Alternate Title: Like I Need a Hole in My Head
Brief Synopsis: Rose loses interest in her new boyfriend when he starts screwing around with the past; Meanwhile, someone's been screwing around with the future.
REVIEW
The Long Game is one of season one's middling episodes. The sets, costumes and effects get the job done but aren't particularly impressive. The story's not bad but it relies on the actors to make it entertaining enough that we don't ask too many questions.
Questions such as: What the heck is the Jagrafess, what is it contributing to the evil plot, and why doesn't anyone notice it until it starts making snarly noises? Who's the editor and how does he sense 'fiction?' Why doesn't anyone think "No one comes back from floor 500... Oh, that's probably because they're dead." Why can't the editor stop Cathica from hacking him? How did the Doctor and Rose get to be "nobody" in the computer? (This last one actually has an answer but it still doesn't make much sense in this episode.)
But having gotten all that off my chest... Russell T. Davies does a good job here of setting up plotlines without letting us see exactly where they're going. Humanity isn't living up to its potential; the poor state of TV is partially to blame. No one's asking questions anymore. Journalism is dead, and free thought along with it - a pointed warning for the 21st century? The ending leaves a lot unresolved but the loose ends will actually matter later on. RTD's plotting is not always going to be this subtle, so enjoy it while it lasts.
Interspersed with all this are scenes of Rose and the Doctor behaving somewhat childishly in order to tease or impress Adam. There are some cute moments, such as Rose showing off knowledge she doesn't actually have and the Doctor making free money with his sonic screwdriver. There is a sense here that all three characters have taken their stupid pills.
Above all, the one part of this episode that demands comment is Adam's cybernetic surgery and subsequent dismissal as companion. The receptionist/nurse who convinces him to go along with it is weirdly seductive and the whole thing is uncomfortable and disturbing. The cybernetic implant itself is more than a little silly. Having a hole in your head would come with certain drawbacks, like, say... Random mosquitos flying into your skull and stinging you in the frontal lobe? The silliness of it makes it hard to believe that anyone would go along with it. "Adam" is supposed to make us think of temptation but his sin here is sheer stupidity.
The Doctor rejects Adam for succumbing to the temptation to use time travel for his own gain. But the Doctor has a magic wand that makes infinite money, so what does he know about it? You might say he's incorruptible, but you might also say that there's not much power left for him to acquire. If Rose was doing her job of keeping the Doctor connected to humanity, she'd point out that it's human nature to want wealth and security, so setting Adam loose in the future with a bottomless credit card was dooming him to failure. It's enough to accuse D9 of sabotaging the little twerp out of jealousy.
That's all troublesome enough but the episode leaves us with the wrongest final scene since D5 unconvincingly failed to rescue a certain whiny companion in the days of the dinosaur. Adam has botched his trial period as companion but the dismissal and scorn he's subjected to are overly cruel, especially considering that D9 specifically ordered him to make mistakes. It's also worrisome given how easy it is to imagine that Adam will be dead in a few months for lack of anyone to do maintenance on his new wetware.
IN RETROSPECT
I remember a lot of people online assuming that Adam was going to come back for revenge. He's been treated cruelly by the Doctor and he's got future tech in his brain - Obviously he's not just going to just sit there in 2012 and live a quiet life like the Doctor told him to! I'm still not sure if this is part of RTD's cunning misdirection or just another reason why this storyline was unsatisfying.
The future this time out is dingy and disappointing, which it had to be because they couldn't afford to produce another episode on the scale of The End of the World. But before you have a chance to ask why this future sucks compared to the one we saw before, the Doctor is framing it as a mystery, which makes it compelling. That's damned clever, I've got to admit.
It took me a long time to post this review because it kept coming off as extremely negative, and I wanted to at least grant the episode credit for what it does right. So I want to take a moment to point out that Simon Pegg is so good as the editor that I was never bothered by the many questions that character raises. Suki was also briefly interesting; maybe this episode would have come off better if it had been about them instead of Adam.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Sometimes the Doctor and Rose don't take their adventures seriously, and it can make them seem callous, even sociopathic. They have way too much fun dancing around other peoples' misfortune, treating time travel like a video game. Somewhere down the road this will actually have consequences.
The only other major example of a turncoat companion up to this point is Turlough, the fifth doctor's would-be murderer. D5's companions were all whiny and ill-conceived but Turlough managed to be pretty interesting anyway. The companion of dubious morality is such a fun character type that it's surprisingly rare in the show's history.
FIRSTS
First "bad" companion of the new series.
First mindbogglingly dumb mistake made by a companion in the new series - no, not the cyber-surgery, I'm talking about when Rose gives Adam her TARDIS key! If he'd really wanted to make trouble he would've tried to take the time machine for himself.
First time in the history of fiction that someone is given the power to barf ice cubes.
KEEPING SCORE
Did the Doctor save the day? / Did the Doctor inspire someone else to save the day? I'll say both because Cathica finished the job but only after having huge doses of common sense poured into her brain by D9.
Surprise Time Lord Super-Power #5: Overriding anonymity. Somehow the Doctor is not just unknown, but reads as a blank to the Editor's computers. If you've read the Dune books you know why this is not effective camouflage.
WTF Factor: Lots of stuff, but mainly the Jagrafess. What is it? What does it do? Why doesn't anyone notice a giant pink thing until it's biting their heads off?
Personal Confuser: Cathica is able to easily out-hack the Editor when the plot allows it. Earlier it seemed as if people connected to the network were completely at his mercy.
Nice person who turns out not to be nice but dies anyway: Suki.
Best scene: Any time the Editor was being gleefully evil.
The Big List
1. The End of the World
2. Aliens of London / World War Three
3. Dalek
4. Rose
5. The Long Game
6. The Unquiet Dead
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