REVIEW: Doctor Who Spin-off: Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough

Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough – Lauren and Michael; credit: dailymotion.com

As I was doing research for the last staff slideshow, I came across something quite interesting under the Zygon listing on tardis.wikia.com. Here is the excerpt:

"They also had the ability to create a process to transform members of other species into Zygons, with the side effect of creating a telepathic link between the new Zygon and the one that induced the change. (HOMEVID: Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough)"

From this description, and skimming its wiki page, I gleaned that Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough is not part of Doctor Who canon. It seems possible, however, that ‘The Zygon Invasion’ and ‘The Zygon Inversion’ very well could have taken vague inspiration from the movie. For one thing, there are hybrids. And while they don’t have stasis pods, they keep a link with a usually unconscious human by attaching a… thing to the back of their neck. Naturally, I had to further investigate this “home video.”

I found Zygon: WBYJIE in three parts on Dailymotion. What I witnessed was, indeed, not canonical, but it was interesting. Especially since there was just as much sex (if not more so) and a greater level of nudity than Torchwood. While Zygon: WBYJIE was released in 2008, it was filmed in 2003. This technically predates Torchwood, which premiered in 2006.

** Spoiler Warning ** The following is my synopsis of Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough:

Two Zygons, Torlakh and Kritakh, are living on Earth as Bob Calhoun and Michael Kirkwood, respectively. Their mission is to change the planet’s atmosphere to be more suitable for Zygons. After eighteen years, however, Michael gets to the point where he practically forgets that he is a Zygon. He confides in his doctor, Lauren Anderson, that he has disturbing dreams about being “a monster.”

Torlakh (as Bob) violently pressures Lauren to attempt to get Michael to remember his true identity. She goes to the police and learns that Bob is wanted for multiple murders.

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Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough – Michael and Torlakh (as Bob); credit: dailymotion.com

After some medical tests, Lauren determines that Michael is not human. Just when they seem to be getting somewhere, her boss puts her on leave due to stress. Now that she is no longer Michael’s doctor, they are free to explore their obvious romantic feelings for one another. The two begin a passionate relationship.

One night, Michael strangles Lauren while he is having a night terror and they break up. Her roommate, Ray, comforts her, but he’s actually Torlakh. She finds ray dead in his room with his throat slit. She then discovers the thing on the back of her neck. Torlakh emerges as Bob and tells her the truth about him and Kritakh. He shows her human Bob’s naked, unconscious body sitting at her dining room table.

Was human Bob’s presence necessary to convince Lauren that Torlakh’s story was true? Probably. Did he need to be nude? No. There is a lot of inconsistency in this movie with the clothing. Sometimes the Zygons steal a human’s clothes and other times the clothes materialize when they morph. I appreciate that they bothered to have Kritakh ponder where the clothes come from when they do just appear. They did not provide an answer, though.

When Torlakh is not satisfied with Lauren’s work, he offers to turn her into a Zygon hybrid with the idea that a better understanding of Zygons will help her achieve her goal. She resists at first, but Torlakh’s appeal to her love for Michael causes her to reluctantly agree to the transformation.

Torlakh then convinces Lauren to steal the identity of a handsome, well-dressed, affluent man. She goes on a shopping spree, then to the man’s home, and there has sex with the his female partner. She has a great time, but feels guilty about it.

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Lauren takes the form of her colleague, Joanna, to try to get her job back… which leads to sex with their boss. She reveals to Michael that she is a Zygon. They try to alert the police about “Bob,” but the officer turns out to be Torlakh because he knew about their plan through a psychic connection with her. Torlakh pulls a gun on her, but Michael, as his superior officer, orders him not to shoot. She hits Torlakh over the head and she and Michael flee.

An officer tries to arrest Lauren for the murder of Ray, but she stuns him unconscious. She takes the officer’s form and tells the police that Bob is stalking Michael. But, of course, Torlakh finds them and attempts to manipulate Michael.

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Zygon: When Being You Just Isn’t Enough – Torlakh; credit: dailymotion.com

Michael soon leaves Lauren again because he is disturbed that she is enjoying being a Zygon in some ways. He goes back to Torlakh to continue their mission. Lauren stops them and convinces Michael to come with her. They find the real Michael and Bob (unconscious and naked), break the Zygon connections, and bring them to the hospital. Because the real Michael is dying, Kritakh takes Bob’s form.

Torlakh frames Lauren for mass murder at the hospital. This is when the plot unravels somewhat. She runs into Michael’s hospital room where we find the supposedly dying man inexplicably awake and walking around. She goes home and stays there for a while. Why the police don’t come to look for her there, I have no idea.

Torlakh soon shows up and Lauren shoots him. He remains in her form after death and he is shown being placed into a body bag. Lauren watches this crime scene in broad daylight within relatively close eyeshot of the surrounding group of people, then continues to walk around in public as herself. It ends with her on the phone with Kritakh. What is their plan? Eh, whatever. What happened to the human Michael and Bob? Eh, who cares?

The only connection that Zygon: WBYJIE has to Doctor Who is that there are Zygons. The movie is very low budget and we rarely see the Zygons in their true forms. Despite these factors, it actually turned out fairly well. For a B movie, the writing and acting were usually decent. They got around the budget issue by making some of the special effects artsy, which particularly worked during dream sequences.

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Next: Review: UNIT: Extinction (Doctor Who Audio Spin-Off)

One does not even have to have seen Doctor Who to appreciate or understand Zygon: WBYJIE. Check it out as a Whovian or show it to your non-Whovian friends who are into B movies.