The Long Game

The Long Game really isn’t as bad as some like to claim. Sure Adam is annoying and ruins this episode as well as last weeks, and yes of course its a bit cheap and everyone is basically in Top Shop outfits. Yet is that not a good thing? The single most dreadful thing with sci-fi is that often future people are either in military uniform, boring and pointless uniforms or fucking stupid outfits that the designers believe are futuristic but make no fashion sense whatsoever.

So I quite like the idea that everyone is wearing some quite simplistic clothing, but yes some design changes here and there would have been nice, but I just like to think that the ultimate metaphor for Rupert Murdoch buys Top Shop at some point and so holds back fashion for tens of thousands of years.

They really shouldn't have listened when that guys said 21st Century retro was in.
But then again its better than the fucking Dollhouse clothing department.
Though they did listen when the big blob thing said holes in skulls are cool.

For me that really is the only bad thing – Adam and the designs. Otherwise its all a pretty good episode, and while clothing is a bit dodgy, frankly a lot of the set design is brilliantly realised and frankly we get some of the best direction we really get in Who. At least for much of series 1 and 2.

So the basic plot line is The Doctor and Rose land on Satellite 5 a news broadcaster – the only news broadcaster – here they find that the human race is being held back on old technologies and being controlled by a Simon Pegg’s villain who works for the slimy Jagrafess. The character of Eva, a self proclaimed anarchist is written very well, and played brilliantly too, jumping from the soft hearted and light girl to a dark and quite controlled freedom fighter.

I did think though that maybe its a bit simple to really just have an editor and an escaped lava lamp gel hold control over a fascist state. There is sometimes a claim that we should get more longer stories, and this idea could have been fleshed out over a few episodes with a bit more believability (also a plot to resolve why everyone is so thick – something in the food or a perception filter would have been nice).

So as things are going along nicely – Adam shoves his head in the way – literally as well. So much dull and boring stuff with the computer technologies, fact is we don’t care and Adam was a bad idea in the first place.

Its also a bad idea for me to even go into it in much detail, so expect dull little paragraphs spread throughout just to moan about him.

Unfortunatly Adam hasn't had his fucking head smashed in, its just a stupid fucking plot device to give his character reason for bothering to fucking exist and ruin a good episode.

The best thing about this episode is that it features some of the best Rose/Doctor dialogue in the first series. They play off one another brilliantly, especially in working things out and investigating, but also in Roses showing off to the dreary Adam.

Floor 500 – bit of security as I said earlier would be rather nice, but hey maybe the Jagrafess is just a bit shy?

Also why is Eva now being used as a worker drone? There is a limited amount of connection ports so you’d think the best would be used. Then again they need the cold looking zombies to arrest The Doctor and Rose.

Have I mentioned how awesome Simon Pegg is? He really needs a two parter in Who frankly, cause he is a brilliant villain and a little bit underused to be honest.

He is a bit of an evil Doctor to be honest, a Sherlock like character who needs the answers and is completely taken in by the impossibility of Rose and The Doctor. They don’t scare him, they just fascinate him.

Okay so the design department ran out of budget over the manacles, the worst jail ever created, its not even connected to anything at the back! Again it makes this fascist empire look a bit rubbish, get some handcuffs and a cell at least.

Defences? Defences! We don't need any fucking defences, we just need a stationary blob monster!

Okay so Adam sending all the information back in time interrupts this current broadcast. In what has to be the most idiotic plot put together – because frankly he has no way of processing the information on the other side – he’ll have to wait about 18,000 years just to process it. Pen and paper would have been better – and anyway, why exactly does he do it? To make money? I think someone might notice if someone is cutting into peoples head and accessing raw information without any kind of science to back up why or how they developed it.

Okay so the conclusion is ruined once more by the lack of security – but if you just watch and accept what is happening it all makes sense within the plot itself. Its a reality hole, not a plot hole. So Cathica saves the day, turning the heating up to max – seems RTD just got the rust for The End of the World in but never mind.

So with water pouring into the systems the computers break down, basically ruining all the plans. So Rose breaks out of the handcuffs by well struggling – sure...I like this episode but you do need to ignore some things. Think Victory of the Daleks.

The Jagarafess’s design is pretty awesome too. Its a bit basic, and why its doing what its doing is never really explained but thanks to series 5 we can just pretend the reason fell through a crack in time. I personally choose to believe that many of the people are sent to the Daleks, and this is foreshadowing to Bad Wolf, but I can’t remember if this is ever stated. I’ll correct it in my future reviews of Bad Wolf if I have to.

I will mysteriously use my sharp teeth to turn you cold and zombie like.

The main characterisation in this episode for The Doctor is that he moves on and leaves it to others to sort things out. Unfortunately The Doctor will see in Bad Wolf, just why he is wrong in doing this and how his inability to stay and sort things out is overall damaging to his view on the universe.

Unfortunately he does the same thing in Parting of the Ways after being shown its a bad idea, so maybe they should have ignored this characterisation?

Oh and Adam leaves in what has to be the single most pointless character arc ever conceived. Annoyingly it was made by the king of character arcs, RTD.

So for this episode I’m going for a nice 7.5/10. Its not amazing, but doesn’t deserve the stick it gets frankly. I really enjoyed it on first watch and actually find it one of the more rewatchable episodes of Who.