Alternative Soundtracks – Terror of the Zygons

The theme for Terror of the Zygons was based around our suckered villains working for Pizza Hut, due to the organic nature of their space ship and in particular the control panels which resemble giant pizzas. During the time we shared a flat together, Andrew and I would regularly order takeaway pizzas over the phone from Pizza Hut in Morden, and so every time we saw the Zygons in a new scene their first line would generally be ‘Pizza Hut Morden – can I help you?’

The man on the doomed oil rig at the start of the story was more interested in doing an impersonation of Kenneth Williams on the CB radio rather than shouting for help as he plunges to his death, and our version of Harry Sullivan was destined to become a take-away pizza box instead of a Zygon replica. The Brig did nothing else in this story than shout at everyone, and seemed to want to use the ‘F’ word with alarming regularity. Andrew especially enjoyed doing all the Scots voices in this adventure as he’s absolutely crap at them (you’d have to hear his impression of Jamie to really understand what I mean), and so it was most amusing for both of us. Because the UNIT soldier who encounters Sister Lamont out in the forest looked slightly like Freddie Mercury, all the dialogue spoken by both characters in that scene was either lyrics from or titles of Queen songs, such as ‘Too much love can kill you’, ‘Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?’ and even ‘Uh, uh, uh – another one bites the dust’, a line which Sister Lamont aptly uttered after she’d clobbered Sergeant Mercury over the head with a rock. Andrew’s penchant for sending up Scots voices was especially apparent for poor Mr McRannald (the character played by Angus Lennie), who’s slight lisp was hugely over-exaggerated and applied to nearly every single word rather than just words containing the letter ‘S’. For example, he says to Sarah, ‘Helloo Misth Smisth. Whatsth can I doosth for yousth?’ These nonsensical words coupled with the fact that his voice sounded like Quentin Crisp on Speed meant that all I did was giggle throughout all of McRannald’s scenes.

For some odd reason, towards the end of the story Broton seemed to turn into Derek Jameson, uttering the line, ‘Mornin, morning, Jameson ere’ each time he spoke prior to saying anything else. Right at the end of the story when the real Duke of Forgil joins the Brig and Harry as they say farewell to the Doctor and Sarah, in the real version the Duke says ‘So that’s the TARDIS?’ when he first sees the police box in the forest. However, in our version he says, ‘Is that Pizza Hut Morden?’ to which the Doctor replies ‘Yes’. This prompted Harry to reply to the Doctor’s invite to join them in the TARDIS as ‘Actually I think I’ll have a sandwich, Doctor’, rather than ‘I think I’ll go by British Rail.’

Next Episode: Pyramids of Mars