The first recording starts with the end of Newsround.
There’s a trail for Adventure Rock.
Then there’s an episode of Raven – The Secret Temple. A sort of outward bound Crystal Maze.
I know they’ve got a safety harness, but even so, this must be pretty terrifying.
Some of the games seem a little lower stakes, although conceptually similar.
This one seems unnecessarily grim – they’ve got two actors playing corpses just to add some atmosphere. And the game is hard as one of them has to walk through all the debris blindfold, pick up jewel bags, without touching anything that’s lying on the floor. Not surprisingly, they didn’t make it.
This one just seems to be “can you copy three patterns”.
Still, at least there’s hugging.
Media Centre Description: The four teams press on to win places to enter the Secret Temple and to attempt to wrestle the elixir from the serpents that guard it. The Panthers enter the Field of the Dead, the Tigers must traverse the Stepping Stones, the Wolves summon all their courage for the Ledge, and the Eagles decipher Rangoli Ring. Nevar and his evil henchmen will try to disrupt the quest.
Recorded from CBBC Channel on Saturday 19th April 2008 12:58
BBC Genome: CBBC Channel Saturday 19th April 2008 13:00
The next recording starts with the end of Pinky Dinky Doo.
There’s a trail for Charlie and Lola.
Then a repeat of Jackanory Junior – King Arthur and the Mighty Contest read by Kris Marshall.
Media Centre Description: Stories for young children and families. Kris Marshall tells Tony Mitton’s crazy tale of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Will they find the Holy Grail?
Recorded from CBeebies on Saturday 19th April 2008 17:43
BBC Genome: CBeebies Saturday 19th April 2008 17:45
After this, there’s the Goodbye Sun, Hello Moon song.
Then the recording stops with the start of Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies.
The next recording starts with the end of that same episode of Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies.
Then it’s a repeat of Charlie and Lola – I Want To Be Much More Bigger Like You.
Media Centre Description: Children’s animation. Join Lola and Charlie, a brother and sister, as they deal with topics that affect their everyday lives. Life’s just not fair when you’re always the smaller one! You can’t go to bed late, you can’t get your own pink milk and you can’t go on the Super Dooper Loop the Looper ride at the fair. Lola does everything she can to make herself taller, including imagining she’s a skyscraper. Finally the scariness of the Looper convinces her she’s better off small.
Recorded from CBeebies on Saturday 19th April 2008 18:13
BBC Genome: CBeebies Saturday 19th April 2008 18:15
After this, there’s trails for Catherine Tate’s bedtime story and Charlie and Lola. Then the recording stops with the start of Rubbadubbers.
The next recording starts with the Chris Evans BBC 2 promo we haven’t seen for a while.
There’s also the Heroes trail.
Then it’s a new episode of Doctor Who – Planet of the Ood. I feel almost restrained today as there’s only two copies of this one today.
[Voiceover] “The Ood. They came from a distant world. They voyaged across the stars. All with one purpose.” [Ood] “Do you take milk and sugar?”
A sweaty businessman is fretting over the sales figures of the business of selling Oods. Until his personal Ood servant goes all red-eyed and zaps him. “Have a nice day.”
The Doctor and Donna land on a cold, snowy planet, with real space rockets. She’s very excited.
The death at the Ood company means the big cheese of the company, Mr Halpen, has flown in. He’s played by Tim McInnerny. He has a drink. The head of Marketing, Solana Mercurio, says “I’m sorry, but according to your own rules, sir, there’s no alcohol allowed on base.” “It’s hair tonic, if you must know. Five years ago, I had a full head of hair. Stress, that’s what this is, stress!” He asks what happened to the Ood who attacked. “Ran for the wilds, sir, like a dog. One of the guards fired off a shot, it’ll be dead by now.”
The Doctor and Donna are still exploring. The Doctor can hear singing, but Donna can’t. Then they come across a dying Ood, obviously the one from the opening. They can’t do anything for him. Before he dies he says “The circle must be broken.” Then his eyes flash red, making the Doctor jump, before the Odd dies in the snow.
They find their way to the Ood facility, and the Doctor flashes the psychic paper. “Representing the Noble Corporation PLC Limited, Intergalactic.” “Must have fallen off my list, my apologies. Won’t happen again. Now then, Dr Noble, Mrs Noble, if you’d like to come with me.” “Oh, no, no, we’re not married!” “We’re so not married.” “Never.” “Never ever!”
There’s something important and secret in Warehouse 15, where Halpen and Ryder, Head of Ood Management visit, trying to work out what’s causing the Ood to go red-eyed. While he’s there he gets news that they’ve realised the Doctor and Donna shouldn’t be there.
Speaking of whom, they’ve found the shipping department, huge (very contemporary looking) shipping container containing Ood, waiting to be transported wherever they’ve been sold. “I don’t understand, the door was open, why don’t you just run away?” “For what reason?” “You could be free.” “I do not understand the concept.” The Doctor asks about the circle. “The circle must be broken” they all say in unison. “Woah, that is creepy! But what is it? What is the circle?” “The circle must be broken.” “Why?” “So that we can sing.”
The company’s head of security, Commander Kess, has spotted them, and mobilises his men. They grab Donna, and shove her into an Ood container. But the Doctor is running, so Kess straps into a robot crane operator, and goes after him with a giant claw machine. luckily, he’s stopped before he kills him because Halpen wants them alive. But then more of the Ood go red-eyed, so The Doctor and Donna take the opportunity to get out, along with Mercurio.
The Doctor tries to get Mercurio to understand the horror of the company she works for, but she doesn’t want to know, and alerts the guards.
That Hair Tonic Halpen’s taking isn’t working very well. That’s exactly what he doesn’t want to happen.
The Doctor And Donna find an area where there are unprocessed Ood. He can hear singing even louder. Donna can’t hear it. “It’s the song of captivity” he says. He does a Vulcan mind meld on her to let her see it, and it’s overwhelming. “Take it away.” “You sure?” “I can’t bear it. I’m sorry.” “That’s OK.” “But you can still hear it?” “All the time.”
The unprocessed Ood carry part of their brain in their hands. “It’s a brain. A hind brain. The Ood are born with a secondary brain. Like the amygdala in humans, it processes memory and emotions. Get rid of that and you wouldn’t be Donna any more. You’d be like an Ood, a processed Ood.” “So the company… cuts off their brains? And they stitch on the translator. Like a lobotomy.”
The company’s security is going to exterminate all the Ood with red-eye. But the Ood keep singing to themselves, and it’s affecting the rest of the Ood. Miss Mercurio runs out to escape the Ood inside, orders security to shoot the Ood outside, and then gets zapped by an Ood.
Helpen leaves the Doctor and Donna handcuffed in his office as he escapes the approaching Ood, heading for what’s in Warehouse 15. The Ood get closer and closer to The Doctor and Donna as they try to tell them they’re on their side. “Doctor, Donna, friends! The circle must be broken! Friends, friends, friends! The circle must be broken! Doctor, Donna, friends! Friends!” The unprocessed Ood in the cage seem to hear this and hold their hands up as if communicating. The approaching Ood suddenly turn of their translator lights, pause for a moment, they say “Doctor. Donna. Friends.”
Halpen has a plan B. A lot of bombs to destroy something big. “We’re gonna blow it up. This thing dies, so do the Ood.”
The Doctor and Donna find the warehouse, and finally discover what it’s hiding. “The Ood Brain. Now it all makes sense, that’s the missing link, the third element, binding them together. Fore brain, hind brain, and this – the telepathic centre. It’s a shared mind, connecting all the Ood in song. Those pylons. In a circle. “The circle must be broken.” Damping the telepathic field. Stopping the Ood from connecting for 200 years.”
Ryder, the head of Ood Management, reveals that he’s a Friend of the Ood, and has been lowering the dampening field, which is why the Ood have been rebelling.
So Halpen throws him over the edge into the brain.
But Ryder wasn’t the only person close to Halpen to have been working against him. There’s also Ood Sigma his loyal servant. And the Hair Tonic he’s been feeding him. “Ood-graft suspended in a biological compound.” And it’s turning him into an Ood. This is even more body horror than the Adipose. And we watched this with our kids!
The Doctor shuts off the telepathic suppression field, and the Ood can finally sing properly. Murray Gold’s score here is lovely.
The Doctor and Donna say goodbye to the now free Ood. But they leave with some hints about the Doctor’s future. “And what of you now, will you stay? There is room in the song for you.” “Oh, I’ve… sort of got a song of my own, thanks.” “I think your song must end soon.” “Meaning?” “Every song must end.”
Media Centre Description: The Doctor takes Donna to her first alien world – but the Ood-Sphere reveals some terrible truths about the human race.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Saturday 19th April 2008 18:18
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Saturday 19th April 2008 18:20
After this, there’s a trail for National Lottery 1 vs 100.
There’s also a trail for the Bafta TV Awards.
Then the recording stops, after 15 minutes of I’d Do Anything. I’m slightly disappointed I don’t have the whole thing this week.
The next recording starts with the end of Gaffes Galore Outtakes.
There’s a trail for Amy: My Body for Bucks and one for Scallywagga.
Then it’s an episode of Doctor Who Confidential – Oods and Ends.
Straight into the production with Tim Barter and Dave Houghton: “We’re in a warehouse today, filming a scene where The Doctor is chased by a giant claw.”
David Tennant: “It was trying to find ways of making it look as risky as possible, and trying to find different ways of coming round a corner, so it didn’t look like you were just running away all the time. Of course, the claw was being added in afterwards. I haven’t seen the finished sequence yet. They could make the claw look decidedly unthreatening, in which case I’m running for my life away from some fairground grabber!”
Abbi Collins supervises the stunts. “David has to fall over some barrels later, and fall down. He’s very good at anything like that. Anything physical, he’s great on. Pad him up and we’ll get him to do it.”
Russell T Davies: “First time we met the Ood, they were introduced on the Impossible Planet as a slave race. They’re slaves, the people who cook the food and do all the physical labour. We never found out much about them. They were sort of mildly telepathic. All identical. Happy to serve, which is a very odd and strange thing that’s touched on fleetingly during The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit, but we never really got to the bottom of that, so I always felt there was a lot more to be explained about them. It’s interesting from The Doctor’s point of view, this story, because he has to confess that he kind of ignored the Ood the last time.”
Graeme Harper (the only director who also worked on classic Who) talks about the Ood: “When I read this story, I realised what a superb group of characters they really were. Once you had the fit ones, the well ones, or once their world had been put right. What a fantastic tribe of people. Brilliant. Or, race of people…”
Catherine Tate: “Today, we are filming in St Athan Airbase… Wales. And we are using the inside of the, um, I don’t know what it is, is it a hangar…thing? As a sort of, um, it’s like an ultimate battery farm for Oods. Each container is crammed in with slave Oods. Myself and The Doctor discover this. I should say, The Doctor and myself, really. And I get shoved in with them.”
Ailsa Berk looks after the Ood movement. “It’s good fun to actually have the Oods back again. Very nice character to work with, because you’re never quite sure who, where they have come from, what their evolution is. But this time, we get more of an insight into the Oods, because we see not just the Oods, but we see the natural Oods who slowly reveal, opening their hands, you see their little hind brain. You get to know more, that something has happened to these people over a period of about two centuries.”
Paul Kasey plays Ood Sigma: “The first look of the Ood. You look at them and go, “Ugh!” because of the tentacles, but as you get to see them more within the episode and the different types of Oods, especially the natural Oods. I think you tend to love them that little bit more. They’re sort of a bit more… You’d want one really, because they’re so nice.”
Neill Gorton demonstrates the animatronics in the Ood head.
Paul Kelly talks about filling a quarry with snow. “It’s amazing how once that turns white, it’s a psychological thing, it makes you feel cold. And it should look quite good, with the falling snow, it will look fairly realistic.”
Susie Liggat: “We’re up at the Trefil Quarry, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. As you can see behind me, we’ve sprayed a lot of it with snow for the opening scene, scene four, where the TARDIS arrives.”
Tim McInnerny: “My character is called Kleinman Halpen which is obviously the name of a villain, it’s very clear.”
Ayesha Dharker: “She’s a marketing manager for the Ood. And I think she’s one of those people that follows the rules. She knows somewhere along the way when she meets The Doctor, she realises that what’s happening is really awful. But she somehow doesn’t step out of her job. She doesn’t follow what she thinks is right. She, sort of, keeps doing her job. “Come on, think for yourself!” But she never does.”
James O’Dee doubles for Dr Ryder for him being thrown into the Ood Brain.
Jean-Claude DeGuara discusses the effects when Halpen becomes an Ood, and some of the CG face tracking they have to do. “The red ones will track the face and hold the face steady, and then all of the blue ones are for the individual muscles. That should lock our head still.”
But they have to reshoot, because the original shot of the tendrils coming out was from the front, and Russell thought it would look like he’s being sick, so they have to do a shot from the side, but Tim McInnerny had finished filming, so they recruited Peter Chester, who normally works as the Best Boy on the camera team, so stand in for the closeup of his mouth. “I’m quite a camera-shy person, so I’m not used all this attention.”
Media Centre Description: Behind-the-scenes look at the making of Doctor Who. There’s a trip to the Ood Sphere to witness the return of the mysterious Ood to the world of the Doctor, and a look at the various methods which go into making an Ood. Plus, how a quarry in Wales in the middle of summer gets turned into a winter wonderland, and David Tennant gets turned into an all-action hero to escape a mechanical menace. Featuring interviews with Tennant, Catherine Tate, and writer Russell T Davies.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Saturday 19th April 2008 19:03
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Saturday 19th April 2008 19:05
After this, there’s 60 Seconds of news.
There’s also trails for Blood, Sweat & T-Shirts, The Wall, and Scallywagga.
Then the recording ends with the start of Top Gear.
The next recording is that whole episode of Top Gear. This is their America special from 2007. They want to see if it’s cheaper, instead of hiring a car for a long road trip, to buy a cheap car, drive it across country, then sell it when you get there to make some money back.
They recruit the Stig’s American cousin to take their cars round a track.
Jeremy installs an in-car shower because his air-conditioning doesn’t work.
Another challenge is to go camping for a night, and they can only eat what they can find dead on the side of the road. The best they can manage is a squirrel until Jeremy arrives with something a bit bigger. Clearly channelling his inner RJK jr.
“OK, it says here we must not be shot or arrested as we drive across the proud state of Alabama. But we will get bonus points if we can get one of the others shot or arrested.” “I don’t understand. How do we do that?” “You will therefore decorate one another’s cars in such a way to draw maximum attention to yourself in this Bible-bashing, redneck, deeply Christian part of the Union.”
This is the challenge that led to this.
And also this. Which resulted in the team, plus, apparently, the camera crew, being chased by armed men in pick-up trucks. If this was all staged, it was well staged, as it looked very scary.
They make it to New Orleans, where they intended to sell the cars to make some of their money back. But when they get there, they can see that the city is still full of the devastation of the previous year’s Hurricane Katrina. So they contacted a local mission to find families who had lost their cars in Katrina, and gave them away.
Well, except James May’s car, which nobody wanted.
Media Centre Description: Motoring magazine show with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. This week’s show is an American special as Jeremy, Richard and James try to prove that a fly-drive holiday to Florida would be more fun if you bought a car instead of renting one. Having picked up some wheels for no more than 1000 dollars each, the boys embark on an epic road trip to find out who got the best deal, encountering heat, flies and very angry locals along the way.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Saturday 19th April 2008 19:48
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Saturday 19th April 2008 19:50
After this there’s a trail for Amy: My Body for Bucks and sports news in 60 Seconds.
There’s also an advert for the TV License.
Plus trails for Glamour Girls and Scallywagga.
Then the recording stops with the start of Cast Away.
The next recording starts with the end of some American hidden camera show.
Then it’s a repeat of Criss Angel Mindfreak – Celebrity Seance.
Media Centre Description: Self-styled extreme entertainer Criss Angel is on a quest to bring magic to the lives of his audience in a series of amazing feats that challenge the traditional concepts of magic and illusion.
Recorded from ITV4 on Sunday 20th April 2008 02:08
After this, the recording stops with the start of Inked. It’s late night ITV4 so no ads really worth mentioning.
The final recording today starts with a trail for The Graham Norton Show featuring Tony Curtis and Kevin Bacon.
There’s a trail for Scallywagga.
Then it’s a repeat of Doctor Who Confidential – Oods and Ends
Media Centre Description: Behind-the-scenes look at the making of Doctor Who. There’s a trip to the Ood Sphere to witness the return of the mysterious Ood to the world of the Doctor, and a look at the various methods which go into making an Ood. Plus, how a quarry in Wales in the middle of summer gets turned into a winter wonderland, and David Tennant gets turned into an all-action hero to escape a mechanical menace. Featuring interviews with Tennant, Catherine Tate, and writer Russell T Davies.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Sunday 20th April 2008 02:33
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Sunday 20th April 2008 02:35
After this there’s trails for Heroes Glamour Girls, Blood, Sweat & T-Shirts and The Wall.
Then the recording stops with the start of Young Mums’ Mansion Changed My Life.