Terror of the Zygons Part Four

The one where the Loch Ness Monster swims up the Thames...

The Duke of Forgill is apparently Chieftain of the Antlers Association, which is not some sort of Masonic-style secret membership club for noblemen of the Scottish Highlands as you might expect, but actually a private bar in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (it's true, Google it!). The Duke is a man of many facets, obviously. Sarah's research also unearths the fact the Duke is trustee of the Golden Haggis Lucky Dip (whatever that is) and president of the Scottish Energy Commission. It's worth knowing, that is...

The Zygon ship makes its merry way down south, headed for London where the monsters can create havoc and thus take over the world (somehow). The Zygons use a jamming device to switch off every piece of radar equipment in the UK so that their ship can pass unnoticed as it flies from Scotland to Brentford. The Zygons are very keen on not being seen, whether it's their spaceship or the Skarasen crossing Tullock Moor (I still don't understand why the Skarasen needed to cross the moor for all those centuries).

Terror of the Zygons Part Three

The one where UNIT goes Zygon-hunting...

OK, so despite me lavishing praise on the Skarasen's realisation in episode 2, it does actually look rather silly in this third episode. Its eyes swivel rather randomly, and when it looms over the Doctor with its giant flipper, it looks nothing other than comical.

The Skarasen is apparently a cyborg, a hybrid of half-animal and half-machine (which bit produces the lactic fluid, I wonder?). The word cyborg was coined in 1960 by scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, but the idea of a half-mammal, half-machine creature stems back as far as the 19th century, in Edgar Allan Poe's The Man That Was Used Up (1843), and really took off in science-fiction literature in works such as Jean de La Hire's Nyctalope and the works of Edmond Hamilton. But the word itself was very fresh by 1975, so all credit to Robert Banks Stewart for having his finger on the pulse.