The Ood Cast

“Wide-spread contagion amongst cast and crew, means that Silurians are being made to wear verruca socks whilst on set.”

How excited are we? I mean, just how EXCITED are we?!

With just a handful of days until the new series starts, we’ll tell you exactly how excited we are in this week’s Ood Cast. But that’s not all we have to say.

We’ll talk about news things – in our own way; knitted, sewn and generally marvellously created things, and we’ll hear how the Doctor gets on when he has to stop on a distant planet for a… comfort break. We’ll also have a bit of feedback from our incredibly intelligent, discerning listeners, and a special musical treat in store too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:32 — 36.4MB)

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest (purely from a personal standpoint – its up to other Ood Casters to decide whether they agree), that the Daily Mail is hardly a beacon of quality journalism.

But I came across this via the superb Doctor Who News Page.   And it is brilliant proof that I am right.

A new sexy Doctor Who? Exterminate!

When Matt Smith, he of the strangely alien features, takes over from David Tennant as the new Doctor Who his assistant, Amy Pond, will be played by Karen Gillan.

The 6ft-tall former model claims she will be the sexiest companion in the show’s history, wearing skirts too teeny to blow your nose on.

‘Initially, they wanted me in trousers, just because of the practicality of running around,’ explains Karen.

‘But I wanted the miniskirt because I think it really suits Amy’s sassy character.’ Matt Smith describes her as ‘the sexiest companion that’s ever lived’.

Since when was Doctor Who’s assistant supposed to be sexy? They’re meant to be one of the boys, running around saving distant worlds.

Is it too much to ask that family TV remains the one universe yet to be invaded by nuts magazine?

What next  -  K9 as a pitbull and Cybermen become Cyberchicks with metal boobs? Doctor Whooarr? No thanks.

The full thing, should you wish to subject yourself to further middle class moaning, can be found via that article.  I can’t bring myself to actually link us to the Mail…

Where do we start?

“…he of the strangely alien features…”

Well, he’s not playing a stockbroker from Islington is he?  I did hear an interesting interview with David Quantick recently on another podcast (the excellent Shift Run Stop, if you’re interested) where he described Matt Smith as having “a face like a bent shoe”… which seems rather fitting somehow.

“…skirts too teeny to blow your nose on.”

Bet you £10 I could manage it.  Although I suppose it depends how large the nose.

“Since when was Doctor Who’s assistant supposed to be sexy?”

Erm, I know this… 1963.  Has she ever seen the show at all?  There’s a long history of companions wearing short skirts – and in the case of Peri, almost nothing at all…

“They’re meant to be one of the boys, running around saving distant worlds.”

I think you possibly mean screaming a lot and being captured/falling into simple traps so the Doctor has someone to save…

“What next  -  K9 as a pitbull and Cybermen become Cyberchicks with metal boobs?”

Right, so she’s not seen Torchwood either then…

And finally, m’lud: “Doctor Whooarr?”

What’s wrong with a west country doctor?  I know the Mail are renowned for being prejudiced and less-than-objective, but insults on regional accents now?  Really.

Expect this to come up on an up-coming Ood Cast…

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.”

If this episode of the Ood Cast was a breakfast cereal, it’d be so packed full of nuts, chocolate shavings, oats, wheat, honey, marshmallows and dried fruit that no one would ever want to eat anything else again. We’re lousy with content this week – Sonic Wiimotes, Global Statistics, Rose/ Amy Cat Fights, Pre-School Doctors and Classic Quotes from all eras of the series.

And if that wasn’t enough, we finish with a scene set on the Vinvocci home world in which we attempt to explain why the Immortality Gate acted in such a bizarrely lethal way towards the Tenth Doctor in “The End of Time”.

There’s even a sound effect of a space ship landing. You don’t hear that every day.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:22 — 31.6MB)

“I like to think of the Doctor as a Liver Fluke. Now if you don’t know what a Liver Fluke is, it looks a bit like a fried mushroom and you tend to find them in abattoirs …”

This week on the Ood Cast we discuss Chris’ attempt at a unified theory of time travel within the Doctor Who universe. That’s right, we spend half an hour earnestly debating a fictional concept. That’s how we roll on the Ood sphere.

Apparently.

Despite acknowledging early on that the real reason that Doctor Who’s approach to time travel doesn’t make sense is because the writers make it up as they go along, we press on regardless and come up with a pretty reasonable explanation that encompasses water mazes, fixed points in time, a technological reading of evolution, calcified internal organs and the fact that the Doctor is probably part-TARDIS.

Bon appetit!

P.S We believe our theory of time travel to be bullet proof and challenge you to find examples that prove us wrong. Write to us at oodcast@me.com or at www.facebook.com/theoodcast. Or you could address your tweet to @theoodcast. Go on … we dare you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (32.0MB)

I have a confession to make. I’m not entirely sure I want to find out what relevance River Song has to the story of the Doctor.

It is intriguing, I admit. A fascinating situation, and it is really tempting to give in to the possibilities and speculate on all of this. My reluctance to be interested is nothing to do with the writing or the actual episodes – the storyline is great and the possibilities almost endless. And I am an unashamed fan of the Moff – from Press Gang days and everything.

It’s just, well… Let’s have a quick look back into my past. Just for a moment.

My childhood was spent with friends in playgrounds and leafy suburban gardens – repeating (scarily verbatim sometimes) the adventures of the 7th doctor and Ace in between games of football and all that. I seem to remember that Silver Nemesis was particularly fun to re-enact if not perfect when on the telly.. (what’s not to love about a game where you get to blow things up, shoot both arrows and machine guns and defeat three enemies at once?).

And physically re-living the bit in Remembrance of the Daleks where Ace twats the Dalek with the baseball bat was so enjoyable we had to do it several times to make sure we all got a go…

Girls were involved in precisely none of this. Unless you counted our mums. And while they were regularly pressed into service as either the malevolent presence of the Master or a guard patrol in the futuristic space station we’d snuck into (usually known as a house, I believe), they certainly didn’t count.

Now, there’s nothing against girls in this. And certainly not female fans of Who. Girls just never seemed to enjoy football, or blowing up parked Cybermen spaceships in someone’s back garden. It seemed equally strange that the Doctor and Ace should choose to defeat Helen A and the Kandy Man through the use of a mean hopscotch, or by sitting on the grass to make a daisychain, or even making their own costume jewellery. So the two things, girls and Who just seemed not to mix.

And that’s just it. I grew up not only thinking that the Doctor was “mine”, if you know what I mean… but also wanting to BE the Doctor. And the intrusion of girls into this wonderfully boyish universe, where guns were always beaten by a man who hated them, was – and sometimes still is – a weird thing to try and deal with.

I’ve often wondered since then if pretending to be the 7th Doctor is why I’m always so taken with independent-minded women, too… I’ve met plenty of them, but to my (I hope not obvious) disappointment, not one of them had a rucksack full of Nitro-9 canisters…

It was the same with Rose Tyler. Really very good character and I know that the bit that annoyed me may well have broadened the appeal of the show. It’s not exactly the closeness or anything that bothered me – it’s the fact that it, well, took away screen time from the monsters… And when I watched during my formative years, the monsters were a brilliant part of the stories, much less hampered by more distasteful things like emotions. I mean, urgh.

And then the moping. The bloody moping. Apart from anything else, it seemed slightly pathetic – everyone else tries to ignore outside problems when they’re at work… If I want to watch lovesick mooning, I’ll buy a DVD of Dawson’s Creek… not Doctor Who.

In all honesty, when the Doctor “donated” the other version of himself to Rose at the end of series 4, I nearly went looking for a DVD of that. At least then it would have made more sense and I wouldn’t have thrown anything at the TV. It took me ages to hoover up the mess.

This, though, is River Song. She’s a brilliant character, and I’m thrilled beyond belief to think that we might not get answers in this series – this is, after all, Steven Moffat we’re talking about. There’s always plenty of chance that the answers won’t be entirely revealed this time round. And on good days, I’m looking forward to hearing what she is to the chap I’ve been following avidly for more than half my life.

On other days, though, the very thought of finding out she’s the Doctor’s future wife (or something like that), makes me long to climb up into the tree house, pull in the rope ladder and pin a sign on the tree outside that says: “NO GIRLS ALLOWED”.

In other words, I think the essence of what I’m saying is this. I know the problem is me, not you. But there are certain shows you turn to for something specific, and I don’t turn to Doctor Who for a dissection of intergalactic unrequited love. If I wanted that I’d watch Kirk snogging aliens on another channel.

“There’s texture to it, there’s weirdness to it, there’s a Hinchcliffe Doctor Who-ness about it.”

And so with the grinding and wheezing of millennia-old engines, the second season of the Ood Cast pulls itself into corporeal existence. This week on the show we get a bit over-excited about the new series, wave aside petty disputes about season numbers and bow ties, reaffirm our mission statement to be a force for optimism and enthusiasm in Doctor Who fandom and then spoil it all by talking about James Corden. We then descend into a heated discussion about things that are pink and deadly. Plus, in an Ood Cast exclusive, we present an audio trailer for Richard Curtis’ episode of the new series. All this and a jingle about geeky pedantry.

Classic Ood Cast!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:36 — 27.3MB)

Hello and welcome to our lovely new website.

Yes, due to Laura inadvertently crashing the old website into Earth during a problematic regeneration, we’ve decided to take the opportunity to redecorate. And with Series 2 of The Ood Cast just days away, we thought we’d spruce up the logo and make a few tweaks to the look and feel of the programme too.

Everyone’s doing it.

Apparently.

These are exciting times. Series 2 of the podcast is going to be something really special. We’re upping our game in anticipation of Steven Moffat’s tenure at the Whoniverses controls. We’ve got loads of ideas for content including sketches, spoofs, games, reviews and even a season of audio adventures. We hope you’ll stick around to ring in a new era of Who with us and while we’re all waiting for Matt Smith to stumble out of those blue double doors for the first time, why not join our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter?

Everyone’s doing it.

Apparently.