9.7: The Long Game

In which Adam wrecks the future, and several major guest stars get wasted.

Broadcast: May 2005

Watched: July 2021

“My watch must be wrong.”

This has a ridiculously great cast for an album track episode. Simon Pegg (how many people have been in both Who and Trek?). Anna Maxwell Martin. Tamsin Grieg, who is amazing (“That’ll do nicely”), but given she was already quite famous it’s a weirdly small role? Reminds me a bit of Olivia Colman in Eleventh Hour.

The episode itself is a bit weird. Why do the **mysterious enemy** want to keep the human race backwards and also promote a human supremacist culture? Has history changed? (Sidenote: the Doctor feels weirdly okay with the idea of a human empire, which feels a bit odd now.)

Also the idea that you can control everything just by changing how news is reported feels a bit... well, a bit like this is written by someone who works in the media. I do like that this is a story that basically backs terrorists against the Daily Mail, though.

The Adam plot is, if anything, even weirder. The idea of a companion (if Katarina counts, Adam counts) suffering culture shock and needing a sit down is great, and I do like the way Rose goes off him when he faints. Feels very RTD to include a character who’s there just to show how brilliant his main character is (“Rose is asking the right kind of questions”).

Anyway. Spiky. But one of those episodes that’s more interesting to think about than to actually watch, I think. First episode this season where it’s not clear what it’s for... which is ironic, given the finale.

Random good things:

• The special offer that upgrades Adam so that he vomits ice cubs .

• The final shot of the episode, the look on Adam’s mum’s face, is brilliant.

Random “huh” things:

• Adam’s family home is weirdly old fashioned for 2012.

• The dog that keeps barking at Adam’s answer phone messages feels like an artefact of another draft where the dog erased it by mistake? The Doctor’s knowledge of the tape comes out of nowhere a bit.

• Not sold on zombie Sukie refusing to let the editor go at the end. Bit undercooked.

• The Face of Boe lives a bloody long time.

• The microprocessor was meant to become redundant in 2019. Oops.

• “I’ll hug anyone.” The Doctor has changed.

A note from the present: Someone on my nerd list replied to this pointing out that Pegg is one of only two people who had, at least as of last summer, been in Who, Trek and Star Wars: the other is Deep Roy.