Nope, not a rant after all

[avevale_intelligencer]

Too tired, I guess. Also a nasty case of TMI in the downstairs region today and yesterday, which may have fuelled the venom a bit earlier but has got me a bit drained at the moment. But one question...

If anyone can explain to me what kind of biosphere could produce *any* kind of creature, not even necessarily humanoid, which has to walk around clutching half its brain in its hand--and the bit of the brain which, certainly in our case, evolved first--without its dying out from any one of a million natural causes (oh dear, frostbite in the medulla, I think I'll forget how to breathe) before it had time to evolve the other half, I will be intrigued. I can't now remember if it was someone on screen or the Countess who pointed out that they would have to be peaceful that way...but the processes that support evolution are not by any means peaceful.

Apart from that, not much to say I haven't already said.

Comments

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Donna commented that the Ood had to be peaceful. The episode did indeed make no sense at all.

[howeird]

which has to walk around clutching half its brain in its hand
I'm amazed that in all your years of fandom you have never seen this. Happens all the time around here. Braaaaaainnnnns!
:-)

[(Anonymous)]

ENGAGE FANWANKING MODE:

Well, obviously the answer is that they weren't evolved that way. They were designed that way. The proto-Ood were probably a very violent species (consider the Arctic conditions probably created by their use of huge megatonnage in earlier wars) and having nearly wiped themselves out they decided to remake their species into a harmless telepathic group mind. The external brain proved necessary because comparitively weak telepathic signals could not easily penetrate their skulls. The big central brain was created as a combination overseer and relay station.

And the 'bug' of having to hold your own brain becomes a feature when your aim is to prevent people from picking up a rifle. Maybe it can regenerate if damaged?

/END FANWANK MODE

Glad to be of service!

Michael Cule
(Who isn't getting a livejournal account because it would increase the amount of time he wastes on other people's blogs and might even tempt him to start one of his own.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

That would at least make some kind of sense.

Of course, if they had neural tissue that could regenerate, we wouldn't be wasting them as slave labour...but that's probably a whole other and even nastier story.

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Missed this last night, watching the BBC3 repeat now. Continuity announcer: "Donna visits her first alien planet, but is she bovvered?"

Bloody hell. Says it all, really.

Mind you - nice to see minorities playing ruthless capitalists and sadistic security guards. Maybe RTD will even give us a nasty bisexual this season...

Donna continues to be a pain. Tate's three acting modes: gurning, gawping, and squawking. Doubtless she's meant to be all "feisty" and free-willed, but instead she's just an obnoxious pain in the perineum.

McInnerny was good, though. And the Sense-Sphere reference. But the twee choral "singing" is embarrassing. Why shouldn't an Ood's song be more inhuman, unearthly, even unsettling? They're ALIENS, for Pete's sake, not a bloddy Songs Of Praise audience!

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

Also, as Lawrence Miles so rightly says:

"But in terms of content - what there is of it - you can spot the exact moment when "Planet of the Ood" cops out. After Donna insists that there's no slavery in her world, the Doctor asks 'who made your clothes?', the most acute thing we've heard in this programme for a long, long time: suddenly we're forced to remember how twenty-first-century Earth actually works, and we no longer have the comfort of believing that we're morally superior to the Ood-wranglers. Yet Donna responds to this all-too-sensible question by criticising the Doctor for taking cheap shots, and… the Doctor apologises, thus allowing us to return to our normal level of smugness. Well, that's no surprise. This is a modern, consumer-age version of Doctor Who. And we can't ask a modern, consumer-age audience to feel uncomfortable about itself. Can we?"

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

And this is presumably an example of Donna "standing up to" the Doctor, the Tracy/Hepburn dynamic we've heard so very very much about.