No ordinary days

Ooo(d), welcome back Chris :) And you are right. This sure, strong, fearless, thriving, pacey, action packed, thought provoking, clever, emotional, challenging, lovely, brilliant but indescribable prog deserves more than a weekly review! Let's cast aside any barely remaining attempts at being ordinary chaps and jabber away. I love Top Gear, and have even watched football. It's just that Doctor Who is a whole lot better than any of that.

Well, Planet of the Ood proves it.

It was something special. A groundbreaker. It built on the emotional and moral edifice of The Fires of Pompeii and presented us with something huge. Undoubtedly this episode will live on in the minds of today's kids for decades like the Krynoid did for me. And it's strength was not just the superb realisation and acting of the Ood but their story. Existentialism. Concentration camps. Genetic experimentation and mutilation. Evolution. Corporate greed. The Simpsons. At 6.20pm on a Saturday! Bring it on! This ROCKS!

Towards the end I wasn't sure what I was watching. Body horror or Brothers Grimm. Either way it was fascinating and strange. I tried very hard to work out what was going on with Halpin's transformation and the secondary brains thing. I loved the idea of both, but found it immensely difficult to make them work in my head. A couple of lines of explanation here and there would have satisfied me a great deal. But it would be wrong to try and take this story as just a normal tv narrative. It's not meant to be and I should get over that. If nothing else the transformation was a perfect reflection of Abraham Lincoln's quote about a strong desire to see those who argue for slavery have it tried on them personally. I happen to know that my wide-eyed colleague has thoughts on all this that make perfect rational sense, so over to you!!

Next week: Monsters invade the Earth! Woohoo!! Can't wait!