Oh, R’lyeh…
The Ood race from Doctor Who: The Impossible Planet
Originally uploaded by BBC.
Last nights episode of Doctor Who, a Doom-esque two-parter, was both a mix of good and bad elements.
The overall story of a planet in a locked position before a black hole, that has an evil force contained within, was very nice. Granted the science was a little off, but it was drama. Like Doom, the entity seemed to have been entombed by an ancient race that had long since passed in to history.
The level of religious quotes and overtones was a really nice touch, adding to the foreshadowing of just what was contained within.
The Ood as a slave race, referred to as ‘cattle’ on one occasion, looked great. Their mouth frongs, sloped-head and slit eyes, conjured up thoughts of Cthulhu in my head, which added to the story telling, especially the later parts of the episode. There is a nice correlation that the place you’d find Cthulhu defied logic and could craze a man’s mind, and the same could be said for staring into the black hole where the Ood were stationed.
I must also add, I did wonder how many of the future human females might use those writhing tentacle mouths to good use. It’s one of those eww and hmm moments.
I also had a thought of an icon with the Ood face and the text “O, R’lyeh“.
The real downside is the use of sick TARDIS syndrome and misplaced TARDIS as a means to strand the Doctor and Rose in danger, whereas previously the Doctor would just stay until things were solved, it seems the writers just want to force him to stay. They used a no escape clause in the recent Cybusman saga (I refuse to call them Cybermen), and now it’s just redundant.
Despite that, I’m looking forward to the second part, The Satan Pit.