Having had some fun on present-day earth and the past, it’s time for Donna to have her first trip to another planet. Just for laughs, the Doctor sets the controls to “random”[1]. They arrive on a snow-covered planet, where they soon find a dying Ood. We first met the Ood in the 206 two-parter The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, where we learned that they were apparently a race bred to “serve”, or slaves, more like. At the time, the Doctor was a little preoccupied with dealing with the nasty thing in the pit and saving the humans to pay too much attention to the status of the Ood, so he decides to take a lot more interest this time…

So, they find the nearby Ood depot, where Ood are prepared for sale and export, and get onto a typically sanitised tour for potential buyers. In the usual way with the Doctor’s “random” arrivals, they just happen to be there as things are turning interesting. It seems the Ood are acting more oddly than normal. They’re getting the glowing red eyes thing, which as the Doctor recalls from his last meeting, generally means trouble. Oh, and they’re managing to use those translator globe thingies to electrocute people, which the management regard as a bit of a problem, as dead customers can’t buy more Ood.

There’s lots of the usual running around, the “we’re not married” line, which appears to be developing into a running gag, a reference to “the bees disappearing”, which sounded like a throwaway line when Donna mentioned it in Partners in Crime, but now looks suspiciously like a hint of something to come, and a nice link back to an older story, when the Doctor mentions that the Ooodsphere is not too far from somewhere he’s visited before – the Sense-sphere, where he met the Sensorites[2], a race bearing something of a resemblance to the Ood.

But it’s not all fun and games. The Doctor and Donna find out what the humans do to the Ood to make them into passive servants, and it’s not at all pleasant. Donna is so appalled, especially after the Doctor lets her “hear” their psychic lament, that she just wants to go home. And what is the missing third factor? What is in Warehouse 15? What do the Ood mean by “The Circle must be broken”? All good questions, which get very unexpected answers.

Of course, in the usual way, the Doctor manages to sort things out, so thoroughly that no Ood will be a slave again, and all the scattered Ood are returning home. A leading Ood invites the travellers to stay and join their Song, but the Doctor declines, saying he has a kind of song of his own. To this, the Ood replies with something that is surely one of Russell’s trademark hints of Things To Come:

I think that your song must end soon.

It was another highly enjoyable episode, with a nice performance from Tim McInnery[3] as the villain who comes to a very, err, Ood end. Next week, it’s back to Earth for some fun with Sontarans, UNIT and the return of Martha.

[1] Which, as I’ve speculated before, may not be all that random really…
[2] He met them in black and white, so it really was a long time ago
[3] Captain Darling in Blackadder Goes Forth, etc