Can the Zygons and the Humans Co-exist?
Guest contributor Richard Forbes explores whether this arrangement could work.
The Zygon Invasion introduced audiences to a troubling, complex moral and political dilemma. With this latest episode we’ve learned that the compromise struck by UNIT with the Zygons in The Day of the Doctor involved resettling Zygons on Earth and peacefully integrating them into society as pseudo-Humans. This tenuous solution has been derailed by Zygon radicals however as a new generation of Zygons, frustrated with what they perceive to be serious grievances, have risen up against humanity in revolt against the terms of the original compromise.
Although circumstances do appear to be rather dire at the end of The Zygon Invasion, I personally have some faith that a new compromise can be forged – one that keeps the spirit of the compromise in tact. You see while some commentators have argued that these young Zygons have absolutely no right to protest the terms of the compromise because their predecessors were simply failed invaders of Earth, I would actually argue that the grievances that the radicals have identified are in fact legitimate grievances. First, we should bear in mind that the Zygons did not outright fail to invade Earth, per se; if the Zygons had outright failed to invade Earth, no peace agreement would have been necessary whatsoever. Instead, to save the lives of those who otherwise would have been lost in a desperate demolition of the Black Archives, UNIT offered several important concessions including life and property to the Zygons (who ultimately could have refused the offer out of spite.)
Desperate to maintain the illusion of a solely human occupation of Earth however, UNIT forged a compromise which forced Zygons to hide their true identities and assimilate into human culture upon acceptance to this compromise – in some ways this echoes real life immigration policies, both past and present, which have regarded an immigrant’s cultural and ethnic identity as something to be traded away for acceptance into a new political community. Nevertheless, it’s this policy of cultural exclusion that is the crux of the radicalism in The Zygon Invasion.
It should also be said that, while some commentators have argued that the Zygons, having the power of interstellar travel should just bugger off if they don’t like having to pretend to be Humans, I would caution readers to rethink this line of thinking since, if you recall, the revolting Zygons are a new generation: first generation Earthlings, to be exact – they consider Earth their home and it’s not exactly unequivocally fair to ask people to leave their own home if they don’t wish to pretend to be someone else and parrot the majority’s culture.
Overall, the crux of the political dilemma in The Zygon Invasion is this need that Humans have (or at least UNIT perceives we have) to consider themselves the sole intelligent life on Earth – only by shedding this necessity of self-delusion could we see a peaceful, fair and ultimately sustainable resolution to the conflicts between the Zygons and Humans with regards to the Zygon resettlement featured in The Zygon Invasion. Until then, the debate remains a zero-sum dilemma where either Humans get the Earth they want (i.e., a world where they can comfortably continue to believe they are alone in the occupation of their planet) or the Zygons get what they want: that is, life as equal residents of the planet Earth. All of this suggests that despite the ugliness and the wrongheadedness of the violent means of protest employed by the Zygon radicals, the problem really is us: humanity’s selfishness – human authorities in Doctor Who would rather see Zygons burdened with cultural and personal suppression than have humanity deal with the inconvenient fact that they’re not the sole occupiers of Earth any longer. Sharing isn’t our thing, apparently.
If humanity was to choose “truth” over consequences, humanity could offer a fairer compromise to the Zygons by making the resettlement of Zygons an open and transparent process. This would, however, have wide-ranging consequences for Earth. No longer would we be the sole kingmakers of Earth. We would be sharing the planet openly with other intelligent life forms (beyond the Silurians.) This would, for lack of a better term, make for a multi-exo-cultural world, where human residents live amongst Zygons openly. Our governments would communicate with one another and continue to sign treaties with one another as equal international partners.
As scary and different as it sounds, I would argue that this compromise might not be such a bad thing, at least as far humanity is concerned – and it’s here where I’d like to end with a final little note. Series 9 has continued to warn us of the creation of a Hybrid. We’ve seen suggestions of hybrid warriors and hybrid races but what if the coming hybrid is not an individual or a species, but rather a hybrid society. A Human-Zygon society, to be exact. Peter Harness’s other episode, Kill the Moon suggests that the history of human race is full of future imperialist and interstellar conquest (a space race kickstarted by the crack of an egg) – but perhaps the unchecked growth and development of the human race begins with the shedding of its belief in its ownership over Earth. By working together with new partners, trading land and resources for technology and cooperation, humanity could excel where it hasn’t before. A partnership, pairing Human ambition with Zygon technology, could be the most fearsome duo that the universe has ever faced.
