The Ood Cast

Best known as the mortal enemies of the Sontaran Empire (you’d be disappointed if you’d been battling someone for more than 50,000 years to only be considered a minor irritation), Rutans – or Rutan Hosts – are famous in the Doctor Who universe for having the highest mention-to-appearance ratio*, only appearing once in the long history of televisually documented encounters but being mentioned on numerous occasions. Mostly by Sontarans.

The only recorded encounter the Doctor had with a Rutan took place when his Fourth incarnation visited a delightful holiday spot called Fang Rock, and it was his investigation into the deaths of the lighthouse keeping team there which uncovered the ability and methods of the Rutans. It also uncovered their true appearance – that of a mis-shapen cloudy green jellyfish with a lightbulb underneath. In fact, I could swear I won a marble that looked exactly like that Rutan in a playground game when I was 7…

As their appearance suggests, they are essentially amphibious but can happily function on dry land – and are even able to cling to sheer surfaces – like the side of the Fang Rock lighthouse. Their voice doesn’t quite go with the appearance, sounding a little like small man trapped in a tin box.

Tactically, they are similar to Sontarans in that they have a habit of sending down single scouts ahead of a larger number of soldiers. But these scouts were just as dangerous and more cunning than a Sontaran would be. The Rutan scout discovered in the lighthouse, for example, targeted specific humans, killed them and then impersonated them in an effort to disguise its presence.

Knowing that the Rutans’ home planet, Ruta 3, was an icy world, the Doctor killed the scout by rigging a weapon to overheat him before he could be rescued, and dealt with the mothership by reflecting the light from the top of the lighthouse at it using a diamond. A pretty blingin’ end.

What do we learn after all of this? That jellyfish and potatoes do not play well together. Also, as a species, they may get less love than Sontarans, but they’re much more interesting…

The Essentials

First (and only – and therefore best and worst) appearance: The Horror of Fang Rock (1977)

Sworn Enemy: Sontarans.

Strenths: Victim impersonation, electric tentacles. Great sense of humour.

Weaknesses: Extreme heat, sea shanties, the plays of Bertholt Brecht **

*This statement is based purely on speculation to make a point. Please don’t be mean and picky about it if it’s not quite true.

**Well, if you swallowed the first unsubstantiated bit…

Click on image to see full size.

Click on image to see full size.

“Come along, Smith!”

Yes, come join the Ood Cast as we dip our toes in the warm, nostalgic waters of The Sarah Jane Adventures and our first review for the series, “Death of the Doctor”.

Unsettlingly Andrew-less, we draft in a close family member to discuss days gone by, whether people’s heads fit their shoulders, the ways we deal with bereavement and how Santiago is like a chicken.

There’s also sketches about the dangers of a whole species having the same job and what would happen if RTD went more RTD than he’d ever gone before.

GLORIOUS!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:06 — 35.3MB)

A rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence (often a sequence of characters) should be mapped to an output sequence (also often a sequence of characters) according to a defined procedure.

Ah. No. Now that there is a “macro”, isn’t it?

Macra are giant, crab-like and crabby in all sorts of ways, living on gases which would be poisonous to humans and prone to eating one or two ape descendants when peckish or feeling rather peeved after a hard day.

When the Tenth Doctor discovered them prowling underneath the motorways of “New Earth”, he called them the “scourge of the galaxy” – a race which once owned and ruled over a large empire. However, when the Second Doctor found them, they were roughing it in a gas refinery – brainwashing the inhabitants of a nearby holiday camp into continuing the production of the vital gases they need to survive. They were masters of manipulative mind control techniques, duping their RC humans into keeping them alive and putting on a fake smile in the process.

If you ask me, it’s not the Macra’s fault – I mean what type of idiot wants to holiday next to a whopping great gas plant in the first place?! And frankly, you’re just asking for trouble if you shove your holiday camp next to the one with the infestation of gigantic crabs, too…

Having been outwitted by the Second Doctor (who incited a revolution and blew them up using a combustible mix of gases), the Tenth Doctor found them hiding from Rick Stein underneath New New York, surviving on the traffic fumes, nicking cars and eating the contents on his way to have a chat with the Face of Boe. It seems that billions of years on from their explosive first encounter with the Doctor, all evolution had done for them was reduce them to nasty, bullying predators.

I read somewhere that these were the only monsters to have appeared just once in the new series. But that’s blatant nonsense, so I’m not going there. Only returning monsters to only feature once, I can believe, but then, how do you fit a Crabzilla into caves under Stonehenge?

The Essentials

First Appearance: The Macra Terror (1967)

Best complimented by: mayonnaise and lemon wedge. Maybe some of that pink seafood sauce.

Weaknesses: Explosions. Large pans of boiling water.

Special one this week. This is a card Laura & I got for our engagement drawn by the extremely talented Steph Hubbard.

Click on image to see full size.

Click on image to see full size.

Did we do it right?

Green and glinty, sharp-toothed and soggy (and not just because he’s just come in an airlock to attack some humans), the Myrka is the highlight inthe undersea inter-species war of 2084 – a war so fleeting, hard-fought and lop-sided that it lasted barely a week, in four 20 minute bursts.

In their subterranean cave-type base, the Silurians and their Martin Clune-like servants the Sea Devils had managed to capture a sea dragon. They had a long-term strategy which, like all good strategies, needed a dragon to progress.

In two separate incidents, first the Silurians themselves, and later their flappy-eared, string-vest-wearing cannon fodder, raided the towns of Wales and the south coast of England in a carefully co-ordinated attempt to buy remote controlled cars from the nearest branches of Argos.

Over the next few years, the slippery cousins worked away in secret, improving the life of their sea dragon friend – eventually creating a sort of scaly Steve Austin – a million-dollar-Myrka, if you will… equipped with the best remote controlled technology available under the earth (complete with the very latest in spring-loaded suspension and high-traction rubber tires. You know the one Buzz Lightyear and Woody ride in Toy Story? Bit like that, but in dragon form…)

The Silurians put the final stage of their plan into action by carefully coating the Myrka in green emulsion and sending it across the sea bed to attack an airlock of the humans’ seabase. Once through the first section of airlock, the Silurians realised that the emulsion had washed off their robodragon on the way to the seabase and decided to put on one last coat before he broke into the base.

Once inside, he fought bravely. He eventually fell heroically when the Fifth Doctor waved a mini-sunbed at him. It turns out that UV light is to cyber-genetically-modified Sea Dragons what Kryptonite is to Superman. Or vinegar is to Slitheen.

He was survived by a wife and two of those mini robotic Godzilla things you see advertised on TV at Christmas.

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