Doctor Blue by Richard English 9/12/21
Back in the mists of ancient time (well, the early 1990s) Doctor Who's future was in doubt. With the programme left in limbo by a cash-strapped and largely indifferent BBC, Virgin books stepped in to carry the torch with their officially licenced novel range. Ben Aaronovitch appalled us with his William Gibson-esque Transit, Andrew Cartmel bored us with his War trilogy, Mark "Oooh, I've seen more classic British sci-fi/horror films than you" Gatiss did his best to prove he'd seen more classic British sci-fi/horror films than us, while Paul Cornell and Lawrence Miles took it upon themselves to lay the foundations for a renaissance in Who literature that never really happened. But despite the highs and, let's be honest, frequent lows of the good Doctor's adventures in print, fans still wanted more. Would we ever again see our favourite Time Lord back on screen where he belonged?
Our prayers were sort-of answered when a number of independent, unofficial fan films began springing up, made by well-connected aficionados and starring the show's more celebrated alumni (and Colin Baker). Some got the rights to use companions or monsters direct from their creators, but naturally the Doctor, the TARDIS, Daleks and Cybermen were strictly Out Of Bounds. It goes without saying most of these stories were utter crap [coughs * Downtime * coughs], but better an amateur, Doctor-lite adventure than nothing at all. After the Paul McGann TV movie came and went, the only succour left was the prospect of more low-budget fare, only this time with even lesser Who-related actors with nothing better to do.
It's a different story now, of course. In the sixteen years since the programme made its triumphant return to TV, there simply isn't the demand for these DIY jobs anymore. In addition to the Doctor's small-screen adventures we've got the Big Finish audio dramas, BBC novels (now with reduced word count!), video games, toys, stationary; what more could you possibly ask for?
How about a straight-to-DVD sci-fi/horror/soft-porn psychological thriller featuring '70s favourites the Zygons before they made their official comeback in The Day of the Doctor?
From my exhaustive, peerless research (all right, Wikipedia), I understand this bizarre, utterly unexpected addition to the fan film canon went into production a full two years before Russell T Davies had every man, woman and child the length and breadth of the country engaged in feverish discussion about the significance of Bad Wolf. The fact that Zygon didn't emerge for another five years is unfortunate since the utterly woeful and hopelessly misguided Torchwood ended up stealing its thunder in the 'adult Who' (i.e., horny adolescent) market. Director Bill Baggs, however, should take some small comfort in knowing he's produced the only spin-off of the world's longest-running sci-fi series to feature both male and female full-frontal nudity.
Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough, (very '60s Esquire) opens with Michael Kirkwood (Daniel Harcourt) visiting psychiatrist Lauren Anderson (Jo Castleton) and describing a recurring nightmare he's actually a shape-changing alien. When Lauren invokes Freud and suggests this is most likely a power fantasy, Michael (or rather Harcourt) manages to keep a remarkably straight face with the reply, "I'm an electrician; I spend all day working with power. You don't mess with it." This bizarre non-sequitur appears to make sense to Lauren, and as Michael leaves it's kind of implied from their awkward eye contact there's a sexual chemistry between them that'll justify the film's 18 certificate.
A short time later, Lauren is accosted by a mysterious older man (Keith Drinkel) with the distinctly Hill Street Blues-ish name of Bob Calhoun. He curtly instructs her to help Michael discover his true identity before vanishing down one of the clinic's strangely labyrinthine, identikit corridors. Lauren is visibly shaken by the encounter - so much so, in fact, that in the next scene she finds herself staring at fellow doctor Joanna's breasts while they share the staff changing room, presumably hoping to find the meaning of the mystery man's words in her colleague's ample cleavage. After gently reprimanding Lauren for this unwanted attention, Joanna acknowledges that, yes, she does have a nice bosom and they have a conversation about breasts and sex. This is cut short, however, when Baggs realises he isn't Fellini or Tinto Brass, so the dialogue abruptly shifts gear to a discussion about Michael. Lauren is convinced she can help him, Joanna says she obviously fancies him, and... Well, I dunno, really: I drifted off a bit at this point. All I know is we get more psycho-guff with Michael, Bob pops up again spouting pretentious, threatening nonsense, and the script suddenly evolves into an episode of the BBC daytime soap opera Doctors when Lauren gets put on forced leave by a Jeremy Corbyn lookalike. This turns out to be a stroke of luck for Lauren since it allows her to sidestep the thorny issue of professional misconduct by accepting Michael's offer for a date. And before you can say 'cack-handed montage', the well-lubricated couple are back at Lauren's apartment where her flatmate Ray has helpfully pre-empted the next plot development by taping a condom to her bedroom door.
The first sex scene is a low-key, tastefully shot affair reminiscent of those Lover's Guide videos that were all the rage back in the early '90s. It almost made me feel bad for writing off this whole enterprise as an exploitative, soft-porn job; but then we get the morning after, and Baggs wastes no time filling the screen with dangly, wobbly and hairy bits, almost as if to say, "LOOK WHAT I DID! I GOT PEOPLE BONKING IN DOCTOR WHO!" Thankfully, though, the skin parade gets cut short when Michael has a flashback to his dream and attempts to strangle Lauren. She fights him off, and a despondent Michael is left to put some bloody clothes on and leave while Lauren seeks comfort from the not-at-all camp Ray. 'Course, she soon discovers Ray has been violently murdered, whereupon the person she assumed to be her flatmate suddenly morphs into Bob and knocks her unconscious. When she wakes up, she discovers a small biomechanical device attached to the back of her neck. Bob reveals he's a Zygon called Torlakh and he's been sent to Earth on a special mission (although, strangely, he doesn't actually tell her what it is, which you'd think would be at the forefront of Lauren's mind at this point). He then offers her the chance to become a shape-changing, starfishy creature like him. Lauren accepts, and before you know it she takes on the form of a wealthy businessman, goes on a spending spree using his credit cards and ends up shagging the guy's wife. Well, you would, wouldn't you?
In contrast to the previous sex scene, this one is shot much more like a Television X production: soft electro-jazz on the soundtrack, bobbing heads, sweaty hands clawing at lingerie, groaning and gasping... Strange, then, that it's not in the least bit erotic. Framed from the perspective of Lauren masquerading as the businessman, it almost brings to mind those obligatory work-out sequences in Jean Claude Van Damme movies; we're asked to admire the bulging veins and rippling muscles, but the exercise equipment itself is entirely ephemeral. Having said that, we could get into a whole discussion here about the Male Gaze and how Baggs sort-of subverts it by having a woman disguised as a man engaging in heterosexual sex, which in actuality makes it homosexual yet still focusses itself through the prism of male hetero-normative desire - but I suspect that wasn't really a serious consideration when the scene was carelessly grafted onto Lance Parkin and Jonathan Blum's original script. Now if it had been Michael or Bob disguising themselves as a member of the opposite sex and getting it on with someone else's husband that really would've been interesting.
Michael! God, we forgot all about him, didn't we? Don't worry, he's still here: delivering ridiculous lines and having a moody conversation with Lauren when she gets back. In her new form, Bob hopes she'll be in a better position to get her confused beau to discover who he really is. As it happens, though, it ends up being Bob who does that. In a sequence that's more Highlander: Endgame than The Third Man, Bob takes Michael up to a rooftop and explains that the hapless electrician is really Kritakh, part of a Zygon taskforce who landed on Earth over twenty years ago as the advanced guard for an invasion. (Whether or not they're connected to the cell the Fourth Doctor encountered in Terror of the Zygons is left unexplained, but it's enough Baggs managed to licence the monsters from Robert Banks Stewart without having to work in all that tricky continuity stuff. Besides, it saves more time for the knobbing.) The plan, it seems, was to pollute the Earth with chemicals and make it more like the Zygon home world until Michael went rogue and forgot his real identity. Bob does his best Darth Vader/Satan impression, offering Michael Unimaginable Power (TM) if he comes back to the fold, but the latter just wants a quiet life with Lauren and rejects the offer. Naturally, this makes Bob angry. So angry, in fact, that he lets Michael go and decides to get Lauren out of the picture by taking her form and killing big-breasted Joanna, videotaping the whole thing for the police to find.
At this point, I couldn't help wondering why Torlakh continues to use Bob Calhoun's identity when the real McCoy is actually a wanted killer. Surely he'd choose another form - say, someone who isn't a known murderer - so he doesn't have to skulk around in the shadows the whole time. But then, as we've already seen, logic clearly isn't his strong suit. His scheme to frame Lauren works, sending the police on a wild goose chase after her, but then there's that pesky problem of her shape-changing abilities to deal with - which wouldn't now have become an issue if he hadn't inexplicably given them to her in the first place. Nope, can't say I understand Bob/Torlakh's thought processes as a villain, unless he's so bloody desperate to get the plan for world domination under way that he's just happy to be doing something - anything - to set the wheels in motion, no matter how idiotic.
In the meantime, Lauren and Michael discover the unconscious bodies of the real Michael Kirkwood and Bob. This section of the plot is ultimately pointless because we know that despite Lauren's suggestion that Kritakh let the innocent Kirkwood go so he can have an ordinary life, she's not going to want to shag her Zygon paramour if he takes the balding, middle-aged Bob's form instead. So, of course, Kritakh has no choice but to stay on as Michael (them's the breaks!) and promptly disappears from the narrative with the real Bob's body in time for Lauren's final confrontation with Torlakh. This takes place back at Lauren's flat, where our incompetent bad guy offers her the chance to take Michael/Kritakh's place in the invasion plan. Lauren refuses, which, in the dumbest in a series of dumb moves, prompts Torlakh to take on her form in an attempt at mockery. Lauren then shoots him dead with a gun she acquired earlier in a scene I can't quite recall, leaving Torlak's corpse locked in her identity. The film ends with Lauren slipping away into the crowd after watching the police remove 'her' dead body, prompting us to reflect on the irony that after all that pointless nudity and bonking we at least got to see one stiffy, even if it wasn't the kind we were expecting.
You know, as a sometime Doctor Who fan, I admit there have been times I look at Barbara, Polly, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane, Leela, Romana I, Rose, Bill Potts and even Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and find myself wondering what other, erm, 'functions' the sonic screwdriver has. But the fact is, I've never wanted to see those fantasies enacted on-screen because Doctor Who, by its very nature, is a celebration of innocent wonder. It can be action-packed, scary, thought-provoking, joyful or tragic, which means it can also, to a certain degree, actually be quite sexy - but not sexualised. There's a big difference between the two, and this, in my humble opinion, is where Torchwood went wrong in its cynical assumption that forcing two characters together in the middle of a jam and getting one of them to comment about feeling the other's hard-on pressing into them is in some way overtly dramatic or 'adult'. It just doesn't fit into the Doctor Who universe, which is exactly the same problem we find with Zygon. You've got a classic monster, a fairly interesting sub-Kafkaesque/Cronenbergian concept about the fluidity of identity, and yet the film seems a lot more interested on selling itself on the characters' pink bits. That said, if there is a Who-fetish subculture out there, they'd probably be better off sticking to the straight-forward porn of Abducted by the Daloids; now there's a fan film that knows exactly what it wants to be without tying itself in knots over its genre pedigree.
Buuut, despite the ham-fistedness of its execution and the entirely ephemeral nature of the production, I can't bring myself to write Zygon off as an abject failure. For 58 gloriously loopy, sometimes even infuriating minutes, we find ourselves watching a genuine phenomenon: fans of varying professional status taking it upon themselves to add a little something to one of the world's most popular, most beloved franchises. In many ways, Zygon is a swansong to the so-called 'Wilderness Era' of Doctor Who, where, free from the restraints of television production, no new direction was unwelcome, and every attempt at a continuation was treated with the same gravity. True, Wartime, Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, Downtime, Auton and Zygon were never going to be nominated for Hugo Awards, but that wasn't really the point. If it wasn't for Baggs and co. keeping the dream, alive we wouldn't have had Dalek, The Empty Child, The Waters of Mars or The Doctor's Wife to show the nay-sayers and critics that Doctor Who still had the inventiveness and originality to entertain audiences well into a new century. For that alone, Zygon deserves at least some respect.