Planet of the Ood

Chapter The 214th, a snowy story as we get close to Christmas.

Plot:

The Doctor and Donna visit Ood Operations, a company that trades in the noodle-faced slave creatures; its base is on the snowy planet Ood-Sphere in the year 4126, and various long-running plans are coming to fruition there. Doctor Ryder is a member of Friends of the Ood, an organisation set up to end this slavery. Over the previous ten years he has infiltrated Ood Operations to a high enough position on the scientific staff to get access to the mysterious Warehouse 15 where a giant central Ood brain is kept locked away. Surreptitiously, he lowers the dampening force emissions surrounding the brain that keep the Ood controlled and docile; this causes outbreaks of red-eye and rabidness in the Ood and people get attacked. The company boss Klineman Halpen discovers his treachery, and kills Ryder by throwing him into the giant brain in its deep pit, but Ryder dies knowing he has instigated a revolution that will free the Ood. Halpen's personal aide, Ood Sigma, has been broken free of his conditioning for a while, and has patiently been working on revenge. He substituted a hair tonic drink that Halpen regularly imbibes for a suspension of Ood-iness, and once Halpen has been in the presence of the giant Ood brain for long enough, it turns him into an Ood. The revolution frees the Ood, who drive the humans away from their home. The Doctor doesn't do anything at all to help until the end, when he diffuses some bombs that Halpen had set around the brain, so it doesn't get destroyed. Donna does nothing at all. The Ood promise that they, their children, and their children's children will forever sing the song of thanks to the Doctor and Donna. Ryder doesn't even get a mention. Ungrateful gits.

Context:

I suffered a small disappointment in early December. The day before I was due to travel up to London to attend the BFI screening of City of Death (to tie in with the soon to be released season 17 Blu-ray boxset) I tested positive on a lateral flow test. I was lucky enough to only get Covid mildly (I'd thought I'd only had a cold, which is being reported as a common misunderstanding with the latest cases, so don't take chances - get yourself tested if you're unsure). This put paid to the trip, and indeed any social event I'd had planned for the end of the year. At a loose end, I thought I would use my time in self-isolation to break my blogging record (yes, it was a bit boring not being able to leave the house). The most posts I've managed to publish in a year previously was 38 in 2018. Including this one, I'm up to three posts for December 2021, and 37 for the year to date. Just two more and I'll achieve a personal best. Having watched a few stories in short order (including Planet of the Ood, on DVD from the New series 4 box-set, and unaccompanied by any of the family again), I'm planning next to pick a random Christmas special to blog before the big day, and then to squeeze in another story before December 31st. Might not manage it, but that's the plan.

First Time Round:

I first watched Planet of the Ood on the evening of its debut BBC1 transmission on the 19th April 2008, timeshifted on the PVR; I was accompanied by the Better Half, after we'd put our then only child down to bed. Doctor Who had an earlier broadcast slot for that year, and the boy was nearly two years old, so we had experimented with the first couple of stories of the series letting him watch live with us. The Adipose one was fine, but the following week The Fires of Pompeii's lava monster was a bit too much. So, it was back to waiting until after bedtime for the rest of the stories starting with the Ood episode. I vaguely knew the writer of the Pompeii story James Moran as we were both screenwriting bloggers at the time (he much more successfully than me, of course) and I made a joke in a post on my old blog along the lines of "Who do you think you are, James Moran, scaring my innocent child?" but I had to edit it to make clear that it was an arcane classic Who reference (referring to an article about 1970s script editor Robert Holmes by a tabloid journalist Jean Rook) and that I wasn't having a pop at James. This was because he was then getting a lot of flak from arse-hat Doctor Who "fans" as one of the few writers in those days - this being before social media became widespread - to have an online presence. I remember someone telling him he was an elitist scumbag for putting in-jokes related to a Latin textbook into the story (James replied that he didn't study Latin at all, and they had been suggestions by Russell T Davies). When he later wrote an episode of Torchwood that killed off a major character, he got even more and even worse abuse. I subsequently met James at a screenwriting festival, and he came over as a very nice guy indeed. Some Doctor Who "fans" really don't deserve nice things.

 

Reaction:

I mentioned in the Dragonfire blog post earlier in the year that the Raiders of Minimization episode of US comedy The Big Bang Theory highlighted that Indiana Jones does not contribute anything material to stopping the bad guys' plans in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. If the story of a big Hollywood film (thereafter loved by audiences for decades) can make the mistake, then I suppose we have to forgive a little 45-minute segment of Doctor Who too. For in Planet of the Odd, the Doctor and Donna are just observers. One might not even notice this at first, as they both do lots of Doctor and companion stuff - getting chased, getting captured, piecing together the backstory by investigating. In this story, they work out the physical and mental make-up of Ood society and how it is being manipulated to make them subservient. I'm not sure that this stands up to much scrutiny if you think too hard about it after the credits have rolled: creatures with tiny vulnerable "hind-brains" that they have to carry around in their hands? It doesn't seem like a viable mutation. Maybe there were no predators on the Ood-sphere (there's no evidence of any in the story, except for humankind, of course), but the natural environment still seems a bit harsh for the Ood to have survived there. This kind of thinking didn't occur during my first watch of the programme, though, so I think the story gets away with it during its running time. Piecing all this together, whether or not it persuades the viewer, doesn't make a jot of difference to the plot. The Doctor can't use the information, as others - who presumably have pieced it all together long before him - already have an endgame in play.

Perhaps this slight lack of engagement of the main characters in writer Keith Temple's script is the reason that the normally entertaining pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Donna don't have as good a go of it in this story compared to others in the series. Some jokes don't land, some exchanges and bits of business feel a bit forced. The director is the normally dependable Graeme Harper, who delivered some great stories in the classic and the new eras, but this is not one of his best. Where he does excel is in the scenes of Ood carnage. The trick of the calm creatures suddenly going on the attack with eyes flicking to red had already been done in the two-part Ood / Satan story in Tennant's first year, but it doesn't get old when its done again and again here. The ante is upped with the rabid Oods, and the explosive scenes of Ood versus security guard fights. Some of the industrial locations are quite impressive, but the CGI-enhanced snowy vistas look a bit fake. The interiors of the posher areas where clients are being wined and dined don't look that classy too, particularly in comparison to The End of The World, the story I last blogged, which was made three years earlier at New Who's beginning when everyone knew less about how to put the show together. Perhaps Planet of the Ood just had a bit less money spent on it than others. The big action sequence - Tennant being pursued by a giant grabber claw - is fine, but doesn't have much to do with the events of the story; it feels like it was (and maybe I've read somewhere that it definitely was?) an idea the production team had for an action sequence that was just waiting for a story for it to be crowbarred into.

Best of the performances, and maybe not coincidentally in all the scenes where the plot is truly moving forward, is Tim McInnerny as Klineman Halpen. He's very good at doing the oily, pinstriped CEO, but there are flashes of vulnerability in moments where he dwells on his childhood or lack thereof (Slave trading of Ood is a family business, which he's been prepared for from a very young age), and McInnerny does very well at showing us a man teetering on the edge of coming apart, literally pulling his hair out with stress in some scenes. It's witty of the script to then show him physically as well as metaphorically coming apart at the denouement, when he turns into an Ood in a gruesome splattery sequence. Through the story, though, McInnerny keeps Halpen the right side of being a villain, we can't ever fully sympathise with him and his fate does not seem undeserved. Ayesha Dharker as PR person Solana Mercurio gets one knockout scene, as she struggles between what we're given to suspect she knows is the moral thing to do versus keeping her job, and chooses wrong (then gets killed to punish her for this mistake). Other actors are not as well served, with Roger Griffiths as Kess, for example, struggling to find much depth in the one-note henchman role as written. It sounds like I didn't like the story as much as I did. It's perfectly okay, just not much more than that. 

One aspect that's good that I haven't mentioned is a clue to how Planet of the Ood was just a stepping stone for later overarching plots: Murray Gold's music, and in particular the choral work for the song of the Ood. This will develop (and probably it was mostly unplanned at the time and only retroactively made to fit, but that's showbusiness) into themes - both plot-wise and musically - for David Tennant's final stories as the Doctor. We will see the image of an Ood in the snow again before too long.     

Connectivity: 

Both Planet of the Ood and The End of the World are from the (first) Russell T Davies showrunner period of new series Doctor Who, and both feature alien creatures invented by him. In both stories there are scenes of rich people partying in expensive surroundings as well as more industrial locations elsewhere. In both, the Doctor takes his female companion for her first trip into the future, and they have a minor tiff where the companion accuses him of taking cheap shots. Both stories feature a speech about humankind thriving and spreading despite pessimistic contemporary worries abut the race dying off (both scripts specify global warming as one 21st century worry). 

Deeper Thoughts:

Early Christmas Gifts (of Peace in all Good Faith) - Part 2. The story so far is that certain circumstances arising in 2021 have rekindled an obsession for completion in my Doctor Who Target books collection, which I thought I'd left behind nearly 30 years ago. I have bought the final three books I don't own to complete the collection, and I have done this late in 2021, so I can draw a line under this madness! With luck, and the sober January chill of a new year incoming, I won't be tempted to find new categories of book to collect - it is an expensive habit. These final three are a short-lived offshoot from the main range, covering adventures of 'The Companions of Doctor Who' after their time with the Doctor. The first book was about Turlough, and my feelings about it, in all their gory detail, can be found in the Deeper Thoughts section of the previous blog post. The second one, originally published in September 1986, is Harry Sullivan's War by Ian Marter. Marter had of course played Sullivan with Tom Baker in the 1970s, but more recently had become one of the regular writers of Target novelisations of broadcast Doctor Who stories, including many that he'd starred in back in the day. As such, he was more than qualified to write an original story about his fictional lookalike. Not that it's a wholly original story, being an espionage action-thriller very much in the mould of a James Bond book. I don't remember ever seeing the book anywhere to buy when it came out. The only memory I have of it from back then was a letter from Marter in Doctor Who Magazine complaining about accusations of plagiarism.

I'd started picking up the magazine again after a gap as Doctor Who was back on television (with Colin Baker's Trial of a Timelord season) so had missed the book review, and only saw Marter's reply to it. The main thrust was that the author had never seen the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill, so the resemblances to his novel - including situating climactic events atop the Eiffel Tower - were coincidental. The novel and the letter were sadly the last examples of Marter's Doctor Who writing to be published before he died terribly young a few weeks later (on October 28th 1986, his 42nd birthday). At that point, he'd delivered two manuscripts of novelisations (for The Reign of Terror and The Rescue) that would be published posthumously over the next couple of years. Working that far in advance, it's possible Harry Sullivan's War had been written before A View to a Kill even hit cinemas in mid-1985; but, in general it is clearly inspired by Ian Fleming's work, and the Bond film adaptations (particularly the Roger Moore starring ones that were current at the time of writing). The book sees Harry 10 years after his travels with the Doctor doing top secret government work on anti-toxins. He starts to get attempts made on his life by members of an anarchist organisation who are opposed to chemical weapons. There ensues many chase scenes with sports cars and helicopters, investigations, double-crosses, code breaking, fights, escapes, and a little bit of globe-trotting (action takes place in England, Scotland and France, and visits landmarks like the National Gallery and the Forth Bridge as well as la Tour Eiffel).

It's hard to know whether some of the flaws are down to Marter, or are mainlined direct from Fleming: in the first couple of chapters, there's the questionable characterisation of a West Indian bodybuilder henchman, for example; it's dodgy, but you could say that about characters featured in the relevant Bond books and films too. There's sexism, of course. A couple of female characters, described in physical terms when introduced, throw themselves at Harry. As the writer looks exactly like the character, this made me a little queasy - is there a male fantasy or two being played out here?  It is clear that Marter is not trying to subvert this genre, but is wholeheartedly celebrating it, but for all the flaws it's infinitely more enjoyable than Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma. There are flaws that are definitely Marter's too, such as two major plot holes. First, why are the baddies trying to kill Harry at the beginning if their plan is to use his knowledge on anti-toxins for their own ends? Second, how come the secret service turn up at the end to arrest the many wrongdoers that are still left alive? Harry never told anyone he was going to Paris. There are less significant loose ends too. There's a big fuss about the initials labelling the tapes that have been made from the anarchists bugging various places. Harry works out what one means, but there's never an explanation of the others and it doesn't have any bearing on future events. If I was supposed to work it out, I couldn't (be bothered). There's the massive coincidence where a good character just happens to turn up at a dead drop - on a remote island - that the baddies are using, to throw suspicion on her as a red herring. It stretches credibility that she'd happen to be there for other reasons.

Overall, it's fairly good and never boring. Harry makes an endearingly bungling spy, and there are nice cameos from the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith in there. It was certainly a better foundation for a continuing series of original companion stories, with lots of contenders that could have been featured (Jo Grant, Tegan, Susan, etc.). Unfortunately, it was not to be. The only other contribution to the range was not an original story at all, but a novelisation of the TV spin off K9 and Company by the original writer Terence Dudley, published in 1987, nearly six years after it was broadcast. My feelings on the story are recorded in my blog post about it here. The book suffers from not having some of the only things about the story that are fun (the theme music, the beginning credits sequence, some of the performances) but it does give Dudley a chance to smooth over some of the more odd plotting decisions. Motivations and emotions are much clearer when we get insights into the characters' thoughts. There's only so much that can be changed though, as there was a definite expectation from the readership that the novelisations would be generally faithful to what was on TV. The only significant difference in the text is the locale; events have been moved from a fictional town in Gloucestershire to a fictional town in Dorset. My guess as to why is that Dudley was more familiar with that neck of the woods, the better to describe it accurately in prose. I don't think there's any bearing on the plot (unless witches' covens are more likely to still exist in Dorset, perhaps?). Ultimately, this is K9 and Company in all its dubious glory, and whether you enjoy the book or not is entirely dependent on how you feel about the TV version.

Since 1987, though there have been many ranges of original stories featuring Doctors new and old, a series of original novels featuring companions has never again been created. A couple of one-off novels have been published over the years since the show came back; like Harry Sullivan's War, these both had the distinction of being written or co-written by the actor that portrayed the main featured character. A Torchwood novel Exodus Code by John Barrowman and his sister Carole came out in 2012, and Sophie Aldred penned At Childhood's End, featuring Ace, which was published last year. That's it for now, though there may be more one-offs in future. I'm not collecting those two, or any other books. The Targets are done, and I have to draw a line. (Obviously, if I crack, change my mind and start collecting all the Virgin New Adventures, say, I'll let you know here!)

In Summary:

It's fairly G-Ood, but not that g-Reat.