The Lynnertic

Doctor Who: The Long Game

Exploring the concept of an Open Mind

The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire (Retarded)

In the year 200,000, TV has finally eaten itself: five-hundred space-station floors of journalists reporting on journalism and making news of the news. The Doctor, Rose and Adam alight in the middle of what the Doctor soon realizes is a strange new retardation of human progress. They learn that the highest levels are manipulating the populace through the efforts of actual corpse-puppet editors and copywriters, animated only by the “on message” chips inside their nasty dead skulls. But you can’t stop the signal, and eventually a Type-A department head revolts against her programming and complacency — after an anarchist sleeper-agent coworker is “promoted” and murdered — and helps the Doctor and Rose to bring the system down. The liberal screeching is turned way down, and the angry and on-target satire is turned way up, making it a very satisfying and still-timely piece of entertainment altogether, all concerns about commodifying revolution aside. Meanwhile, Adam’s data-addiction leads him astray, and he pays a horrible/hilarious price…

Summary from Television Without Pity

The Long Game takes place in orbit above Earth on board Space Station 5. In the show’s opening scenes the Ninth Doctor criticizes “Rose’s boyfriend” Adam for his shock at the realities of time and space travel. The Doctor encourages Adam to open his mind and explore the space station, yet strongly disapproves with the way that Adam eventually chooses to do so: which was to buy an implant which would allow him interface directly with the station’s central computer.

Adam, the infojunkie from 2012 gets a really fat pipe.

Adam is the first companion that The Doctor abandons for bad behavior. Adam’s crime was attempting to exploit knowledge gained through time travel for personal gain.

No more time travel for you!

These images are from Steve Hill’s Doctor Who Image Archive. Geek out on your Doctor Who trivia or read a plot summary at Wikipedia. A full recap of this Doctor Who episode is available at Television Without Pity.