Peter Harness presents 24,
WITH ALIENS!!
A consistent problem with this
series format has been the decision to make every episode a two-parter. While
it gives Moffat and his team more time to develop story, it has lead to 30
minutes of snoozing for every opening episode.
Case in point, The Zygon
Invasion should be an all out action episode, but Harness has to stretch it to
two making it entirely too wordy for a family show. Other issues show
themselves through this problem; the world is in peril so the Doctor abandons
the TARDIS for the far slower UNIT plane, with some stupid explanation. He
could get inside the Zygon base in a matter of seconds in his ship, but he
decides to take a plane for the sake of meeting the episode’s run time.
Look, I’m sure that this is
going to pay off in next week’s episode, but I’m really tired of that being the
way it is. Why should I, or any loyal viewer, have to sit through a load of
set-up lines and plots that are going to end up making up 50% of the series?
The stupid thing is that this is the mid point of the series and actually the
ideal place for a two-parter. But as it happens, I’m now so fed up “to be
continued” that I can’t tell you whether or not the episode suffers majorly for
this issue.
No, scratch that actually I
can tell you; I would not be complaining about the two-part nature of this
episode, were it an isolated incident. Harness does everything right for a
continuing story; he sets up the stakes, he delivers a cliff-hanger and he
establishes the villains. But the whole thing is undermined by the notion that
you as a viewer are just going through the motions; it makes it task to sit
through the episode.
I take major exception with
some other issues in the episode too. Osgood is back, which I see as an incredibly
cowardly move by Moffat. In American TV shows like Arrow, Smallville and Star
Trek, titular and popular characters have what are referred to as character
shields. This basically means that an extra can be killed with one punch, but
Oliver Queen can get impaled and survive (spoiler alert by the way). I didn’t
expect such lazy fan-pandering from Moffat and I was very disappointed when it
was announced that Osgood would be returning. This isn’t because I didn’t like
her, but precisely because I did like her. Killing off a character you like is
a really good way to keep the audience emotionally involved (look at Game of
Thrones). Aside from that there’s a
pretty significant alteration to the way that the Zygon abilities operate
that’s also given a premium BS explanation.
But, like I said, these are
things I could probably get over were I not aware of the annoyingness of the
format.
Not really much else to say;
ably performed by the cast and crew; not a bad episode by any stretch, but
suffering for the larger decisions at play.
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