The Long Game

My watch must be off.

I've heard The Long Game referred to as the first Doctor-lite story. It is true that he has less screen time, but so does Rose. It is really only due to the devotion of time to Adam's little adventure that the Doctor and Rose are seen less. Now, you could still call that a version of Doctor-lite, but the question is how the story holds up overall.
Plot Summary

The Doctor, Rose and Adam (having tagged along at the end of Dalek) emerge on Satellite 5, a news broadcast platform, in the year 200,000. Humanity has expanded to a large empire across space. However, the Doctor immediately notices that something is wrong as the people are less developed than they should be. He poses as someone from upper management doing an inspection to learn what is going on.

The three travelers tag along with the news team to watch an info transfer from the various satellites through one of the worker's brains, processing the information like a computer. The Doctor's activities alert the Editor on the top floor that something is amiss. He scours records and issues a promotion to one worker, cutting off the new transfer demonstration. The promoted woman leaves and ascends to level 500 where she finds a group of frozen bodies. She is in fact a plant sent to investigate and destroy the news station if necessary. The Editor alerts her to the one in charge and despite firing at it, she is assimilated as a frozen drone.

Adam, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the future, heads to the observation deck by himself. He accesses an info terminal and is able to access the history of computers. He uses Rose's cell phone to call his parent's answering machine to record the history but is cut off by a message telling him to report to level 16. Going down, he learns his access was cut off as he doesn't have an info chip. Using a credit bar the Doctor had given him and Rose, he buys a chip implant, with the worker talking him into getting the upgraded version, which opens a hole to his brain.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Rose hack into the stations computer and learn that despite it being very hot on their level, the station's cooling system is going full blast, with all the cooling being directed to level 500. Their hacking attracts the Editor's attention and when they fail to show up on the registry, he gives them access to level 500. The two of them ascend to the top where they are captured by the Editor and they see the Jagrafess, who has been dictating the direction of humanity through information control over the past ninety years.

Shortly after the Doctor and Rose are captured, Cathica, a news agent who they had been talking to, follows them up the elevator and overhears the conversation between the Doctor and the Editor. Meanwhile, Adam has returned to the news room and again records information on to his parent's answering machine, but this time he is beaming the information directly through his brain. This however, gives the Editor access to Adam's memories and he immediately learns who the Doctor is.

Cathica recognizes what is happening and plugs herself into a terminal on level 500, overriding Adam's connection. She shuts off the cooling system and disables the central computer. The feedback frees Rose and she releases the Doctor. The lack of cooling causes the Jagrafess to overheat and he explodes. The Editor had tried to escape as well, but he was held in place by one of the controlled bodies of the promoted and killed in the explosion.

The Doctor leaves Satellite 5 in Cathica's hands and immediately takes Adam to his parents home. He destroys the answering machine with the data and leaves him behind. In addition to telling him off, he warns Adam to keep a low profile since having a hole in his head that opens with a snap could be dangerous to him. As the Doctor and Rose leave, Adam's mother comes in and she snaps her fingers during their conversation, letting her in on Adam's secret.

Analysis

This is a very straightforward story that would have been around a half an hour if it hadn't been for Adam's subplot. That doesn't make it bad though. Adam's subplot was less interesting but it was woven in between the Doctor's scenes and at least had a payoff in that Adam's folly accelerated the danger the Doctor and Rose were in.

The Doctor himself was quite entertaining in this one as he seemed less tolerable of fools than usual which gave him an even greater alien vibe. Rose had very little to do except follow the Doctor around and babysit Adam at the beginning of the episode so that cut down on any shortcomings she might have.

I was also pleased that Cathica not only was able to create a solution to the problem, but also did not die as a result. In a number of stories, the Doctor gets into a jam and it is a third party that helps out but dies as a result so it was nice to see this one survive. I was also amused by her revenge motivation for not being promoted, with the added twist of being angry that you weren't considered a threat to be taken care of.

I'm less familiar with Simon Pegg as I have not seen either of the new Star Trek movies or much beyond clips of the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy. But I did enjoy his performance in it's slightly over the top way. It was hammy, but not in a distracting way. I think there was a deliberate choice to make the Editor something of a mustache twirler as a way of offsetting the horror of the Jagrafass for the kids. It didn't bother me and when done right, a little mustache twirl can be very entertaining.

On the downside, this story is very simple and is probably not one that will clamor for your attention once you've seen it once or twice. Adam's plot can have slow moments and really, there isn't much need to pay close attention at any point in the story. That's not bad, but it doesn't make for an overly memorable episode.

This couldn't be helped, but when looking it from ten years forward, the CGI effects are pretty obvious, and can look a bit cartoony at times. Obviously that can't be helped, but it is one thing that your brain will register and could take you out of it at some point.

On the whole, this episode is probably a good one to get a younger viewer in on. It's not particularly scary and is interspersed with a reasonable amount of humor as well as not being too demanding of understanding the plot. Of course, it also means that's it's not going to be marked as anything resembling a classic either. It's entertaining but also forgettable. You could pull it off and watch it again easily but it's also not going to be on anyone's "must watch again" list.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5