: "You like asking questions." The Doctor responds, a trifle exasperated: "Well, it's the only way to learn." What the Doctor learns is the Zygons are done with hiding under Loch Ness and are about to take over the Earth and restructure it using forced human labor to make it suitable for their own kind.

Meantime, the Brigadier gets a phone call from the Prime Minister. "Absolutely understood, madam," he tells her. By the time DOCTOR WHO was shown in the United States, Britain had a woman prime minister, but at the time TERROR OF THE ZYGONS was written, performed and originally aired, this reference was still science fiction. In fact, it was not even Margaret Thatcher the scriptwriter had in mind at this time, but another woman politician named Shirley Williams.

Although it is not clear from any Tom Baker story up to this point, and is mentioned only in passing in PYRAMIDS OF MARS, all the UNIT stories took place in the then-future of the 1980s. This is because the original Patrick Troughton UNIT stories were set then, and to be internally consistent all the others had to be as well. However, by the time Peter Davison took over the role of the Doctor, the script editor either forgot or chose to ignore this, as in MAWDRYN UNDEAD the Brigadier is seen to be retired and teaching maths at the time of the Queen's Jubilee, which took place in 1977.

The Zygons land in a disused quarry and put the ship on half power to prevent its detection. The Doctor, to get a signal to the Brig, does the equivalent of sticking his finger in an electric socket, pondering the question: "Is half power lethal?" If I dwell on how well Tom Baker portrays these scenes of agony it is partly because this was something Jon Pertwee didn't do very well--Pertwee actually looked comical with his eyes crossed and bulging--but Baker is absolutely believable in these sequences.

Fortunately, the Doctor survives. He frees the real Duke, Caber and Nurse Lamont and uses his sonic screwdriver to heat a fire sensor to lure the Zygons out of the control room. Once there he activates the self destruct mechanism, and with 60 seconds to spare gets everyone off the ship. It explodes just as the Brig, Sarah and Harry show up.

Broton, however, has escaped, disguised as the Duke, who is president of the Scottish Energy Commission. The real Duke mentions the First International Energy Conference is being held today close to the Thames--an ideal location for the Skarasen to strike.

UNIT surrounds the energy conference building and the Doctor and Sarah find Broton in the cellar. They fight, and Broton is shot by the Brig; but no one can locate the activator. "I can almost feel it!" the Doctor exclaims. With seconds to spare, he finds it in his pocket. Declaring "the monster must be allowed to destroy it," he tosses the device in the Thames, urging the Skarasen to "fetch it." The Skarasen chews up the device and heads back to Loch Ness, "the only home he knows."

Back in Scotland to reclaim the TARDIS, the Doctor declares: "I'm going to pilot it all the way to London. I could be there 5 minutes ago." The Brig and Harry decline to join him, but Sarah goes along.

The Duke reproves the Brig; as a Scotsman he should have gotten the Doctor's and Sarah's return rail tickets and turned them in.

Writing in her posthumously-published autobiography (Aurum 2011), Elisabeth Sladen noted, "I thought the shape-shifting Zygons themselves were pretty chilling.  You can tell when James Acheson is back in the costume department, because things got ratcheted up a notch.  Need a half a dozen giant orange-hooded suits with tentacles and octopus suckers?  Jim's your man."

"When he wasn't being the Duke, or a Zygon pretending to be the Duke, [John Woodnut] actually lived inside one of the Zygon costumes.  They were very difficult to move inside---I can still picture Jim Acheson guiding John across the room.  John didn't let it get him down; he used to tap dance on his mark."

TERROR OF THE ZYGONS is the last Tom Baker story to feature the Brigadier, although he is mentioned in passing in the later UNIT story THE ANDROID INVASION. Nicholas Courtney originally tried out for the role of Richard the Lionheart in the William Hartnell story, THE CRUSADES, but Julian Glover was cast instead. In the Hartnell story THE DALEK MASTERPLAN, Courtney played Bret Vyon, who was killed off. For the Troughton story THE WEB OF FEAR, Courtney was originally cast as Knight but at the last minute the actor who was to play Col. Lethbridge-Stewart bowed out, and that role was offered to Courtney. It led to the creation of UNIT, the promotion to Brigadier and a 2 year contract which stretched into 7 years. Courtney returned as the Brigadier for MAWDRYN UNDEAD and THE FIVE DOCTORS, both Peter Davison stories and in the McCoy story BATTLEFIELD.

The Brigadier was a popular character although, after so many years, UNIT had certainly run its course. The role was conceived as a typical military type, but over the years Courtney was allowed to supply some of his own dialogue and managed to imbue the role with a good deal of his personal charm. In particular, little nonverbal touches--reaction shots when you could literally read his mind--made the Brig endearing.

John Woodnutt, who plays Broton and the Duke of Forgill, played the Emperor in FRONTIER IN SPACE and Hibbert in SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE (both Pertwee stories); and went on to play Seron in a future Tom Baker story THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN.

Angus Lennie, who plays Angus McRannald, played Storr in the Troughton story THE ICE WARRIORS. He also played Ives, the little Scotsman in THE GREAT ESCAPE.

Keith Ashley, who plays a Zygon, played a Dalek in the Tom Baker story GENESIS OF THE DALEKS.

Bernard G. High, who plays a Corporal, played a Soldier in the Troughton story THE WEB OF FEAR.

Robert Russell, who plays Caber, played a Guard in Troughton's first story, THE POWER OF THE DALEKS.

Hugh Martin, who plays Munro, plays the Priest in the Colin Baker story VENGEANCE ON VAROS.

Bruce Wightman, who plays the Radio Operator, played William De Tornebu in THE CRUSADES and Scott in THE DALEK MASTERPLAN (both Hartnell stories).