Doctor Who Watch A Thon Season 1 Episode 7 "The Long Game"

As an effort to justify our somewhat obsessive T.V watching Meghan (Of Coffee and Wizards and @MegTao on Twitter) and myself have decided to undertake a Doctor Who Watch-a-long. We'll be starting with the beginning of the 2005 relaunch and will be posting about one episode each Friday, on our respective blogs. We hope you'll join in – whether as a re-watch or to discover the Doctor for the first time!

*just a heads up each post may contain spoilers for that episode and then ones before it*

Episode Summary

Written by: Russel T Davies

Directed by: Brian Grant

The Doctor and Rose bring Adam in his first trip aboard the TARDIS into the future, arriving aboard Satellite 5, a space station orbiting Earth in the year 200,000. Rose escorts the bewildered Adam around the station, while the Doctor becomes curious as to the station's purpose. The Doctor meets with Cathica, a reporter, and discovers the station is a giant broadcast tower transmitting news across the globe, using special "ports" installed on the foreheads of the reporters to facilitate information transfer. The Doctor believes there is a malevolent purpose to the station that is holding back human development. The Doctor learns from Cathica that a select few are invited to "Floor 500", believed to be the highest promotion they can get, but they never return to the lower floors of the station.

My Thoughts on the Episode

I cannot talk about my thoughts on this episode before stating this: There are going to be 96 BILLION people?! As in 90 BILLION more than we have now? I'm a small town girl and I can't take that many people. I'm moving to Pluto and then I'm going to sit back and laugh at all you poor suckers.

Ok now that I've got that out of my system, let's move on to the episode itself. We've travelled along with the Doctor, Rose and now Adam to the year 200,000 but something is not quite right. For one thing people are drinking beef flavoured slushies. For another thing there is one space station that produces all of the news. Don't we have laws that prevent this type of monopoly? What happened to them? We're also told that "Once you go to floor 500 you never come back" and no one seems to think this is strange either. So in addition to monopoly laws we've also thrown transparency out the window. I can only agree with the Doctor when he says our race has been set back. 

Now let's talk about Adam. Adorable though he is, I continually wanted to shake this supposed genius. Oh Rose why do you pick the dorkiest guys? First Mickey, now Adam (also what about Mickey? Is he not your boyfriend in the future?). I'm not really complaining though because now that Adam's gone, Rose and the Doctor can get back to their compulsive sexual tension filled hand holding. 

There are some pretty strong political statements here, which really made me wonder what was going on in Britain in 2005. The Editor also posed the question “Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's a slave.” The Doctor was quick to say no and I totally agree that what they're doing in wrong. But is it really slavery? Or just an empire? And in that way its kind of history repeating itself (you know with the British empire and all). These questions demonstrate one of favourite things about Doctor Who - it's ability to be down right silly and hilarious while making you think of deeper political/philosophical implications.

Favourite Moment

Adam has brain surgery to have a computer chip installed in his head. As a special promotion they add on this extra feature to his throat that freezes his vomit. Apparently this is more convenient? It just made me burst out laughing for an inappropriate length of time.  But then when I was done laughing and really thought about it, I made this face

It's ok Adam. I don't understand either. 

What did you think of Adam and "The Long Game"? Thumbs up or down? And I have to know, would you opt for the frozen vomit promotion?