After impressing in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit
two years before, the Ood are back and this time they are more in the story.
This is Donna’s first trip to an alien planet and the scene where she and the
Doctor are in the TARDIS is set up just right because when Donna leaves she
comes across snow. It takes less than 90 seconds for the Ood to start
misbehaving.
This episode is one that has a morality slant to it. It’s a
question of slavery. The treatment that they have received is something that is
horrible. When it’s revealed that their brains are cut off and replaced with
translator. The grimness continues when you think about how high the body count
is. Ood are being shot dead and the humans are falling just as quickly.
Tim McInnerny is very good in this although I do still think
of him as Percy from Blackadder 2. He is the boss of the Ood Operations that
are treating the Ood appallingly and over the course of the episode he has been
drinking what he thinks is hair tonic but is in fact turning him into an Ood. Before
he becomes an Ood, he starts off by being a totally unlikeable person and then
when things go wrong he wants to commit genocide. When he does change into an
Ood the effect is really horrific and I remember thinking when I saw this that
the show would get into trouble for doing this.
One of the things that I really like about this episode is
the Ood singing and the reaction of Donna when she can hear them. Catherine
Tate continues to impress me and although she’s not quite as good as Martha,
she is completely different from the Donna that we saw in the Christmas Special
she debuted in. Again Donna is trying to humanise the Doctor and make him
realise that his actions have consequences. There is a moment where she decides
that she might want to go home and this must have made some people throw their
fists in the air but thankfully its not the end of Doctor Donna and she decides
she wants to stay.
Graeme Harper does a good job in directing this episode and
its rather nice looking. It’s not his best but its still got a lot of good
shots and manages to make some drama out of scenes which wouldn’t scream out to
me as action set pieces.
This was the strongest episode of the series so far. I know
that might be damning with faint praise but it’s the first time this series
that I have truly felt that the whole thing has worked well. There are things
wrong with the episode but this is a good episode and there are some subtle
things that lead to the rest of the season.
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