Dr Who 4.3 - Planet of the Ood

For those who are not aware of this, I am a giant Who nerd, loving old school Who, new Who and all whoniverse paraphenalia (would that be abbreviated to whophenalia?) so I thought I'd review this while it's fresh in my mind.

It was a good episode I felt, I can see how it might be decisive for some people, and it wasn't an episode I was particularly excited about, but it felt different for new Who, and that seemed good enough for me.

(EDIT: I wrote Decisive, i think i meant Divisive... is that a word? I mean it might divide peoples opinion.. hold on let me check dictionary.com...yup, I mean Divisive. Back to the previously published blog)

I understand that if you list the ingredients of the episode then you would end up with what would appear to be a bog standard episode:

Nasty Humans + Aliens that are bad, oh wait they're not really + happy ending + hint about what is going to happen towards the end of the series...

But to me it was a nice, well made, entertaining and fun story, and in the Ood I think New Who has finally created it's first long lasting monsters, ones that could continue throughout the Whoniverse.

Oh, and Tim McInnery was great. But that was no surprise. In fact I thought all the supporting cast were very good this week.

On a technical note (people who are not technical ignore this paragraph) this was such a well made episode. Beautiful CG and compositing, some of the best compositing we have seen in the series so far, the battles were very well shot and looked big and busy, even the cheesy claw grabbing chase scene was good :) Hats off to Graeme Harper, a brilliant Who director.

All in all, I think it gets 4 out of 5. :) Shame about the shoehorned in reference to the end of the series "Your song must end soon". I'm normally a big fan of storyarc references, but this just... I dunno, seems different, which is a good thing rather than the single word references of the last three series's, but, it just felt so similar to last weeks "Psychic" references.

Maybe I'm just being fussy, I don't know.

Oh, and Dr Who Confidential... don't get me wrong, I like watching behind the scenes bits, but why did they bother to extend each one to being 45 minutes long if all they're gonna do is pad them with three minute montages of clips from the last 3 and a bit series?

Meh. Who knows.

So .. next week?

Martha :D

UNIT :D

Sontarans :D

Big Spaceships :D

A Brigadier Cameo? (We can only hope, but I doubt it)

All in all, looking forward to it, although I won't be watching it as it airs, so don't tell me anything about it until I've seen it on Sunday!