Season 13: Terror of the Zygons

Doctor Who never scared me - it thrilled me! Even as a child I watched it without feeling the need to leap behind the sofa. Instead I revelled in all those monsters and slime and robots and everything else. Yet I think that one of the scariest moments in any iteration of the programme is the end of episode one of this story when we see a Zygon for the first time. It is something to do with the fact that, as well as  the appearance of the creature being grotesque anyway – a cross between an embryo and a sea horse- it has its mouth wide open and Sarah’s scream is given a slight echo and mixed into the end sting when the theme music starts. Somewhere in the land of What-if there is a period of Doctor Who called the Banks Stewart Era when the writer Robert Banks- Stewart took over the series and every story was delivered with same brio as `Terror of the Zygons` and `Seeds of Doom`. It would be full of hard action, vicious antagonists, quirky characters and lashings of richly swirling Geoffrey Burgon incidental music. In the event though we have just ten episodes with these ingredients but they do stand out even from their much admired fellow stories this season. Unbelievably `Terror` was supposed to end season twelve - can you imagine this story being shown in the summer?

 

Robert Banks Stewart

Robert Banks Stewart, who has died aged 84, is best known for creating both Bergerac and Shoestring, a couple of inventive crime dramas but we Doctor Who fans hold him in high regard for his two classic stories `Terror of the Zygons” and `Seeds of Doom`. They also happen to two of my all time favourite stories which I recall enraptured a whole generation when first shown in the 1975 -76 season which must rank as the overall most consistently good season in the series’ history. Both manage to conjure up a slightly different take on the series than the other stories that season. Robert Banks Stewart seemed eager to push the show into a harder world with storylines that grew from everyday preoccupations of the time. He put a spin on old ideas- and sometimes the best Doctor Who does that- be they the Loch Ness Monster or plants taking over. Because they were largely made by the same team they are similar in production values and drawn together by Geoffrey Burgon’s elegant fluid scores. By way of a little tribute, here’s a piece I recently penned for an upcoming project about `Terror of the Zygons` though I should point out I love `Seeds of Doom` equally!