But really, the only link here is just a couple o’ giant brains that would make a hungry zombie fall to their knees and give thanks to be alive… erm, or dead, we guess. We start with the 10th Doctor and Donna arriving on the Ood home planet because some people thought, “Hey, maybe the Doctor should have more to say about the whole Ood slavery thing than a sternly worded Letter to the Editor in the Des Moines Daily Shopper.” What follows is your bog standard hey-let’s-free-them-all-from-slavery-but-don’t-fall-in-the-giant-brain-because-it-will-absorb-you-(I-guess?)-for-some-reason-not-fully-understood romp featuring a guy from Blackadder and a guy from Chef. It’s a plot so straight-forward that Probers get a glimpse into John’s formative years, which were marked primarily by the receipt of knock-off versions of movie soundtracks. If only he had been able to run away from it all and live in lobotomized bliss on the Planet of the Ood.
We then rocket back to the always entertaining Season 24 and the debut of Sylvester McCoy – first, very briefly, as the 6th Doctor and then for a bit longer as the 7th Doctor. Recovering from the ol’ conk-on-the-head induced regeneration, the Doctor must try to fight through the haze of post-regenerative amnesia amplified by the haze of Bonnie Langford and Kate O’Mara‘s hairspray, and Porter must fight through three episodes of the much-maligned Time and the Rani before even discovering the linking theme of these episodes – yes, it’s another giant brain. Absurd? Sure. But any more absurd than Kylie Minogue driving a forklift into a pit of fire? See what the NNTMP crew has to say.