The second half of “Empty Vessels”, or the other two-thirds I guess, is “Lure of the Zygons”, a two part/two hour story that similarly deals with a spooky abandoned space craft but throws in some Zygons for some extra flavour. Well… sort of, honestly this felt just like the previous story in being rather bland, thankfully inoffensive, but still just that little bit too predictable and meandering to stand out. Let’s take a look…
Much like the previous story, this one kicks off with The Doctor (Paul McGann), Liv (Nicola Walker) and Helen (Hattie Morahan) finding a distress call from a, well, empty vessel, in this case one that had already crashed onto a planet. Our main crew meets a group of space junkers led by its Captain in Shay Elhan (Nisha Nayar) who is actually here for another reason: her sister Wren (Maddison Bulleyment) had gone missing and her ship is the one stranded on the planet. There are a lot of issues with Part 1 here, half of the story is a framing device where Helen is talking to Liv, who is waking up from being knocked out and relating what she remembers only it couldn’t have been any more obvious she was talking to a Zygon disguised as Helen that you’re just waiting to either hear more of the actual story or for Liv to finally realise what’s going on. Meanwhile the actual story is just The Doctor, Liv and Shay walking around the ship, the former seeing Zygon-like organic circuits and the skeletal remains of the Skarasen yet somehow not twigging that the Zygons were about until right towards the end of the part. Helen befriends one of the other crewmembers but is betrayed when he gets freaked out, leading to Helen being captured and her Zygon duplicate shocking Liv unconscious and kidnap her as everyone else is leaving the ship so the past story can catch up with the framing device. It’s just a lot of nothing really.
The Doctor and Shay do find Wren in a Zygon duplicator machine and save her (along with Helen later), but the younger Elhan claims that her crew were wiped out by crazed monsters on the planet’s surface and that her ship was already destroyed and this was the Zygon’s ship trying to transform into her craft and use its rare lightspeed technology but failing as the ship only responds to her. This leads to the ship taking off with Liv on board, doomed to explode when they try and use it…
If this had been cut down to an hour and the framing device removed it might have worked better, but even still there wasn’t a lot going for it. The guest characters aren’t much more than a single personality trait each, which in a two hour story there’s no excuse for, the Zygons weren’t all that threatening, and really their plan all that clear. I don’t want to be too negative, it was perfectly fine to listen to, but so unremarkable that the bits it got wrong are about the bits that stand out to talk about…
The Continuity:
What’s that? “There were definitely Zygons in this story”? Well… yeah, I know. What an odd thing to say…
The Zygons first appeared in Fourth Doctor classic “Terror of the Zygons” and have since appeared on TV, on audio and in books and comics many times, including even several other times against and alongside the Eighth Doctor. They’ve definitely reached Dalek and Cyberman level of me not being able to list all their appearances in this section anyway! I will mention Eighth Doctor audio “The Zygon Who Fell To Earth” and Eleventh Doctor 50th anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor” though, as they both feature Zygons who end up liking the human life after copying it for so long and becoming “good”.
Overall Thoughts:
“Lure of the Zygons” is a pretty bland story, especially in the first half which is full of an extremely predictable framing device and The Doctor not figuring out the obvious, almost as if the Zygons being in it was supposed to be a surprise, but you know, if you name the story “Lure of the Zygons” and have a Zygon front and centre of the cover it’s hard to pull a surprise reveal… Anyway, nothing too offensive, but nothing too exciting either, making for a rather bland and flat boxset overall, sadly.
As The Doctor, Helen and the Elhans head back to Shay’s ship we find out that the feral beasts on the planet were Zygons who had hatched while there was no Skarasen around and therefore became feral, which is at least a fun idea. On the Zygon ship Liv has a few heart-to-hearts with the Zygon who was pretending to be Helen who then turns into Wren to try and control the ship, saying she likes this form but with Liv pointing out that there’s a difference between looking like someone with access to their memories and actually being that person who has those memories and can feel them emotionally. The Doctor manages to convince the Elhans to dock with the enemy ship but they run into trouble when they find out the feral Zygons have come on board, but the Doctor gets Liv to play live Skarasen sounds from the Zygon ship to soothe them until they get to the TARDIS, allowing them to escape just before the Zygons destroy it, hatchlings and all.
The Zygon Wren tries to activate the ship via Wren’s memories (as that’s how it works, oddly) but is having trouble due to what Liv said about feeling a memory and the whole experience soon shows her how wonderful a life Wren has lived and how she is more comfortable as her, to the point where she willingly betrays her two fellow Zygons and joins The Doctor, Liv, Helen and the Elhans on the TARDIS, leaving her kin to die as the ship explodes. Zygon-Wren is looking forward to further adventures, but I assume the Elhans and the Zygon would have been dropped off by the time of the next boxset…
Hogan Reviews 