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| The Impossible Planet/The Satan
Pit |
|
 Name: The Ood
Format: Television
show
Time of Origin: The Ood-sphere, unspecified
date in the far future around the 42nd century.
Appearances: "The
Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit", "Planet
of the Ood", "The End of Time" and "The Doctor's Wife"
Doctors: Tenth
Doctor and Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, Amy Pond, Rory
Williams;
Wilfred Mott was indirectly involved in an encounter with the
Ood but did not meet them himself
History: Although The Doctor has fought with the
Ood, they are one of the few alien races that he has encountered
in his travels who are unquestionably his allies in their natural
state; whenever The Doctor and the Ood engaged in battle the
Ood were under the control of something else.
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| The Impossible Planet/The Satan
Pit |
|
When
The Doctor first met the Ood, the Tenth
Doctor and his companion Rose Tyler had just landed on Krop Tor,
an anomalous planet apparently in orbit around a black hole,
where an Earth expedition was investigating the power source
that kept it immobile. Although the Ood initially appeared as
a simple slave race, content to serve the human crew of the facility,
The Doctor, Rose and the base staff were forced to fight the
Ood when they fell under the influence of The Beast,
a powerful and mysterious entity that had been imprisoned near
the planet’s core at the beginning of the universe, their
telepathic link to each other allowing the Beast to control them
all as the ‘Legion of the Beast’. With no other way
to stop the Beast, The Doctor encouraged the crew to delay the
Ood by transmitting a telepathic pulse that disorientated the
Ood minds long enough for the human crew to retreat to the expedition’s
rocket, evacuating the planet as The Doctor destroyed the gravity
field holding the planet in position around the black hole, allowing
the Beast to be destroyed forever, although he keenly regretted
his failure to save the Ood even if he had obviously lacked the
time to do so ("The
Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit").
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| Planet of the Ood |
|
During his second encounter with the Ood,
The Doctor found himself on their home planet, the Ood-Sphere
("Planet
of the Ood"), where he admitted to his new companion Donna Noble that he was privately ashamed
of his failure to save the Ood during his last encounter with
them, as well as the lack of attention he had paid to the obvious
anomaly of the concept of a slave race. Investigating Ood Operations
after he witnessed another red-eyed Ood fleeing the complex,
the company responsible for shipping the Ood out, The Doctor
and Donna were horrified to learn that the Ood translator ball
that allowed them to communicate with humans was actually a replacement
for a hindbrain that the Ood had carried in their hands before
humans arrived; the peaceful, trusting Ood had been lobotomised
by humans to make them slaves.
Although
Halpen, the head of Ood Operations, attempted to dispose
of the red-eye Ood and The Doctor by leaving The Doctor
and Donna in the factory, the TARDIS crew
were able to convince the Ood that they were friends,
subsequently travelling to the mysterious ‘Warehouse
Fifteen’, which Halpen had earlier mentioned contained
a particular secret to his family’s control of
the Ood. Entering the building, The Doctor and Donna
discovered a ‘main brain’ that linked all
the Ood together in a telepathic song, allowing their
main and hind brains to coordinate with each other, Halpen
having kept the brain contained with an energy field
that limited its telepathic output. Although the brain
had been kept contained for two centuries, the energy
field had been recently lowered by one of Halpen’s
staff, a secret member of an organisation who objected
to humanity’s enslavement of the Ood, with the
red-eye Ood being the result of the brain’s anger
reaching out to ‘incite’ its fellows.
Although Halpen attempts to shoot The Doctor and Donna,
it was revealed that his personal Ood servant, Ood Sigma, had
been secretly working for the brain for some time, the brain
subtly influencing Ood Sigma to plan Ood-graft into Halpen’s
hair tonic. As a result, when Halpen was in such close proximity
to the brain, it mutated him into an Ood, Ood Sigma noting casually
that they would take care of Halpen now that he was ‘Ood-kind’.
Breaking the field that had kept the Ood brain contained for
so long, The Doctor and Donna restored the Ood to their rightful
state, allowing them to begin their telepathic song of harmony
once again. Although The Doctor and Donna turned down the offer
to remain with the Ood, they were nevertheless touched as Ood
Sigma confirmed that the Ood would always sing of The Doctor-Donna
and their role in restoring the Ood to freedom, although The
Doctor was concerned at Sigma’s subsequent comment that
The Doctor’s ‘song’ would end soon.
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| The End of Time |
|
The Ood returned to The Doctor’s life after he
attempted to change a fixed point in time by saving three people
who had been destined to die ("The Waters of Mars"),
Ood Sigma appearing to The Doctor in a vision transmitted all
the way to Earth in 2054 to call for his help. Responding to
the Ood’s message - after spending some time attending
to the last few things he wanted to do in this incarnation, recalling
their warning that his song would end soon -, The Doctor learned
that the Ood were being troubled by bad dreams of an approaching
darkness that heralded the end of Time itself. As they shared
their vision with him, The Doctor witnessed the Master’s
resurrection and learned that Wilfred Mott would play an important
part in the upcoming events, but despite his subsequent attempts
succeeding in averting the end of time, The Doctor was unable
to prevent his own death, sacrificing himself to save Wilf by
exposing himself to a lethal dose of radiation. As the radiation
began to consume The Doctor’s cells, Ood Sigma appeared
to him in a telepathic vision one last time, informing The Doctor
that he and the other Ood would sing The Doctor to his rest,
their song giving The Doctor the strength to get back to his
feet and walk the last few metres to his ship. As The Doctor
set the TARDIS to dematerialise, Ood Sigma returned to his time,
reflecting that, while The Doctor’s current song was over
as his tenth incarnation regenerated, The Doctor’s story
would never end ("The End of Time").
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| The Doctor's Wife |
|
The Eleventh Doctor had another brief encounter with
the Ood when the TARDIS was drawn into a ‘bubble universe’ controlled
by the mysterious planet-sized entity known as House who ‘ate’ TARDISes,
with one of his ‘family’ - a small group of beings
sustained by House’s life-force - being a green-eyed Ood
he introduced as Nephew ("The Doctor's Wife").
When House attempted to escape the collapse of his universe by
possessing the TARDIS after he extracted its consciousness, seeking
a new food source now that the TARDISes were extinct, he took
Nephew with him into the TARDIS, forcing Amy and Rory to try
and escape from him by retreating to one of the TARDIS’s
old archived console rooms. After Amy and Rory had lowered the
TARDIS shields in the archived console room, The Doctor was able
to return to the TARDIS using a ‘junk console’ that
he had assembled from the remnants of House’s past meals,
his arrival disintegrating Nephew when the console materialised
in the same location that Nephew was currently standing in due
to the console’s lack of safety protocols. |
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| Season 28 (New Series 2) - Volume 4 |
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| Season 30 (New Series 4) - Volume 1 |
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