I had to watch the Terror Of The Zygons on Dailymotion today. The library has the dvd but I'm far down the list and it won't drop into my mitts for several weeks. Rather than wait I watched it on DM. Not to bad a picture, but the streaming kept getting interupted. I don't know if it's the site or Comcast. The serial is the 80th and it's the first of the 13th season. It aired from August 30 to September 20 1975 and there were 4 parts.
The story starts with an oil rig being destroyed. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) calls the Doctor in to help. At the end of the last episode the Tardis gang had recieved a message from the Brig and they rushed off to help. Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Slayden), Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) and the 4th Doctor (Tom Baker) arrive in the Tardis and meet up with the UNIT forces in Scotland. My favorite character Sgt Benton (John Levene) is still with the team. There have been several oil rig attacks and no one saw anything. The Doctor finds a fang print in the cement of the rigs pillars.
It turns out to belong to the Loch Ness monster wich is being controlled by the shape shifting aliens, the Zygons. The team chases after the Zygons and get caught. They escape and run some more. There's secret passages, underground hideouts and loopy plans to take over the world with the power of Nessy. Some aliens sure are dumb. Good thing, I guess. Good for a laugh, anyway. I'd give this serial a slightly better than average score. The story moved along fairly well and the props and sets were pretty good. On the other hand, the monster was pretty poorly done. The beast was kind of stiff and the green screen to make him appear with the actors just made me sad. I did like the attempt to make the Zygons ship more organic than their usual alien hardware. At least, I hope that's what they were going for. Maybe it'll explain it somewhere in the extras on the dvd. I'll have to wait to see those extras until I pop up to the top of the library queue. Usually the disc have been around enough that they rarely have more than one or three people on the queue. This disc came out last September so it's just started circulating. For some reason NetFlix doesn't have the dvd.
Comments