Doctor Who: 15 Cool Details Peter Harness Just Revealed About The Zygon Invasion

11. The Doctor Sat On A Swing Is Another Nod To Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

Doctor Who The Zygon Invasion swing Invasion of the Body Snatchers
BBC/Twitter: @mrpeterharness

After the opening titles, the episode cuts to Brockwell Park, London, where the Doctor is sitting on a swing. Somehow, he has the willpower to not ride it. Mad skills.

Another nod to 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this one is in reference to the creepy image of Robert Duvall's priest character silently sitting on a swing in the opening moments of the film.

Robert Duvall in Invasion of the Body Snatchers
United Artists

According to the movie's director, Philip Kaufman, Duvall is the first "pod person" (an alien in a snatched human body) we see in the film.

With this swing parallel, maybe Harness was trying to say something similar about the Doctor: the fact that he looks like a human and often tries to act like one... but he's actually an alien. He's pretty much a "pod person" himself.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!