The Ood are a hive mind race in Doctor Who who carry part of their brain in their hand.
So Planet of the Ood was on PBS last week and watching it again got me thinking. What kind of advantages would there be to having half of your brain sticking out of your mouth?
I can think of plenty of disadvantages, it would be hard to get dressed in the morning, if you slip on the ice you could get brain damage, eating hot wings would be difficult. Going to the bathroom, putting on gloves making sweet love to your oodfriend, playing almost any sport would seem to require two free hands, or at least having one hand busy holding something as important as your brain would make doing just about anything very complicated.
So beyond the thought that their exposed forebrain was necessary for telepathic communication, what other biological reason would there be to necessitate the Ood developing like this?
The Ood might ask the same about us and our iPhones. Since it’s so important to us, why hasn’t evolution put it in our heads instead of glued to our palms?
Those devices were attached to the nerve bundles that formerly attached their secondary brains to the primary ones.
As to why they have secondary brains…I suspect it may be an artefact of their telepathic abilities - put the main transmitter/receiver outside the bone casing that protected the part that dealt with life support and thought.
The bad guys removed their external brains and replaced them with those translator devices, to make the Ood their willing, or rather uncaring, slaves.
Here are a few crazy theories:
Maybe the external brains were originally used for something else. Say, as a sexual organ, or for display, like a peacock’s feathers or a turkey’s chin. They probably don’t have to carry them in their hands, they could just let them dangle or sling them over their shoulders, but that would be considered rude, kind of like not covering up when you’re naked would be for a human being.
Maybe the brains are really the male Ood, and what we think of as an Ood the female. After mating, the male Ood’s body atrophies and his brain (which originally evolved a form of psychic echolocution to be able to locate female Ood in season on their home planet) merges with the consciousness of the female. In other words, true Ood-dom is only the last part of their lifecycle.
Maybe the brain is only a hindrance in Earth’s atmosphere or gravity.
I actually think giving the Ood the external brain ruined the concept. The idea of a truly happily subservient species is a lot more interesting than an odd anomalous mutant. I have a harder time believing their half brain developed outside their body.