Review of The Zygon Invasion
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This is one of those stories in which misdirection is the order of the day, and which on subsequent viewings doesn’t necessarily become clearer. At least, not without the second half of the story, which is yet to come.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

In other words, this is your fair warning that I have some oddball theories this week, so prepare to be inundated with my evidence. (Next week you can mock me mercilessly when I turn out to be completely wrong, but for now I’m going to pretend I’ve come up with the most brilliant fan theory of the series to date.)

Before I get into my speculative musings, though, let’s start with the more relatable mystery of which Osgood is which. Before the credits even roll, we see the surviving Osgood (who now wears question marks, whether on her lapels like the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Doctors each did, or on her replica of the Seventh Doctor’s vest) scrambling to escape capture. Hiding under the sheriff’s desk, she makes use of her inhaler. “Ah-ha!” we all crowed. “That’s the human Osgood! Zygon Osgood was the one Missy vaporized!”

Even the Doctor backed up our assumption, trying to help this Osgood come to grips with her identity. “Zygons need to keep the human original alive to refresh the body print. If you were a Zygon, you’d have changed back within days of your sister’s death.” But we’ve already seen these Zygons do something others have never done before: they can use mental images to take on a human form. (I’m kind of getting tired of Moffat’s finger in every goddamn pie, rearranging things to suit his own agenda. Yes, change is part of the show, and they have to keep things fresh. Still don’t like it.)

It is during this same conversation that we get the Series Arc Anvil dropped on our heads. Osgood tells us she rejects the very premise of the question of which Osgood she is. “I am human and Zygon.” The Doctor looks thoughtfully apprehensive and replies, “Like a hybrid.”

Okay, yes. We’ve got it. This series’ Big Bad is some sort of hybrid, and the Doctor will see that bogey man around every corner until it sneaks up behind him in the finale, taps him on the shoulder, and says “boo!” I’m over it now, and intend to ignore the arc completely until said trap is sprung in another four or five episodes.

But the real story here goes back to the misdirection I mentioned up top. From the get-go, we know that anyone we see could be a Zygon. There are clearly factions among them, as the current High Command get kidnapped off their school playground. (I love, by the way, that writer Peter Harness turns our expectations on their head here. We’ve come to believe that the Doctor is just wacky enough to see a threat where none exists (e.g., the big ol’ rabbit in Day of the Doctor—also referenced in this episode), so the fact that he pegs two small schoolgirls as high-level Zygons feeds right into that idea. Except then they turn out really to be Zygons, and we see that the Doctor wasn’t actually being silly those other times after all.)

The piece that really got me thinking, though, was when the rebels (for lack of a better designation) executed the High Command (and thank Prime they had the good sense to have Jemima and Claudette “normalize” first, because can you even imagine the (justified) uproar if they’d allowed a couple of little kids to get murdered on screen?). Yes, there’s a moment of “uh oh, shit just got real” there, but the part that fascinated me on second viewing was the little piles of organic matter crackling with some sort of electric discharge on the floor.

And I’d like to point out that this is the only time we see anyone become such a pile.

In short, I am proposing that every pile of remains we see thereafter is the remains of a Zygon, not of a human. (Nice crackpot theory, eh?) Think about it. When the Doctor accompanies the UNIT troops to the occupied village in Turmezistan, we never see anyone change form. We have to infer whether the “hostages” or the “troops” are representing themselves honestly—or maybe neither of them are. Is commander Norlander a Zygon? All we know for sure is that someone gets turned into fuzzballs.

Later, when poor Jac gets roped into Bonnie’s trap (notice how “Clara” arranges that whole thing: “I need to swing by home and grab a couple of things,” then discover the kid getting snatched, find the underground cave by manipulating goo in the lift controls, suggest reinforcements, surround her enemies), the faux Clara tells her troops to “kill the traitors.” Why would a Zygon see humans as traitors? Isn’t it more likely that Jac and her UNIT troops were Zygons from the “live in peace” faction? They end up as frizzy piles of death, but what did they start as?

Then there’s the situation in New Mexico (note again that it’s Bonnie-as-Clara who informs Kate, Jac, and the Doctor that Truth or Consequences is the name of a town there). I’ll admit I fully expected the sheriff to be a Zygon, so the ambush of Kate at the end didn’t surprise me. And in retrospect, we still have no idea whether the frizzy piles of death in the dumpsters were human or Zygon remains. My money’s on Zygon for that, though it’s on Kate at the end.

While one of the two women clearly doesn’t make it out of the sheriff’s office alive, I don’t think it’s Kate who bit the dust. She’s clever enough to figure out how Zygon tech works, and to tell the commander what she wants to hear in order to buy herself more time. Just because we’re used to seeing Zygons take on human shapes at the drop of a hat doesn’t mean that’s what happened this time.

So despite Bonnie’s dire claims of the deaths of Clara, Kate, and pretty much all of UNIT, I don’t believe it for a moment. There’s too much Zygon politicking happening for things to be so straightforward. Besides, there’s an entire second episode left in which to mess with our minds, and Moffat’s a cowriter. There will be shenanigans. Mark my words.