Harness, Peter

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

3 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: The Zygon Invasion

A novelisation of two episodes of Doctor Who (originally scripted by Harness and Steven Moffat) featuring Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor and his companion Clara Oswald.  Twenty million shape-shifting Zygons have been living among the population of Earth for years as part of an uneasy peace brokered by the Doctor.  However, the peace begins to unravel when a splinter group of Zygons set out to unveil their hidden brethren and spark a war with humanity.

As something of a follow-up to 'The Day of the Doctor' (my favourite Who story) and featuring my favourite incarnation of the Doctor, I've always been quite fond of the televised version of these two episodes from Series 9.  Here, however, I discovered that much of my affection for those episodes hinged upon the performances of the actors involved, in particular Capaldi and Jenna Coleman as both Clara and her Zygon doppelganger Bonnie.  Without the strength of those performances some of the elements here fall a bit flat, not least the humour and the Doctor's impassioned speech about the nature of war.

So what we're left with is a bit of a mixed bag, with some really interesting core ideas like the conflict of Zygons being forced to live a lie but also some fairly awkward filler moments (the badly is-this-an-80s-action-movie named Turmezistan, for example).  All that said, the messaging of the Doctor helping others through the same 'push a button and commit genocide' decision that he made in his previous lives resonates really nicely.

3 out of 5

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