The Long Game

🙏🏼63% = Fine! = Skippable!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

THE ONE WITH THE ALBINO SIMON PEGG!

The Long Game is a satire on the media and a commentary on technological advancement, both themes that are prevalent in Series 1. It has a similar aura to Vengeance on Varos, but it’s not quite as bleak. It also seeks to teach us about the responsibilities of time travel and the consequences of misusing it.

Christopher Eccleston continues to show interesting sides of his Doctor, such as when he decides to break the Laws of Time to try and help a future civilisation improve, or when he determinedly throws Adam out. Billie Piper is also on a roll, so it's a pity that this one is so focused on Bruno Langley's unlikeable and idiotic Adam. Though having Adam be the one who wanders off and gets himself into trouble allows Rose to stay with the Doctor, where she is at her best,.

Simon Pegg is deliciously campy as the Editor, one of the more memorable Eccleston-era villains. Christine Adams is good as Cathcica, a likeable and intelligent supporting character.

From the beginning, it is evident that Nine and Rose share a close bond and primarily use Adam for amusement, as evidenced by the Doctor assisting Rose in demonstrating her time-traveling abilities to Adam. Nine also treats Adam much like Mickey, and at times much worse. This inadvertently makes Adam feel unimportant and prompts him to make a foolish choice that leads to his expulsion from the TARDIS. I know I should feel bad for him, but I don't because I have never been able to stand his nosy and attention-seeking persona.

Oh, Russell and his silly aliens. The Jagrafess is hardly one of his most memorable or effective ones (a blob with teeth hanging from the ceiling) and is overshadowed by the Editor despite being the main baddie of the story.

I quite like the Satellite 5 setting. It feels more lively and crowded than a lot of space station sets in early Modern Who, and you can clearly feel the contrast between the upper levels and the lower levels. The filming and editing techniques further enhance the authenticity of the setting. Despite the dated CGI, the production design maintains its exceptional quality.

Parts of this give me The Macra Terror or The Krotons vibes, in how unsuspecting people are used by their masters for nefarious purposes, only for the Doctor to shake up this power balance.

The episode is surprisingly slow. It manages to move the main plot of Level 500 forward while also developing the Adam-enteric B-plot without rushing things. It takes time to build the atmosphere and set up the encounter between Nine and the Editor.

The Long Game delivers a climax that swiftly escalates, failing to evoke a genuine sense of tension or dread prior to the fleeting resolution of the threat. The real climax, however, is the fallout of Adam's actions, which serves to show that this incarnation of the Doctor takes his work very seriously (and that final shot is priceless).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

This is the first story in Doctor Who where the Doctor explicitly kicks the current TARDIS companion out of the TARDIS due to their bad behaviour.

The troubled production of this episode contributed to the introduction of the companion-lite and Doctor-lite episodes that were commonplace during the RTD and early Moffat eras.

We will return to Satellite 5, the setting for this episode, later on in this season, in a narrative development similar to the one from The Ark in Space to Revenge of the Cybermen or the first and second halves of The Ark.

Keen-eyed viewers might notice that this episode has been shot on the same set as The End of the World. That's a cost-cutting measure for you!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Unless you're a devoted fan, The Long Game is mostly a typical, skippable filler episode, raising some good points and looking great in places.

When I think of the segments with the Ninth Doctor, his companions, and these television parodies, almost every moment I remember is actually in Bad Wolf and not this episode. It is almost uncanny how little of this satellite is explored beyond the most superficial critiques of modern technology and its role in human culture. I recognize there is some intelligent, thoughtful ways to explore these ideas, and science fiction has done it before and since The Long Game.

Unfortunately, this sweatly, silly, poorly animated even by Series 1 standards episode just doesn't hold up. Simon Pegg should have been a good fit for Doctor Who and you can see that in his Star Trek work, but here he just doesn't work at all. I don't think he worked well with the then inexperienced production and it just feels like a waste of good talent and a big name. Neither Rose nor Nine get to shine here, and the Ninth Doctor seems almost cruel with how he treats Adam. I also found the brain hook-up thing just such a clumsy, heavy handed version of the possible future of information technology. It's bonkers we would accept something so intrusive (though somewhat salvaged knowing what was going on with humanity's future as part of Series 1's larger arc).

All told, it is an episode worth watching for the sake of knowing the larger continuity points of the Ninth Doctor's era, but otherwise, it is a prime candidate for a story I usually just skip right on by on rewatch.

Whilst RTD gives this story an interesting setting, engaging characters and a strong premise, it comes off quite slow and slight. Not as well paced as the rest of the series and feels incidental when looked at in its own context. It might even take less risks than most of the series around it.

Part of the issue is that the main villain is a big blob on the ceiling (not to be confused with the big blob on the floor in Rose). Simon Pegg does a marvelous job selling the importance of his monster boss with a long name (again, lifted from Aliens of London) but it is unable to be intimidating or do just about anything. The dialogue sells the situation well, it’s just the plot that is lacking.

Eventually the room blows up around the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe in the same way it blew up around the Nestine Consciousness. And the Gelth. And the group of Slitheen. Similar to how Cassandra blew up. And we saw a Slitheen blow up due to being hit by vinegar. And the Dalek from last week blew itself up.

The difference is that all of the above stories had a USP. The Long Game’s USP could have been using the news to spread disinformation, an idea that it dangles but never really goes for the jugular with.

What it does succeed in is showing Adam as a failed companion and what a time traveler should *not* be like. It’s realistic that some ambitious people when given a TARDIS would try and use it for their own ends, so The Doctor ends his journey short. There’s a nice bit of tension between Rose, The Doctor and her “new boyfriend” which ultimately plays out as Rose treating it like a failed date.

The characters carry the whole story.