Hurrah! It’s time for me to write a Christmas column! Except… Well, the thing is, I’ve only just seen The Zygon Inversion. This time last year we’d just had Death in Heaven and a nice Santa-y trailer so it was all Christmas is coming! Next stop Christmas! – but right now, for me at least, there are still four episodes in the season to go, and we don’t even know the title of the Christmas Special yet. All in all, it’s way too early to think about Christmas – apart from my idle wondering if any canny manufacturer might rush out some question-mark underpants in time for the Christmas market.
So, let’s look at Zygons instead. “Why didn’t the Doctor use the machine that goes ding?” asked Non-Fan Twin, remembering that the Tenth Doctor had a very handy device that could tell Zygons from humans. “Well,” I said, thinking furiously, “either he didn’t want to risk people on Earth having technology that could derail the peace treaty, or at some point between The Day of the Doctor and now, Clara sat on it.” That was my attempt at an explanation. Goodness, children ask a lot of questions. Which is a good thing, of course. Apart from when they start to pull apart the whole idea of how the TARDIS translation circuits actually work, because it is utterly impossible to come up with a consistent explanation for that one. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind a translation circuit at home. According to Fan Twin The Zygon Inversion was ‘boss’ (possible translation: ‘awfully jolly good’) and the Zygons themselves ‘got wrecked’ (possible translation: ‘their naughty plan did not succeed’).
ILLUSTRATION: BEN MORRIS
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