The Ood Cast

We’ll record our Christmas episode after we’ve seen what Mr Moffat has in store for us on Christmas Day but until then we had the privilege of being asked to join in the festive fun over at The Doctor Who Podcast. We wrote and appeared in a sketch with them and you can listen to that (along with a few other surprises) by clicking on the following link:

The Doctor Who Podcast Christmas Special

Please go over and have a listen and maybe subscribe to their podcast (if you don’t already)? Trev, James and Tom run an amazing show full of cracking interviews, reviews and discussions about everything Doctor Who. They deserve your time.

You’ll also hear a Christmas duet between Laura & Tom which is, in our humble opinion, one of the best songs we’ve ever done. Tom is an incredibly accomplished blues singer and Laura, as we all know, isn’t exactly a slouch in the vocal performance department either.

So as an extra treat, it’s our pleasure to provide a complete version of the song for download. The track should slot comfortably into the rest of The Ood Cast album as track 19. Merry Christmas.

Listen here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download here:
19 Bigger on the Inside - 6.09 MB

(The track is also available on our Downloads page)

As a bit of a festive thank you to everyone who has downloaded the latest show, I’m going to reveal a little about our recent technical troubles…  Well, briefly.  We (well, Andy) had huge problems getting some of the material off the memory stick it was saved on, and although we rescued most of the material recorded for this show, there’s still something missing.

I need to explain a little.  Annette Badland played Margaret Slitheen in Boom Town… but I remembered her from my childhood, as Charlotte in the BBC series Bergerac alongside the ever-brilliant John Nettles.  If you want to know more, have a look here .

So, using that link, and to shamelessly fulfil a childhood dream of playing the hard-nosed sleuth Jim Bergerac (it was one of my reserve playground games when there was no one around to play Doctor Who with…) I wrote the sketch below…  As there’s not much point re-recording it, here’s the script so you guys can see what you would have heard.  Oh, and to help you with the beginning, and for some of you to reminisce, you’ll find the Bergerac theme tune here…

Good Cop, Bad Slitheen

Bergerac theme tune plays
SFX: Car pulls up

JIM:
What time is it?  Oh hell…

SFX: Running footsteps.  SFX: Office noises (typewriters, phones etc)

BARNEY:
Where is he?  Have you seen him, Terry?

TERRY:
Not this morning, no…

SFX: Door opens

BARNEY:
Ah, at last!

JIM:
Morning Barney.

BARNEY:
Where have you been?

JIM:
Oh you know…

BARNEY:
No, I don’t.

JIM:
Never mind then.  Morning Terry.

TERRY:
Morning Jim.

JIM:
Morning Charlotte.  (Silence) Morning Charlotte…

SFX: farting noise.

CHARLOTTE:
Sorry about that.  Morning, Jim.

SFX: Slitheen screams

“I really enjoyed them skirting round the issue and occasionally touching it and jumping away like some sort of frightened cat.”

On this week’s Ood Cast, still a member down, Laura, Andy and Chris Alpha take the Slitheen by the skin suit and use their time wisely. Not by invading the Earth using decoy pigs in space suits (or even pigs in blankets – it is the festive season after all), but by revisiting series one’s Boom Town. They wonder out-loud into handily positioned microphones whether the episode was as shaky as the planning permission for that nuclear power station in the episode must have been….

We discover (not necessarily this order): just what happened at that Cardiff Council planning meeting when the power station was approved; why Chris Alpha wanted to make a snowman instead of watching the episode; why they all agreed that they did and did not like it; and that Laura had absolutely no inspiration for a song this week.

Only joking. Of course there’s a song.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:56 — 31.1MB)

The Doctor Who universe is home to a great many unusual and unlikely creatures. But not even there would a creature who looks a bit like a bipedal balloon animal exist, surely?

Well, even there we’re spoilt by the great children’s entertainer in the sky. Enter, the Slitheen.

Coming from Raxacoricofallapatorius, Slitheen is a family name rather than a species – but that didn’t seem to stop anyone from mixing them up. Although, to be fair, it is a lot easier to say than Raxacoricofallapatorian… Either way, this is the universe’s version of the Krays, and after escaping their fate, they decided that the earth was a suitable place to convert into starship fuel and scrap.

The Doctor’s first encounter with these creatures came when they dressed a pig in a spacesuit (insert your own joke about Barack Obama / Sarah Palin here, folks) and made it crash into the Houses of Parliament and down into the Thames.

So, with the spaceship ringing Big Ben, their invasion began. While scientists were baffled by the terrified pig, the Slitheen family had moved into 10 Downing Street, killing and using high-profile victims as dress-making patterns for their handy skin suit disguises, which were very poorly designed. As anyone who’s ever tried to get a small person into a baby-gro will know, a suit with just a small opening at the top is not going to be easy to get in and out of. And if they were going for stealth, the whole breaking wind and lighty-up zipper thing probably isn’t good design either…

Here, two things were learnt about the species. Firstly, that they explode if they come into contact with vinegar. Secondly, that they are vulnerable to nuclear attack. Useful to know – to be safe from Slitheen attack, just open a fish &chip shop up in Chernobyl.

But disguise and covert existence seems to be their major strength – managing to infiltrate positions of authority is something unique to the Slitheen. And the Autons. And Zygons. Oh, and the Master too.

But disguise and covert existence seems to be their major strength – managing to infiltrate positions of authority is something they are moderately good at.

A lone Slitheen managed to escape the Downing Street explosion and resurfaced in Cardiff just six months later – proving the family’s reputation for being quick-to-rise political talents by already being installed as Mayor of the city. Using her powerful position, Margaret Slitheen managed to get a badly-wired nuclear power station approved at the planning stage – the model of which hid a hover board that she’d either borrowed from the Jetsons or Marty McFly (we’re never quite told) and on which, she intended to ride to freedom… She was then defeated in true Doctor fashion, by being given a second chance and regressing to an egg.

Slitheens, or at least fellow Raxacoricofallapatorians, were also part of the Alliance that shut the Doctor into the Pandorica. So maybe that second chance didn’t work out so well after all…

The Essentials

First Appearance: Aliens of London/World War Three (2005)

Telltale signs of their presence: Lots of windy smells, fidgeting, evil giggling. (actually, that could just be children, couldn’t it?)

Strengths: Surprise (as long as you don’t notice the farting or flashing lights), strength, disguises.

Weaknesses: Vinegar (any type is fine, although Balsamic is preferable if you’re having a salad after), nuclear explosions, and pregnant women with a good sob story.

For anyone interested, here’s the poem I wrote about that speech in “Rose”, and performed (if performed is the right word) on Series 3 episood 5…

That’s Who I Am

“If I’d gotten in there I’d have flattened myself against the doors and built up some sort of coat stand barricade…”

You know when you go shopping, and something just leaps out at you?  Literally?

Well, this week on The Ood Cast we are Sigma-less for the first time, and have a good look around before trying a spot of nostalgia to mask our temporary loss by going back to the very beginning of the good Doctor’s return to give the traditional Ood Cast treatment to the Series One opener, Rose.

We whisk you through a head writer’s neighbourhood gossip, the costume selection process, and we have a go at explaining one of the enduring mysteries of the new series – just why did the Eighth Doctor regenerate?

All this and some poetry, and there might well be some songs too.  You never know…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:41 — 33.6MB)

In 1970, The Doctor changed. But not only that, a new terror stalked the high streets and shopping centres of Britain… Something that would make shopping a more frightening experience than it already was. Plastic mannequins with weapons concealed within poorly-manufactured hands… The Autons.

Autons are basically deadly shop window dummies brought to life by the Nestene Consciousness – one of the oldest beings in the universe, a disembodied alien life-form, which created the form of a large, be-tentacled cuttlefish after invading the earth using hollow plastic meteorites. The control of their plastic warriors was generally done through an advance form of short wave radio signal.

During the first invasion attempt, the Nestene Consciousness stuck to their simple initial 2 ranges: The Basic (Which lived in shop windows and wandered around killing indiscriminately) and the Deluxe (more advanced and realistic human replicas, living in waxwork museums which were used to take the place of leaders and other important figures). Both were armed with the now-familiar weaponry – guns concealed in the hands of the Autons, which could only be activated when the fingers dropped down.

Their first invasion attempt failed when UNIT attacked the plastics factory the Nestene Consciousness was hiding in, but as the soldiers discovered that the Autons were impervious to traditional bullets, it was left to Liz Shaw to save the planet by finding the off switch on the tank containing the consciousness.

But the Autons were genuinely scary, and returned to have another crack at humans a year later, this time with a more developed plastic power thanks to an alliance with the Master – who convinced them with some joke shop daffodils. Eventually (and uniquely maybe) the Doctor convinced the Master that the Nestenes would double cross him and they teamed up to send them back off into space.

The Ninth Doctor later discovered them in Henrick’s Department Store, London where he helped a certain shop assistant to escape before blowing the activated Autons up (along with the store). This much later invasion attempt showed the Nestene Consciousness as an angry blob of putty hiding under the London Eye, near Westminster Bridge. He defeated them with “Anti Plastic” (bit like De-Icer. Only for plastic and that).

Their eye for detail has clearly improved over the years, and when they returned at the moment the Eleventh Doctor discovered the Pandorica, they were capable of very accurate human reproductions – and had decided to make a whole new Roman Army for the occasion.

The Essentials

First appearance: Spearhead From Space (1970)

Most heartbreaking appearance: The Pandorica Opens (2010) [Poor Rory!]

Most “handy” appearance: Rose (2005)

Strengths: Resistant to conventional earth weapons, can activate any number of inanimate plastic objects

Weaknesses: Extreme heat, being switched off, over-simplified opposites.