how very Ood
Apr. 22nd, 2008 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywela"Know this, Doctordonna: you will never be forgotten. Our children will sing of the Doctordonna, and our children's children. And the wind and the ice and the snow will carry your names forever."
This is a pretty nifty episode, all things considered. First viewing I mostly just thought it was entertaining, but then I started to make notes, and ended up going on and on for pages!
I love how the Ood manage to merge the Doctor and Donna's names into one weird hybrid. Hee. The scenery at the start of the episode is gorgeous – really beautiful CGI work. And the Doctor and Donna really do bicker like an old married couple, but the joke is getting a bit thin now, so I hope they don't continue to overuse it all season.
"Humanity defines us. We look to you."
Man, that Ood Sigma has a wonderful line in passive-aggressive sarcasm. Once you know he's a kind of sleeper agent, there are all kinds of fab subtle digs in his lines that fly right over Director Whats-His-Name's head.
The sequence of Solana's sales pitch on how well the Ood are treated intercut with guards chasing a rabid Ood is really very effective, comparing and contrasting the spin and the harsh realities of the slave trade. The sequence where she demonstrates the novelty voices that can be programmed is an equally disturbing indictment of humanity's treatment of their slaves, stripping them of every shred of their dignity and denying their sentience. It's easier to mistreat a creature if you view it as an 'it' rather than as a person. But the fear of revolution is inherent to all slave traders, and we see that here throughout. The 'livestock' might be docile and obedient, but there are a lot of them, and if they turn en masse disaster for their captors can be the only result.
I like that the Doctor's presence really doesn't have any material impact on the Ood uprising. It's already in process when he arrives, and would have taken place whether he was there or not. He might be the one who gets to flick the switch and finally free them, but it would have happened anyway, regardless of his presence. He's more a witness than a protagonist here.
"Everything you're feeling right now – the fear, the joy, the wonder – I get that. […] Why do you think I keep going?"
At the start of the episode, the Doctor tells Donna that he set the Tardis controls to random. Remember when the destination circuit was broken, so that it never went anywhere that wasn't completely random? Fixing those controls allows for contact with friends and family back home, for the companions, which adds a new dimension to the show that's good and strong and welcome…but it also means the writers have to work that bit harder to explain why they are going wherever they go in any given story. There has to always be a decision made, even if the Doctor does then end up landing in the wrong place because maybe the destination control isn't as fixed as he'd like to think it is. Back in the day, they just landed wherever they landed and made the best of it because there was no other option!
Anyway. I love how the Doctor just drinks in Donna's reaction to her first real taste of space travel, how excited she is about being on another planet. He might get a kick out of exploring himself still, but what he really loves is having someone to share that with, being able to experience it all again anew through someone else's eyes. And hey – for once it really is another planet! How exciting. Even if it is a planet full of humans, it also has Ood! Actual aliens, conquered by humans, the ethics of which is what this episode is all about. I also love that the Doctor is so excited about there being real snow when he steps outside – a nice, subtle little call-back to previous episodes where the snow has been fake, either whipped up by the Doctor himself to impress a girl or ash from a destroyed spaceship in orbit – whereas Donna's immediate reaction to the climate is: "Oh, I've got the word: freezing." She's so down-to-earth, and I'm really loving that as a means of puncturing the Doctor's pompousness, since he does tend to get a bit carried away at times. "You've got a box; he's got a Ferarri." Hee.
One thing that does seem to be being emphasised so far this season is the Doctor's alienness, demonstrated here by his ability to hear the Ood song, which all humans are completely deaf to (until the giant brain is released at the end). The fact that he's a 'spaceman', not human, is something Donna is very, very clear on. She doesn't see him as a man in the way that both Rose and Martha did. They were both attracted to him on a romantic level. With Donna, it's the fact of him being an alien space traveller who can show her the universe that's so appealing.
"I spent all that time looking for you, Doctor. I thought it was so wonderful out here. I wanna go home."
After the horrors of Pompeii in the last episode, this time around we see Donna getting her first real taste of what she's wanted for so long: exploring space, visiting another world, meeting aliens. Her shocked and slightly squicked out reaction to the first Ood she encounters is perfect, but since it is bleeding and dying in the snow there isn't time for culture shock and she just snaps right back out of it again. And then her compassion kicks in, and is wonderful. "Just what you need, a doctor. Couldn't be better." And I love that she pushes past the Doctor to return to the Ood when it dies, while he's still wary because he's seen the Ood become dangerous before, and I love that she wants to bury it.
I like the continuity, with the Doctor admitting that he overlooked the Ood last time he encountered them, having other priorities at the time. "I owe them one." But as I recall, Rose reacted to them in much the same way that Donna does in this episode, questioning their servitude and trying to engage with them, although the more pressing crisis of having the alleged devil in their midst quickly distracted her attention, as well. Here, the plight of the Ood is the crisis, and slowly builds up right from the start. Donna is suspicious and concerned for them right from the start, asking questions about their desires and welfare and immediately smelling a rat in their apparent content with their lot in life.
"Servants? They're slaves! […] Great big empire built on slaves." Donna's revulsion for the conditions in which the Ood are kept is, of course, another example of just why the Doctor wanted her as a companion. It's like he goes through life constantly auditioning potential companions, but only offers the gig to those who live up to his standards. And Donna does. Not that her compassion for the Ood's situation saves her from his sniping about contemporary sweatshops, and he does have a point, but it's hardly the time or the place, and she's right to call him out on it. "Is that why you travel around with a human at your side? It's not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it's so you can take cheap shots?" As Rose once commented to Jack: "When he's stressed, he likes to insult species."
The scene where the Doctor and Donna discover the caged natural-born Ood, unprocessed and afraid and with their brains in their hands, is good, although Donna asking to hear the Ood song and finding it too much to bear is a little overdone. I do like her realisation that she can ask to have it taken away but the Doctor can't, though. And when she admits to being overwhelmed and wanting to go home, the Doctor's stricken reaction is brief – and interrupted – but perfect. Everyone leaves him in the end. And I think that sense of impending desolation feeds into his manic ranting at the guards who come to capture them.
"You idiot. They're born with their brains in their hand! Don't you see? That makes them peaceful. They've got to be. A creature like that would have to trust anyone it meets!"
Donna rallies pretty quickly, though, and that's good. She's learning a lot in a very short time, and her experiences with the Doctor thus far have been fairly intense and not very pretty. But her first adventure with him, way back two Christmas specials ago, pretty much sealed her fate. Adrenaline junkie. And for all her momentary despair, she can see how much he needs her, and that as terrible as things can be, he does his best and generally succeeds in making the universe a better place, even if the process isn't ever easy.
"Being with you, I can't tell what's right and what's wrong any more."
"Better that way."
Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell.
I said before that the Doctor goes through life constantly auditioning the people he meets. We see it here with Solana. "Come with me. You could help." She knows the truth; he's giving her the opportunity to make a difference, to do the right thing, to be more. But she instead chooses the path of least resistance and buries her head firmly in the sand. "It's nothing to do with me." And she pretty much signs her own death warrant with those words.
Doctor Ryder, on the other hand, is great. "I think I understand the barrier mechanics well enough. I'll check the signal." So innocuous, and yet he was the one who turned the barrier signal down in the first place, thus setting the entire sequence of events into motion. Fabulous.
The giant brain is…dodgy science fiction. "Shared mind connecting all the Ood in song." Very dodgy science fiction. And something that is impossible to get looking anything other than weird and lame. Turning the Director into an Ood with hair potion is even dodgier science fiction! But Donna's face and reaction are worth it, though, and this is Doctor Who, so dodgy and incomprehensible science fiction is a given. It's a plot mechanic, nothing more.
"The circle must be broken. […] So that we can sing."
I really like how gradually it becomes clear that the frenzy of the Ood with red-eye really isn't as random as it first seems. The clues are there from the start – the Doctor even reminds us right at the beginning that a powerful mind was able to take control of them last time he encountered them. But even so, the scene where the red-eye Ood are all crowding in on the Doctor and Donna, who frantically chant whatever mantra they hope will work, is really effective. "Doctor Donna friends!" "The circle must be broken!" The Doctor goes for his standard message of peace and friendship, while Donna repeats the Ood's own magic words back at them. And the combination of the two works very effectively indeed, proving that there is a very solid method behind the apparent madness.
It's funny that the deactivating of the mines that would have destroyed the giant Ood brain is so anti-climactic in the end, more an afterthought than anything else. The Doctor's just like, 'oh yeah', and flicks a switch and the danger is over. "The circle is broken. The Ood can sing." And the ending is pretty trite, with the restored Ood so easily returned from slavery across three galaxies. I mean…all the processed Ood have still had partial lobotomies, right? They should still be completely lacking any sense of self, and there have to be repercussions from that, surely. Come to that, with the second brain, the one in the hand, removed, how could Ood Sigma have as much personality as he had…?
I really must learn not to question the plot this deeply! It's Doctor Who. Ignore the plot holes and move on.
"Will you stay? There is room in the song for you."
"Oh, I've sort of got a song of my own, thanks."
"I think your song must end soon."
"Meaning?"
"Every song must end."
Ooh, intriguing! Definitely foreshadowing of some kind, but meaning what, exactly? David Tenant isn't leaving the show just yet, as far as I know, although there is going to be a lengthy gap between seasons, with only a few specials in 2009. So just what this ominous prophecy refers to is rather fascinating to consider.
Prophecy seems to be a recurring theme so far this season. And those disappearing bees have been mentioned a couple of times, as well!
Overall, season four is getting a resounding thumbs up so far. Roll on episode four.
This is a pretty nifty episode, all things considered. First viewing I mostly just thought it was entertaining, but then I started to make notes, and ended up going on and on for pages!
I love how the Ood manage to merge the Doctor and Donna's names into one weird hybrid. Hee. The scenery at the start of the episode is gorgeous – really beautiful CGI work. And the Doctor and Donna really do bicker like an old married couple, but the joke is getting a bit thin now, so I hope they don't continue to overuse it all season.
"Humanity defines us. We look to you."
Man, that Ood Sigma has a wonderful line in passive-aggressive sarcasm. Once you know he's a kind of sleeper agent, there are all kinds of fab subtle digs in his lines that fly right over Director Whats-His-Name's head.
The sequence of Solana's sales pitch on how well the Ood are treated intercut with guards chasing a rabid Ood is really very effective, comparing and contrasting the spin and the harsh realities of the slave trade. The sequence where she demonstrates the novelty voices that can be programmed is an equally disturbing indictment of humanity's treatment of their slaves, stripping them of every shred of their dignity and denying their sentience. It's easier to mistreat a creature if you view it as an 'it' rather than as a person. But the fear of revolution is inherent to all slave traders, and we see that here throughout. The 'livestock' might be docile and obedient, but there are a lot of them, and if they turn en masse disaster for their captors can be the only result.
I like that the Doctor's presence really doesn't have any material impact on the Ood uprising. It's already in process when he arrives, and would have taken place whether he was there or not. He might be the one who gets to flick the switch and finally free them, but it would have happened anyway, regardless of his presence. He's more a witness than a protagonist here.
"Everything you're feeling right now – the fear, the joy, the wonder – I get that. […] Why do you think I keep going?"
At the start of the episode, the Doctor tells Donna that he set the Tardis controls to random. Remember when the destination circuit was broken, so that it never went anywhere that wasn't completely random? Fixing those controls allows for contact with friends and family back home, for the companions, which adds a new dimension to the show that's good and strong and welcome…but it also means the writers have to work that bit harder to explain why they are going wherever they go in any given story. There has to always be a decision made, even if the Doctor does then end up landing in the wrong place because maybe the destination control isn't as fixed as he'd like to think it is. Back in the day, they just landed wherever they landed and made the best of it because there was no other option!
Anyway. I love how the Doctor just drinks in Donna's reaction to her first real taste of space travel, how excited she is about being on another planet. He might get a kick out of exploring himself still, but what he really loves is having someone to share that with, being able to experience it all again anew through someone else's eyes. And hey – for once it really is another planet! How exciting. Even if it is a planet full of humans, it also has Ood! Actual aliens, conquered by humans, the ethics of which is what this episode is all about. I also love that the Doctor is so excited about there being real snow when he steps outside – a nice, subtle little call-back to previous episodes where the snow has been fake, either whipped up by the Doctor himself to impress a girl or ash from a destroyed spaceship in orbit – whereas Donna's immediate reaction to the climate is: "Oh, I've got the word: freezing." She's so down-to-earth, and I'm really loving that as a means of puncturing the Doctor's pompousness, since he does tend to get a bit carried away at times. "You've got a box; he's got a Ferarri." Hee.
One thing that does seem to be being emphasised so far this season is the Doctor's alienness, demonstrated here by his ability to hear the Ood song, which all humans are completely deaf to (until the giant brain is released at the end). The fact that he's a 'spaceman', not human, is something Donna is very, very clear on. She doesn't see him as a man in the way that both Rose and Martha did. They were both attracted to him on a romantic level. With Donna, it's the fact of him being an alien space traveller who can show her the universe that's so appealing.
"I spent all that time looking for you, Doctor. I thought it was so wonderful out here. I wanna go home."
After the horrors of Pompeii in the last episode, this time around we see Donna getting her first real taste of what she's wanted for so long: exploring space, visiting another world, meeting aliens. Her shocked and slightly squicked out reaction to the first Ood she encounters is perfect, but since it is bleeding and dying in the snow there isn't time for culture shock and she just snaps right back out of it again. And then her compassion kicks in, and is wonderful. "Just what you need, a doctor. Couldn't be better." And I love that she pushes past the Doctor to return to the Ood when it dies, while he's still wary because he's seen the Ood become dangerous before, and I love that she wants to bury it.
I like the continuity, with the Doctor admitting that he overlooked the Ood last time he encountered them, having other priorities at the time. "I owe them one." But as I recall, Rose reacted to them in much the same way that Donna does in this episode, questioning their servitude and trying to engage with them, although the more pressing crisis of having the alleged devil in their midst quickly distracted her attention, as well. Here, the plight of the Ood is the crisis, and slowly builds up right from the start. Donna is suspicious and concerned for them right from the start, asking questions about their desires and welfare and immediately smelling a rat in their apparent content with their lot in life.
"Servants? They're slaves! […] Great big empire built on slaves." Donna's revulsion for the conditions in which the Ood are kept is, of course, another example of just why the Doctor wanted her as a companion. It's like he goes through life constantly auditioning potential companions, but only offers the gig to those who live up to his standards. And Donna does. Not that her compassion for the Ood's situation saves her from his sniping about contemporary sweatshops, and he does have a point, but it's hardly the time or the place, and she's right to call him out on it. "Is that why you travel around with a human at your side? It's not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it's so you can take cheap shots?" As Rose once commented to Jack: "When he's stressed, he likes to insult species."
The scene where the Doctor and Donna discover the caged natural-born Ood, unprocessed and afraid and with their brains in their hands, is good, although Donna asking to hear the Ood song and finding it too much to bear is a little overdone. I do like her realisation that she can ask to have it taken away but the Doctor can't, though. And when she admits to being overwhelmed and wanting to go home, the Doctor's stricken reaction is brief – and interrupted – but perfect. Everyone leaves him in the end. And I think that sense of impending desolation feeds into his manic ranting at the guards who come to capture them.
"You idiot. They're born with their brains in their hand! Don't you see? That makes them peaceful. They've got to be. A creature like that would have to trust anyone it meets!"
Donna rallies pretty quickly, though, and that's good. She's learning a lot in a very short time, and her experiences with the Doctor thus far have been fairly intense and not very pretty. But her first adventure with him, way back two Christmas specials ago, pretty much sealed her fate. Adrenaline junkie. And for all her momentary despair, she can see how much he needs her, and that as terrible as things can be, he does his best and generally succeeds in making the universe a better place, even if the process isn't ever easy.
"Being with you, I can't tell what's right and what's wrong any more."
"Better that way."
Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell.
I said before that the Doctor goes through life constantly auditioning the people he meets. We see it here with Solana. "Come with me. You could help." She knows the truth; he's giving her the opportunity to make a difference, to do the right thing, to be more. But she instead chooses the path of least resistance and buries her head firmly in the sand. "It's nothing to do with me." And she pretty much signs her own death warrant with those words.
Doctor Ryder, on the other hand, is great. "I think I understand the barrier mechanics well enough. I'll check the signal." So innocuous, and yet he was the one who turned the barrier signal down in the first place, thus setting the entire sequence of events into motion. Fabulous.
The giant brain is…dodgy science fiction. "Shared mind connecting all the Ood in song." Very dodgy science fiction. And something that is impossible to get looking anything other than weird and lame. Turning the Director into an Ood with hair potion is even dodgier science fiction! But Donna's face and reaction are worth it, though, and this is Doctor Who, so dodgy and incomprehensible science fiction is a given. It's a plot mechanic, nothing more.
"The circle must be broken. […] So that we can sing."
I really like how gradually it becomes clear that the frenzy of the Ood with red-eye really isn't as random as it first seems. The clues are there from the start – the Doctor even reminds us right at the beginning that a powerful mind was able to take control of them last time he encountered them. But even so, the scene where the red-eye Ood are all crowding in on the Doctor and Donna, who frantically chant whatever mantra they hope will work, is really effective. "Doctor Donna friends!" "The circle must be broken!" The Doctor goes for his standard message of peace and friendship, while Donna repeats the Ood's own magic words back at them. And the combination of the two works very effectively indeed, proving that there is a very solid method behind the apparent madness.
It's funny that the deactivating of the mines that would have destroyed the giant Ood brain is so anti-climactic in the end, more an afterthought than anything else. The Doctor's just like, 'oh yeah', and flicks a switch and the danger is over. "The circle is broken. The Ood can sing." And the ending is pretty trite, with the restored Ood so easily returned from slavery across three galaxies. I mean…all the processed Ood have still had partial lobotomies, right? They should still be completely lacking any sense of self, and there have to be repercussions from that, surely. Come to that, with the second brain, the one in the hand, removed, how could Ood Sigma have as much personality as he had…?
I really must learn not to question the plot this deeply! It's Doctor Who. Ignore the plot holes and move on.
"Will you stay? There is room in the song for you."
"Oh, I've sort of got a song of my own, thanks."
"I think your song must end soon."
"Meaning?"
"Every song must end."
Ooh, intriguing! Definitely foreshadowing of some kind, but meaning what, exactly? David Tenant isn't leaving the show just yet, as far as I know, although there is going to be a lengthy gap between seasons, with only a few specials in 2009. So just what this ominous prophecy refers to is rather fascinating to consider.
Prophecy seems to be a recurring theme so far this season. And those disappearing bees have been mentioned a couple of times, as well!
Overall, season four is getting a resounding thumbs up so far. Roll on episode four.
