Planet of the Ood

The circle must be broken

Planet of the Ood sees the return of the Ood, first introduced in The Impossible Planet. The story takes on an aspect that was hinted at in the first tale, but abandoned in the face of other story elements: the state of a simple race being exploited at slaves.
Plot Summary

The Doctor and Donna arrive on the home planet of the Ood. They find an Ood in the snow who had been shot after he killed one of the senior management and ran off. Before dying, he urges them that "the circle must be broken," with his eyes going red. The Doctor is immediately concerned given the events of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.

The two sneak into the Ood processing facility, posing as the owners of a company. Inside they observe the selling of Ood as servants, equipped with "upgrades" to meet a customer's need. They also hear an alarm go off, although they can't see for what. The alarm is due to another Ood breaking out and attacking other guards. He is taken with his eyes red and foaming at the mouth. The people running the facility have noted several Ood related deaths and are convinced that "red eye," as they call it, is a disease infecting the Ood.

Donna and the Doctor sneak away from the group and investigate the facility themselves. They observe the Ood being herded to storage containers for transport throughout the Human Empire. Donna likens it to slavery and the two of them head to the warehouse. The Ood do not attempt to escape upon the opening of one container, but they do repeat the mantra that "the circle must be broken" when asked.

They are discovered by the guards. They quickly capture Donna and toss her in a container with some of the Ood while the captain of the guards tries to crush the Doctor with the container crane. He is stopped however by the PR woman who tells him that the director wants them alive. Upon gathering them, all the Ood being prepared for shipment develop red eyes and move upon the guards. The guards drive them back with their guns but in the fracas, the Doctor and Donna escape.

The two flee to another building where Ood development is done. Inside, they find unprocessed Ood who are telepathically singing a song of captivity. The Doctor briefly shares this with Donna who is overwhelmed with the sorrow and asks the Doctor to take it away. The unprocessed Ood have a secondary brain which they hold in their hands and connects them in a telepathic hive mind. To process the Ood, this brain is surgically removed and replaced with the communication ball.

The guards arrive and rearrest the Doctor and Donna and take them to see the director. The director orders all the red eyed Ood in the warehouse to be gassed and a countdown timer is set up to do so. At the same time, the unprocessed Ood send out a signal and there is a mass rebellion by the Ood. The other clientele as well as many of the staff are killed and the guards are driven outside into small knots against the Ood. The director and head scientist abandon the Doctor and Donna and head to a special warehouse containing the source of the Ood hive mind.

The Ood outbreak frees the Ood trapped and scheduled to be gassed, brining more soldiers to the fray. The captain is instead trapped in and dies from the releasing gas. A group approach the Doctor and Donna, but the unprocessed Ood, remembering their kindness, send a signal to stop that group. The Doctor and Donna are freed by Ood Sigma, the director's personal Ood who he released when he left the building. Ood Sigma takes the Doctor and Donna to the same warehouse.

In the warehouse, the director has set up mines to destroy the hive brain which is surrounded by a telepathic inhibitor field (the circle). Confronted by the Doctor, the director learns that the head scientist is actually a member of the "Friend of the Ood" movement and had lowered the field to allow the Ood to begin communicating again. The director kills him by knocking him over and into the brain. The director prepares to shoot the Doctor, but is suddenly overcome. Ood Sigma, under the guise of hair tonic, had been feeding the director an Ood essence and it comes to fruition in the presence of the more active hive mind. The director transforms into an Ood, loosing his malevolence. The Doctor disarms the mines and then deactivates the inhibitor field. With the field down, the Ood stop their attack and gather together to sing. The few remaining guards also hear the song and lay down their weapons, retreating to the rocket which will take them away.

With the call sent out across the empire, the Ood prepare for their brothers to return and say goodbye to the Doctor. Ood Sigma, the nominal spokesperson, invites the Doctor to say for a bit but he declines. Ood Sigma also warns the Doctor that his song will be ending soon. The Doctor shrugs it off an leaves with Donna.

Analysis

When dealing with a story that involves clear lines of morality like slavery, it is easy to get overly melodramatic. It takes a deft hand to steer away from this and this story does not have that deft hand. It is not bad, but both the Doctor and Donna get rather morally righteous which also paints the villains in a strictly black hat, one-note light. Combined, story suffers a bit due to this lack of nuance which also allows the acting to get a bit histrionic as well.

Overall this isn't a bad story, but it very heavy handed. The closest you get to restraint is when the Doctor starts to go off and Donna slaps him down, reminding him that she never owned slaves. But other than that, it's very white hat/black hat. I don't mind a story like that, especially in settings like Westerns where they are fighting over law and order or land ownership and the like. When you introduce something that allows a moral high ground, like slavery, then it no longer becomes just two sides fighting, it becomes right vs. wrong and the right can get very prissy. Likewise, the wrong tend to lose any touches of grey and quirks that they might have had to make them more enjoyable also tend to fade into the background.

Director Halpen is a good example. He enters the story as a harassed CEO, struggling against the elements to keep the company profitable. You know he is going to be the titular bad guy but he is mildly sympathetic in the beginning and the quirk of constantly drinking hair tonic to deal with hair loss provides an amusing aside. By the end though, he loses all nuance and just becomes another megalomaniac preparing to kill anyone in his way. The loss of nuance in his character makes what should be a dramatic final confrontation scene somewhat boring.

Another example is Commander Kess, leader of the guards. He is your stereotypical sadistic overseer. He has no good in him and clearly takes pleasure in dealing out suffering. His attempts to crush the Doctor with the crane and his relish at gassing the Ood left no doubt that there was no nuance there. Granted, his malevolence made his death by the aforementioned gas more satisfying, but he was a standard trope in a story that was already pretty trope-y. Not bad, but not anything to keep you engaged either.

The graphics team was a bit overmatched in this story as well. Some things work, but other things just look off. Worst among the offenders is the giant Ood brain. Obviously something like that was going to be CGI, but it was rather poorly rendered CGI and at no point does it ever look believable that something is actually there. If they had put a matte painting of the brain, it would have probably looked just as believable. Normally I don't slag on the show for less than perfect graphics, but there was something particularly off about this one. I think the attempt to make it an action-adventure story at the end also caused a bit of a problem as obvious action cheats were exposed. It just made the story look cheap.

Now, those put aside, there are some good moments, mostly from Donna. Donna is a bit less stroppy in this episode and her evolution of mild disgust and fear at the Ood to openly sympathetic and advocating for them. Her emotional turn at listening to the song of captivity expresses more than just about any other moment in the episode.

It was also amusing to see the indulgence of a bit of fan service as well. Obviously there was going to be a call back to The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit but another one was slipped in as well. Apparently after those two went out, some comments were made about how the Ood design reminded fans of the Sensorites from that story. The writer indulged this idea by placing the Oodsphere in the same system and the Doctor made a comment about it, going so far as to even mention the Sensesphere in his muttering. It's a throw away line, but it is also entertaining that another bit of continuity string was thrown between the classic and new series.

Overall, I won't say this is a bad story, but I will say that I think the negative outweighs the positive here. People with a less demanding nature will probably not be bothered by the easy moral high ground the Doctor takes, nor by the easy slip into white and black hats. It can certainly be enjoyed and there are enough elements to be enjoyed over the course of the whole story, but it just didn't jive with me. I'd watch it again with someone but I doubt I would pick this one out for personal entertainment.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5