Back to the bad old days

I'm not perfect, you know, and sometimes I change my mind about things. Mushrooms, for instance. Thought they tasted strongly of rot and mould as a boy, came to love them like an (edible) son when I grew up. Same goes for mobile phones - I always said they were utterly pointless, but nowadays I generally find my Razr quite useful.

And so it is with Planet of the Ood. When the episode finished I mentioned online that I thought it was a reasonable, if largely uninspired episode. On a second viewing though, I think that it only just clears the pole-in-the-dirt bar which is Gridlock.

It's actually a return to the bad old days of last year. Lazy, lazy plotting combined with a vague, blind man in a blindfold in a room with no windows stab at alien and the Doctor at his most annoyingly hyperactive yet curiously ineffective.

It was like the first part of the Eccleston season all over again, except without the cement of Eccleston's towering performance.

The Ood were cool, mind, which does raise the standard above such previous low-points as last year's Dalek two-parter. And Tate as Donna, even in a bad script, is better than plastic fantastic Martha, but other than that - nah, I have nothing positive to say.

However, I will say that...

• The alien planet was basically a backlot with some snow and a couple of dodgy bits of cgi.
  

• The supporting characters either existed

1. to be pricks and then satisfyingly die (the security team and the unpleasant yuppie business types)
2. to make it look as though the Doctor was doing something, be pricks and then die (that PR woman)
3. to make it look as though there were thematic layers (the Friends of the Ood guy - really, what was the point of him?) and then die or
4. to be pricks and then get turned into an Ood (Captain Darling).

• The biology of the Ood made neither evolutionary nor intuitive sense.

1. They've evolved hands and opposable thumbs (signs of a need to compete for available resources) but also brains on bits of string (a sign of not thinking your alien race through properly)?
2. They live on ice planet zebra, apparently, but have also evolved a species component which is an unprotected giant brain with a mouth on top, i.e. where it's not very easy to feed?
3. If you cut the whole brain in their hand off - 'lobotomise them' according to the dialogue - and then throw those brains in the bin four planetary systems away, it doesn't matter because as soon as you release the giant brain (by flicking a single switch in a shed) everything's OK - and, eh, they're not lobotomised any more?

Or something. Whatever. It doesn't matter - it's only Doctor Who after all.

Not that it really is Doctor Who either. For one episode only (hopefully) it's back to being someone else's show, not the Doctor's. Unlike the Eccleston season though, it's not even the companion's series - in fact, I have no idea who's supposed to he be the hero here. The Ood themselves I suppose. Certainly there was no need for the Doctor to be there. He contributes nothing to the Ood revolt and yet gets told at the end that the wind and the air and the snow and the husky shit will sing of him for ever and ever and ever, amen.

As someone wisely remarked on a mailing list I frequent, hopefully the song the various elements will sing is something along the lines of "thanks for nothing DoctorDonna: you came here, stood about, got locked up, then sodded off having nicked all the glory".