Doctor Who/Recap/S27/E07 The Long Game

"Create a climate of fear, and it's easy to keep the borders closed. It's just a matter of emphasis. The right word in the right broadcast repeated often enough can destabilise an economy, invent an enemy, change a vote."

Rose, Adam, and the Doctor land on a space station in the year 200,000. The Doctor expects to encounter the center-of-the-British-Empire satire such as was seen in old Who episodes like "Kinda", and proudly tells them to prepare for "Humanity at its height!", with splendid cuisine and high culture. But what they get is a satire of Britain as it is today: a dingy station where people eat things like Kronk-burgers and beef-flavoured shakes, and "high culture" turns out to be the future equivalent of "zillions of channels and nothing on". All anyone aspires to is a trip to the fabled 500th Floor, which is rumoured to have walls made of gold. Also, there's a Bad Wolf channel.

Rose and Adam are still too new to the whole travelling thing to be disappointed, but the Doctor is thoroughly mystified. He befriends Suki and Cathica, a pair of journalists, and convinces them he's from Management. This leads to them showing him how journalism is done in the future: it consists of Cathica opening a hole in her head and having data beamed through it. Now the Doctor is also grossed out.

The intruders have started to attract the attention of the mysterious Editor (hey, it's Simon Pegg!). He lives in the icy dump of the 500th floor, overseeing the flow of information. The Editor is even more intrigued when the computers of the future report that the Doctor is "no one" and Rose is also "no one". Meanwhile, Adam has snuck off to have his very own hole put into his head by the local head doctor (hey, it's Tamsin Greir!).

The Doctor and Rose discover that the Editor is an employee of the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe (Max for short), an ugly, toothy, slimy monster living on the ceiling of the 500th Floor. Max has taken control of all information on Earth and is responsible for preventing the "humanity at its height" timeline from happening. He's also using the space station as a fridge to keep himself cool. Adam, meanwhile, uses his new head port and Rose's superphone to send information of the future to his Mum's answering machine -- unfortunately, this gives the Editor access to everything he knows about the Doctor and Rose, including where to find a key to the TARDIS. Whoops.

Fortunately, Cathica hacks into the computer, shuts down Adam's feed and tampers with the heating to deep-fry Max. Happy ending for everyone in this satellite for now, except of course for the evil guys. And the good guys who died earlier. And Adam, since the Doctor decides he's too stupid to be a companion and he's left home with a hole in his head.

Tropes
"The Doctor: Yes.
 * Ancient Conspiracy
 * Arc Words: Bad Wolf Channel
 * Canon Welding: With Children's Ward. Adam's mum is a nurse played by Judy Holt, who played a nurse in Children's Ward who had the same surname as Adam. Of course, it may just be an Actor Allusion.
 * The Dragon: The Editor.
 * Epiphanic Prison: The Editor and the Jagrafess are keeping the entire population of Earth in one, manipulating the media to discourage travel. "Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?"

The Editor: Oh, I was hoping for a philosophical debate. Is that all I'm gonna get, "yes"?

The Doctor: Yes.

The Editor: (chuckles) You're no fun."


 * Evil Albino: The Editor, played by Simon Pegg with bleached hair and a bleached mustache.
 * Faux Affably Evil: The Editor has a twisted sense of humour, as quite impressively portrayed by Simon Pegg.
 * Innocuously Important Episode
 * The Load/The Millstone: Adam
 * The Man Behind the Man: The Jagrafess. The Editor claims that they represent a consortium of banks with an interest in keeping the human race under control.
 * Mistaken for Special Guest
 * Overly Long Name: The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe. (The Editor: "I call him Max!")
 * Retroactive Recognition: Cathica now has a lead role in Terra Nova.
 * Room 101: Floor 500 isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
 * Starfish Aliens: The Jagrafess is...a big pink mass with a nasty-looking mouth growing out of the ceiling.
 * Taking You with Me: Either Suki / Eva or the Jagrafess via possessing her.
 * Thrown Out the Airlock: What Adam was afraid the Doctor had in store for him.
 * Title Drop: One doesn't occur here, but the episode gets Title Dropped in the series finale.
 * Timeline-Altering MacGuffin - Adam copies information from the Satellite 5 computers, including the future history of computing, to his mother's answering machine. Even a single invention from the year 200,000 would be worth billions.
 * The Unintelligible: The Jagrafess.
 * Unusual User Interface
 * What Year Is This?
 * You Have Failed Me: In a Rare Non-Villain example. After Adam installs the brain chip and becomes a liability when he almost creates a time paradox by recording the data on his mom's answering machine to use the information for profit, The Doctor Kicks Adam to the curb and leaves him at his home, as he is now a walking Paradox waiting to happen.