04x03 - Oods and Ends

[bunniefuu]

The Ood are back...

You've gotta love an Ood.

And apparently, as yummy as ever...

You just wanna bite them!

That's a bit of a worry.

It's an ice-cool reception
for the slaves' return,

so join Confidential backstage

as we serve you
an insight into the Ood!

I wanted the Ood.

I wanted the ice planets.
I wanted humans as sl*ve traders.

Back here, you can have that sh*t
lined up for Dave.

And you can have a tighter one
that stops him.

Yeah? Yup.
So you can come off the line here...

We're in a warehouse today,

filming a scene where the Doctor
is chased by a giant claw.

It was trying to find ways
of making it look

as risky as possible
and trying to find different ways

of coming round a corner,

so it didn't look like you were
just running away all the time.

Of course, the claw
was being added in afterwards.

We've got a pre-vis
that we put together at the Mill,

and we've already worked out
rough moves of this CGI arm.

We're gonna try and match it in
with the action. Yeah.

So when we come to film
the elements that we need here,

of David running down the aisles,
we know exactly what we want.

Action!

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I left my baby
And it feels so bad

♪ I guess my race is run

♪ She's the best girl
that I ever had

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law
And the law won... ♪

I haven't seen the finished sequence
yet, so I hope they don't stitch me
up.

They could make the claw
look decidedly unthreatening,

in which case I'm running for my life
away from some fairground grabber!

And for today's sh**t,
cast and crew ready themselves
for some rough and tumble.

It looks quite flash to me.

David has to fall over
some barrels later and fall down.

He's very good
at anything like that.

Anything physical, he's great on.

Pad him up and we'll get him
to do it.

'It wasn't particularly dangerous.'

I wasn't doubled for anything.
It was really just throwing yourself
around, which I always quite enjoy.

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law and the law won

♪ I fought the law
And the law won... ♪

Cut!

Still loved it. Of course, this is
not the first time there's been ups
and downs when the Ood are around.

We should find out who's in charge.

Oh! Right. Hello! Sorry, erm,
I was just saying, er, nice place!

We must feed.

First time we met the Ood,

they were introduced on the
Impossible Planet as a sl*ve race.

Your refreshment. Oh, yeah, thanks.

They're slaves, the people
who cook the food and do all
the physical labour.

I'm sorry, what was your name?

We have no titles.

We are as one.

We never found out much about them.

They were sort of mildly telepathic.

All identical.

Happy to serve, which is
a very odd and strange thing

that's touched on fleetingly
during The Impossible Planet
and The Satan Pit,

but we never really got
to the bottom of that,

so I always felt there was a lot
more to be explained about them.

There's always a danger
that you bring stuff back

just because
it's been in there before,

and isn't it fun to have
a reappearance from old monsters
or characters?

What's important is that you only do
that when there is a story to tell.

As the tentacles return,

the production team at last get to
reacquaint themselves

with an OOLD friend!

♪ Here they come
The beautiful ones

♪ The beautiful ones

♪ La, la, la, la

♪ Here they come
The beautiful ones

♪ The beautiful ones

♪ La, la, la, la, la... ♪

Today, we are filming
in St Athan's airbase...

Wales.

And we are using the inside of the,
um, I don't know what it is,
is it a hangar...thing?

As a sort of, um, it's like
an ultimate battery farm for Oods.

Good morning, chaps!

Each container
is crammed in with sl*ve Oods.

Myself and the Doctor discover this.

I should say,
The Doctor and myself, really.

And left, right, left, right...

The movement of the basic Ood
hasn't really changed.

They still have the same presence,
the same calmness

and the same walking movement.

They're very distinctive
and very different,

cos they're not a Doctor Who monster,

in that they're not rampaging
and chomping and destroying,
as aliens often are.

There's a real slowness
and precision to the Ood that is
very, very carefully worked out.

The guys in the suits
work very hard at doing that.

Action!

And then you've got the sheer
anger coming out
and the frustration of the Ood,

with the running Ood
or the rabid Ood,

so we've got a really nice contrast.

They don't just walk calmly.

You're seeing
a whole better dimension of them.

If updating the Ood
for another outing wasn't enough

to send chills up the spines
of the design team,

they also faced a cool challenge
realising the Ice Planet.

Snow!

Ah, real snow!

Proper snow at last!

Ice Planet is one of the
things I've always wanted to do.

It's one of those science fiction
staples actually,

and quite easily done.

A quarry, a snow machine,
a bit of white paint.

I say it's easy - people
slaved night and day over it.

MUSIC: "Let It Snow"

♪ Oh, the weather
outside is frightful

♪ But the fire is so delightful

♪ And since we've
no place to go

♪ Let it snow
let it snow, let it snow

♪ Man, it doesn't show
signs of stopping

♪ And I've brought me
some corn for popping

♪ The lights are turned way down low

♪ Let it snow, let it snow. ♪

Today, we're dressing
the ice plane scene.

As you can see behind,

there's paper snow going down.

There's a fine spray
of water which goes down first,

then paper snow
is blown on top of that,

which makes it adhere a bit better.

It's a fairly fast process,
as you can see.

We're up at the Trefil Quarry,
on the edge of the Brecon Beacons.

As you can see behind me,

we've sprayed a lot of it with snow

for the opening scene, scene four,
where the TARDIS arrives.

We had the most fantastic summer day,
blue skies, very pleasant and warm,

with this snow landscape.
It was really peculiar.

One of the quirks of filming
is when you're meant to be hot,

it's freezing cold, and whenever
you're meant to be cold,

the sun is b*ating down.

What is it?

An Ood. He's called an Ood.

But his face...

Donna, don't, not now.
It's a he, not an it.

Give me a hand.

Donna's reaction to the Ood
is brilliant, cos it's like...

She's so honest.

When she first sees them...

'Not only is she horrified,
she's quite freaked out.

'They're not nice-looking,
from a human point of view.'

She's there to do the clumsy things
we'd all do.

My name's Donna.

No, no. No, no, no.
You don't need to. Sorry.

Donna presumes that to
speak to it,

you have to use
that translator ball.

She picks up the ball and talks into
it, which is a terrible faux pas

in front of someone who's dying.
I believe you'd do that.

Face value, it's a shocker, innit?

Seeing that lying in the snow
with purple blood.

'It...it's not nice.'

And she is mystified,
she is fascinated.

She starts questioning
the Ood more closely
than the Doctor's ever done.

Are there any free Ood?

Are there Ood running
wild somewhere like wildebeest?

She finds great
empathy and compassion.

She's properly disgusted by what
she discovers going on in the cages,

and quite right too.

I think she's
quite good at reminding the Doctor

of the cost of things, possibly.

And it's not only his companion
that's challenging.

'My character is called
Kleinman Halpen,'

which is obviously the name
of a villain, it's very clear.

Halpen's a businessman, a nice
middle-level Doctor Who villain.

What I mean is he's not out
to take over the universe.

He's a management body.

He's doing his job
and he's making a profit,

which we, sort of,
use a lot of in Doctor Who.

I think it's closer
to true life villainy.

The Ood are born
with a secondary brain.

Like the amygdala in humans,
it processes memory and emotions.

Without that you wouldn't be Donna.
You'd be like a processed Ood.

So the company cuts
off their brains.

And they stitch on the translator.

We had a lot of fun working out
the secret operative
of Friends of the Ood,

working behind the scenes
to release the Ood.

It is Dr Ryder. We tried to hide it
by writing it down.
It's a lovely performance.

After a decade of discreet
dealings with the Ood,
Dr Ryder finally gets his moment.

But sadly for him, on set today,
his moment is being m*rder*d.

Being a Friend of the Ood
has made him an enemy of Halpen.

It's taken me ten years
to infiltrate the company.

And I succeeded. Yes.

Yes, you did.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

APPLAUSE

The death of Dr Ryder
is very important,

or Halpen wouldn't quite deserve
what's coming to him.
Halpen's fate is disgusting.

What have you done?!

There's something very Gothic
about the ending of this episode.

The fact that Halpen
is transformed into
the very creature he's been abusing.

He is forced to walk
in an Ood's shoes.

Actually literally at the end.

Hopefully in school on Monday
morning, everybody goes, "Did
you see that man turn into an Ood?"

So job well done if they are.

The circle is broken.
The Ood can sing.

It's quite important
that these first three stories
with a new companion,

you write them into
the history of the programme,
so they become embedded.

That is absolutely great
for those two.

♪ When the night feels my song

♪ I'll be home

♪ I'll be home. ♪