Doctor Who: Series 1, Episode 7 – “The Long Game” (2005)

Solid Ninth Doctor story, featuring good Doctor-companion interplay, a repulsive villain, and a bevy of cool guest stars. I wouldn’t say it quite reaches the heights of the season’s best, but it’s entertaining.

The Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Adam (who just boarded the TARDIS after the events of “Dalek”) have arrived on a space station in the middle of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Or at least, it ought to be. But something has gone wrong, and it’s somehow connected with the journalists on Satellite Five. While the Doctor and Rose investigate, Adam considers how the future might benefit him.

For whatever reason, this episode is fond of its icky stuff. The revealed Big Bad is pretty gross, there are undead office workers on ice, and the journalists themselves are the conduit to transmit the news out of Satellite Five, thanks to a handy little door in their forehead that exposes their brain. But I do like the premise of the story, and I enjoy the notion of taking a story set in the future but still viewing it from a lens of “history’s gone off course.”

Pound for pound, this might be the best new Who episode out there for guest stars. While others feature bigger “gets,” and of course Whovians get most excited over returning show alumni, this episode has a potent combination of actors who were already popular in the U.K. at the time and actors who would go onto bigger work after this. Simon Pegg does an excellent job as the episode’s Medium Bad, the man behind the curtain making sure everything goes according to plan, and there’s an amusing sequence between Adam and a nurse played by Tamsin Grieg (she was great as Malvolio/a in the National Theatre Live production of Twelfth Night.) And the two main journalists we meet are played by Christine Adams (I’ve seen her pop up in a lot of things now, but I still know her best as Simone on Pushing Daisies) and Anna Maxwell Martin (loved her in both The Bletchley Circle and the 2005 adaptation of Bleak House that she starred in.)

If Adam counts as an official companion, he’s definitely my least favorite, but I do like the dynamic that his presence adds to this episode. It’s really cute when the Doctor and Rose come out of the TARDIS before him, where we see the Doctor feed Rose a few observations she can use to impress Adam with her time-traveler prowess. And while the Doctor undeniably does his best to monopolize Rose’s attention, he’s less openly rude to Adam than he frequently is to Mickey; instead he’s mostly just amused by him. Not to mention, Adam facilitates the episode’s terrific final scene.

Of course, though, there’s no getting between the Doctor and Rose, who are having a grand old time investigating this wrong future history. There’s some nice material for both of them, separately and together. I especially enjoy their interplay during the climax.