The Planet of the Ood

Writer: Keith Temple
Director: Graeme Harper

“The Ood aren’t born like this, they can’t be – a species born to serve could never evolve in the first place.  What does the company do to make them obey?”

 

The Doctor has taken Donna on a trip to her first alien world but has no idea where they have ended up. The planet is an ice world and after they see a spaceship flying over head follow it to civilisation.

The ice world is home to the Ood (The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit) and the centre of Ood Operations a company formed to breed and sell the Ood as domesticated servants to the pockets of humans spread across the galaxies.  As the latest batch of buyers arrives all is not well with the Ood, several of whom are showing disturbingly aggressive tendencies to the extent of even committing murder!
The head of the company Mr Halpen demands answers from Dr Ryder, his chief scientist. Dr Ryder believes that the Ood have become infected with a virus that he has called ‘red eye’ after the initial symptoms he has seen.

The Doctor tells Donna that he can hear singing in his mind although she can’t hear anything. They follow the sound until they find a dying Ood in the snow. All he manages to tell them is that ‘the circle must be broken’. They reach the headquarters of Ood Operations and join the other buyers being given the corporate ‘spin’ on the positive benefits of owning an Ood. Eventually they slip away from the presentation to do some investigating of their own.
They discover that the reality is far from what they were told and that the Ood are treated like slaves and not servants. The Doctor is forced to admit that when he last met the Ood he hadn’t had the time to ask them why they were like they were and, along with everybody else, just accepted the fact that they seemed happy to serve.

In another part of the complex an Ood with red eye has escaped. Halpen sends guards to hunt down the Ood and when they finally capture it they discover that not only does it have red eyes but is also appears to be rabid.  Halpen orders his men to destroy all the Ood with red eye. The deaths of a few thousands Ood will, he believes secure the future of his company

The Doctor and Donna discover a warehouse full of shipping containers, each one filled with Ood ready for dispatch to other worlds. The Ood in the containers again tell The Doctor and Donna that the circle must be broken so that they can sing. Halpen has been informed that The Doctor and Donna are not who they claimed to be and have gone missing from the presentation, he sends his men to find them.  Donna is quickly captured and thrown into a container with the Ood whilst The Doctor has to run for his life from the advances of the grab hand used to lift the containers, until eventually he is captured too.  As he is reunited with Donna, the Ood from the container attack the guards and The Doctor and Donna manage to escape. They ask Solana, the head of marketing for Ood Operations to help them believing that she can not condone what is being done to the Ood. Instead she betrays them to the guards and they once more have to flee for their lives. 

The Doctor can still hear the sound of the Ood singing and they follow the song until they find a cage containing several natural born, un-adapted Ood.
Donna asks The Doctor to help her hear the song but when he does, she finds the song of captivity so upsetting that she immediately asks him to make it stop. The ‘natural’ Ood are born with a secondary brain in their hands which the company takes away from them to make them subservient.
Donna realises that not everything about travelling with the Doctor is good and briefly regrets ever finding him again.

 The Ood emboldened by the song have begun to rebel and all across the complex fights are breaking out.  Halpen and his guards recapture Donna and The Doctor and handcuff them to a post in the office block where they are left to the mercy of a group of Ood. They manage to convince the Ood that they are friends and that they want to help them ‘break the circle’.

Donna and The Doctor track down Halpen to a warehouse which contains the Ood Brain. The Brain controls the telepathic field between all the Ood and Halpen has planted explosives all around the area ready to destroy the Brain. Doctor Ryder reveals himself to be a member of Friends of The Ood, a resistance group fighting to free the Ood. He tells Halpen that the reason the Ood have begun to behave erratically is because he turned down the force field that was suppressing the telepathic field from the Ood Brain. Halpen exacts his revenge by throwing Ryder over the barrier and into the Ood Brain where he is absorbed.

Halpen is ready to shoot The Doctor and Donna and complete his escape when his own personal Ood, known as Ood Sigma offers him a drink. For years he has believed that what he was being offered was hair tonic when it was in fact Ood DNA. This close to the Ood Brain he can not stop the changes in his body as the Ood elements take over and becomes one of the Ood kind. Ood Sigma tells The Doctor that as Halpen is now one of their own they will look after him.

The Doctor defuses the explosives around the Ood Brain and switches off the force field, breaking the circle and allowing ALL the Ood to join in a song of freedom. This song can be heard by Donna and other humans all over the galaxy and it calls the Ood home.
The Ood ask Donna and The Doctor to stay with them, telling them there is room in the song for friends of the Ood. The Doctor thanks them but tells them that he has his own song. Ood Sigma tells him that he thinks that The Doctor’s song must end soon…..

Written by Deryn Corner