Day 741: Planet of the Ood

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit was an episode rich with characters and concepts, and unfortunately some of these had to make way for the main meat of the episode - the Doctor/Devil confrontation. Fortunately Russell T Davies saw sense, and went forth to commission a story based around the story's most interesting idea, which is how the Ood actually work.

The Ood were introduced as a slave race, and aside from a brief moment of questioning from Rose, they are generally left that way. Planet of the Ood dares to ask how they became slaves, and more importantly, it delves into the question of why they are slaves. The way in which it deals with this is quite interesting, when considering the structure of the episode. When it begins, we see the Ood as much the same as in The Impossible Planet, i.e. generally docile with some element of danger within them. It presents their slavery as perfectly normal, a by-product of the world of 4126. To compare with the Ood, humans working on the Ood-Sphere are also introduced, presenting a look at the normal people in this time period. We see four main characters, being a slightly menacing boss (Halpen), his quiet scientist assistant (Ryder), a generic security team leader (Kess) and Solana, an assistant working on the Ood-Sphere. Naturally, the audience can assume that, whilst the majority of the humans will turn out to be slightly malevolent, there will be good eggs within the basket, perhaps Solana, the friendly assistant will be a keen ally to the Doctor and Donna.

As the story progresses, however, the way in which we see the humans changes somewhat through the lens of looking at the Ood. We see that they are incredibly cruel to the Ood, packing them away in storage containers, keeping them in cages, and most shockingly of all, removing their hind brain from their bodies to make way for a translation globe, effectively lobotomising them. Suddenly, the focus of the story switches from the Ood as monsters to the humans being the real monsters. We see this expressed in two ways. One is the scene where Kess chases down the Doctor using the claw of a crane, which he does with a frightening amount of glee, going straight for the kill of the Doctor. At this moment, he goes from generic security leader to a reasonably malevolent man, actively taking glee from the pain that he gives others. It means that when the Ood kill him later in the story, we actually empathise with the Ood, and see them as the heroes of the story, with the humans as the villains.

Similarly, Solana goes from being a hopeful ally to a traitor, revealing the Doctor and Donna's position to the guards and actively telling the security men to kill the Ood as they begin their revolution. Her uncomfortable views reveals another side to the story, that the evil doesn't have to be with characters like Halpen, men who happily dash about the story joking as they prepare to commit genocide. Instead evil people can be perfectly normal, with a smile on their face as they go about and do their work. Solan's death at the hands of an Ood doesn't feel like a moment that presents the Ood as heartless in their quest to get their freedom back, it comes as a relief to see her character get what she deserves.

And, honestly, that's just scratching the surface of Planet of the Ood, which is a story that always improves for me on repeated viewing. It's about the need for revolution, it's about how humans can and often are the bad guys, and it's about taking an offhand moment from some past adventure and realising that there's a story to be told.