Guaranteed to infuriate anyone who likes to refer to Doctor Who stories with acronyms, this week’s ‘The Zygon Inversion’ was the conclusion of the two-part tale which began with ‘The Zygon Invasion’.

With the Doctor granted a pivotal speech on the futility of war, Clara was also busy; first entrapped and then manipulating “Bonnie”, her Zygon doppelganger.

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> Buy Season 9 on Blu-ray on Amazon.

Of course, pacifist sentiments are nothing new to Doctor Who and doppelgangers are a sci-fi staple, so here are a few suggestions from the Time Lord’s back catalogue that you might enjoy…

 

‘Battlefield’ (1989)

While it had some faults ‘Battlefield’, which opened the original run’s final season, also dealt with the futility of war. The conclusion granted Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor a tremendous speech as he persuades Morgaine that there is no honour in unleashing a nuclear weapon.

Of course, it is also memorable for the return of UNIT and the Brigadier, and had us all believing that he was going to die saving the world from The Destroyer.

 

‘Planet of the Daleks’ (1973)

While the Doctor commonly takes a pacifist stance, when he is not employing his Venusian aikido, ‘Planet of the Daleks’ saw him voice it in a touching scene at the story’s end; as the Thals are about to depart, he implores them not to glamorise their victory against the Daleks, but rather to tell the stories of those who died.

 

‘The Rebel Flesh’ / ‘The Almost People’ (2011)

In more recent times we have seen plenty of duplicates with the introduction of the “Flesh” technology. Used as disposable bodies for work in dangerous conditions, the TARDIS crew became involved in the Gangers’ fight for rights.

Proving not all doppelgangers are bad, we were introduced to a Flesh version of the Eleventh Doctor and enjoyed some amusing scenes between the par before his inevitable heroic sacrifice… and then a jaw-dropping ending.

 

Continued on next page…