Z-67

[llywela]

There were certain things I didn't like about Doctor Who's recent Zygon two-parter. This little missing scene story is the result.

Title: Z-67
Show: Doctor Who
Author: llywela13
Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Osgood, Clara Oswald, Harry Sullivan (mentions thereof)
Spoilers: Missing scene from The Zygon Inversion. When the crisis is over, Osgood has a question to ask. Companion piece to Smoke and Mirrors
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The Doctor, his TARDIS and his companions belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.

Follow the fake cut to the story at my other journal

Also archived at A03 | Teaspoon

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I sort of needed to watch the ep again for bits like the Harry bit that I'd already forgotten... Good writing though, cos I want to slap your Clara as well... *g*

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Haha, and here I was flattering myself that I hadn't allowed my dislike of Clara to show! I guess just keeping her in-character was enough to do it...:D

I disliked this episode rather a lot. The plot was a mess, the premise deeply flawed, and it threw a 40-year-old character under the bus for absolutely no reason whatsoever. So I decided to set the record straight. Plus...it's a Chekhov's Gun thing. If you show the gun in the first act, it should go off in the third. The story goes to all the trouble of telling us about this gas and what it does, who supposedly invented it, how it got stolen, etc, but then never actually goes anywhere with it. The gun never goes off. The story needed to do something with the concept of the gas to give it dramatic and narrative purpose. If the gas wasn't going to actually be brought into the story, then there was absolutely no reason for the Harry backstory on it. It was just character assassination for no purpose. So the other way to give it dramatic and narrative purpose was to introduce a twist in the tail (Moffat loves those, after all) and say that the gas never existed in the first place, it was all a big set-up - which ties in perfectly with the resolution of the story. And see how easy it was, just a few short sentences to round off the story of the gas, redeem what the episode did to Harry, and honour the relationship he actually had with the Doctor.

Shame the writer of the actual episode was relying on cliff notes for his continuity references, rather than actual knowledge.