Ogron

Ogrons are a fictional extraterrestrial race from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The name may be derived from the mythological ogres.

Ogrons are low-intelligence, ape-like hominids who live in scattered communities on an unnamed planet on the outer fringes of the Milky Way, far from the central spaceways. The dominant lifeform on their home planet is a giant slug-like lizard named the Eater, and the Ogrons both pray to and are preyed on by it.

Ogrons are hired mercenaries. Those who have employed their services include the Master and the Daleks. On some human planets, Ogrons are employed as police officers, usually led by a mentally augmented leader.

They appear in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Romance of Crime by Gareth Roberts, the New Adventures novels Shakedown and Mean Streets, both by Terrance Dicks, and the BBC Books novels Mission: Impractical by David A. McIntee and Interference by Lawrence Miles. In these books, it is explained that the Ogrons are only able to fly spacecraft via their powerful sense of mimicry. Interference states that Ogron speech also uses subsonic frequencies and that they are more intelligent than they appear to be from their audible speech alone. A mentally augmented Ogron named Garshak appears as a supporting character in both Shakedown and Mean Streets, first as police chief for the corrupt megacity on Megarra and later as a private detective.

In The Romance of Crime and Mission: Impractical, the Ogron homeworld is given the name Braah. Because of rapid changes in Braah's climate, the evolutionary path the Ogrons were on got confused, resulting in them being a mixture of primate and carnivore instincts. The Virgin New Adventure So Vile a Sin named it as Orestes. According to the Dalek Survival Guide, written by various Doctor Who novelists, the Ogrons have never named their planet, and a committee has proposed the name "the Ogron Planet".

The Ogrons also appear, in the employ of the Daleks, in the Big Finish Productions audio drama Return of the Daleks.

Other uses
In Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward, ОГРОН (OGRON) (Оперативная Группа Разведкой Объединённых Наций, or, Operativnaya Gruppa Rasvedkoy Obyedinyonnih Natsiy, which roughly translates to "United Nations Reconnaissance Operations Group") is the Russian division of the alien defence organisation UNIT. The coincidence of names is likely a metafictional in-joke.

Appearances

 * Television
 * Day of the Daleks — January 1-January 22 1972
 * Carnival of Monsters, briefly — January 27-February 17 1973
 * Frontier in Space — February 24-March 31 1973
 * Audio drama
 * Return of the Daleks (released December 2006)