Mission Report by UNIT Agent Bill Filer to Trap One - Subject matter: (Zygon: When being you just isn't enough)

This is a story that keeps popping up in discussions, mostly it seems as a source of ridicule - I might even be the most guilty of bringing it up any chance I get. But thinking about it, it is probably a full decade since I last actually watched it - so guess what I did last night?

What mostly gets brought up about this story is nudity and the soft porn, but as our resident TARDIS Guide Swede @Tian recently said, it is on par with a great deal of Nordic films. It isn't that excessive when it comes down to it, with only two sexual encounters. The first shows Lauren and Mike getting closer to each other after they have had a long affection for each other but have been unable to move along with the relationship because of the Doctor/Patient situation. The second sexual encounter is when Lauren is in the body of that random businessman, and is basically an exploration of Lauren's sexuality as she has sex with a woman, as a man. Her attraction to woman was shown earlier in the movie when she was eyeballing her colleague in the locker room. There is actually something really interesting going on here in terms of Lauren's questioning nature of her sexuality, but unfortunately it isn't explored much further and is buried beneath the plot.

The plot of the story with Mike forgetting he is a Zygon, and getting treated for a mental illness when images surface in his dreams is super interesting. The other Zygon, Bob, trying to use Lauren's professional relationship to Mike to get him to remember his Zygon nature, is again a good narrative idea but not explored enough. The movie is just too short at around an hour to actually flesh out the plot and the intricacies of Lauren becoming a Zygon, and her exploration of her sexuality, it needed probably another half an hour.

But I am kind of grateful that it is so short, because the production value is appalling. Really low visual quality, shaky cams, the same extras everywhere in the same clothes, weird editing in post-production, bad effects when Zygon stuff happens, the script needed a bit of a rewrite, and sadly acting that isn't quite up to scratch.

It's a movie that has a bunch of faults, but at the end of the day I think it has gotten an unfair reputation. I won't be rushing to watch it again any time soon, but I would still say this is a 3/5 :star: story.

End of report. Logged and filed at The Black Archive.