Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Long Podcast Part 1

"Every ****ing planet has a ****ing North! Now ****ing do one!"

This week Tachyon TV plays The Long Game in part 1 of an alternative DVD podcast commentary.

Topics up fo discussion this week include: Simon Pegg's CV, Suki's uber-cuteness, the supergroup Toto and RTD's original '80s story-pitch that featured Noel Edmonds as the Editor. Warning: contains even more swearing than usual!

Available at the usual place

Coming soon: The Age of Steel (live!)

An Open Letter to Simon Pegg

Dear Simon

First of all, let me say that I am a big fan of yours. In fact, you are my third favourite actor in Spaced!

Anyway, having just seen George A. Romero's Land of the Dead I had to ask you a question:

Do you regret your decision to turn down a role in one of the most acclaimed and challenging stories in Doctor Who's long history - a role that could possibly have broadened your range and enhanced your career - opting to appear in a 12 second cameo where you are completely unrecognisable and only detectable if you happen to be sitting next to a nerd who will punch you on the shoulder and whisper "That's him! Look! There! Oh, you missed him..." instead?

Still, you made The Long Game less shit than it could have been, and Shaun Dingwall really was great, so I guess I shouldn't grumble.

Yours sincerely

Neil Perry
Cleveland

Thoughts on "The Long Game"

Speculative Fiction is all about the possible. It's about taking us to the future, the past or an alternative reality and making us see, believe, question and experience the differences. Last Saturday, Russell T Davies surprised me. In the under-rated (and certainly under-appreciated) "The Long Game", he managed to build a future that intrigued, surprised and entertained.

"The Long Game" depicts a society artificially held back for 90-odd years. Instead of arriving at civilization's peak, the Doctor and companions find a decaying satellite where rude, xenophobic citizens refuse to stand politely in line, Beef Slurpies and Krump burgers replace fine cuisine, and where peeling paint (particularly evidenced by the scene in the non-emergency medical unit) indicates the breakdown in physical and social maintenance. Even Cathica, local heroine du jour, initially fights against doing the right thing, so conditioned is she against it. "Don't mention my name. When you get in trouble, just don't involve me," she says. Hardly a heroic beginning.

The delay, this ninety-year span, is an absolutely brilliant conceit created by Davies. Think about the technology and society of 1915. Any resident of 2005 might disdain the scientific and technological accomplishments of 1915 as hopelessly antiquated--and yet twenty thousand years in the future a mere 90 years seems like nothing. How should we consider this delay, less than a century long, in a future thousands of years away? We may have trouble thinking it relevant but Davies, hence the Doctor does not. He catches the problem right away.

The defining moment starts with a queasy comment from Adam. "I can see her brain," he says watching Cathica's forehead in disgusted fascination. And indeed he can. The forehead implant has opened to allow Cathica direct access to the electronic information feed.

"Do you want to get out?" Rose asks.

"No, no," he says. "This technology, it's amazing." Adam speaks for all of us viewers, watching the future with 21st century eyes. Fortunately for us, the Doctor does not. The Doctor directly contradicts Adam.

"This technology's wrong," he says.

"Trouble?" asks Rose.

"Oh yeah," he says.

We quickly learn that Cathica's brain implant isn't quite so amazing as Adam thinks. "This society's the wrong shape," says the Doctor. "Even the technology."

"It's cutting edge," Cathica protests.

"It's backwards," he says. "There's a great big door in your head. You should have chucked this out years ago." And there we have it. Davies does the impossible. He creates a future and and future technology and then lets us, even *makes* us see it as impossibly quaint and backwards. The audience can now look at Cathica's outdated implant begin to pity her and her society.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

I'm not sure why "The Long Game" received as little praise as it did. Perhaps it pales in comparison to the emotional roller coaster of Dalek. There's no Time War back-story here. There's little arc development. But there was neither in the widely-praised "Unquiet Dead" episode.

Go figure.

And this had Pegg.

Pegg, for heaven's sakes!

"The Long Game" stands quite well in the Who canon as an intellectual story that intrigues and challenges. Perhaps over time, it will garner the appreciation it sorely deserves.

The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe

Watching Doctor Who is an awful lot like making love to a beautiful woman. Er..., no... strike that.

Watching Doctor Who is a lot like supporting Sunderland AFC. How? I'm glad you asked, I'll tell you how. SAFC can usually pull off the most unexpected result against top quality opposition - like beating Newcastle United, away, 34 - 0, with only 9 men on the pitch, blindfolded. You always hope and pray that it's going to be something special, and it is. Then they'd go and lose against bottom of the table opposition, at home, the following week. This, for the sake of argument, I'll call "The Twin Dilemma Effect". I was full expecting that the TDE would be in full effect when it came to The Long Game. This was mostly based upon my own irrational judgment that anything following Dalek would be a pile of plop in comparison. But...

On first viewing I was left kind of ambivalent towards it. Not helped by my immediate reaction that this has the look of an early Sylvester McCoy about it. Possibly with a hint of Max Headroom thrown in. But a couple of further viewings has changed all that. It's really not too bad. Not bad at all. Simon Pegg is completely wonderful. Camp and sinister. Canister, if you will. I like my villains outrageous, over the top mincing fops with enough menace to turn a warehouse full of hardened Resident Evil players a ghostly shade of white.

The Mighty Jagrafess was also magnificent. Not seen teeth like that in an Editor-in-Chief since Derek Jameson's last days on Fleet Street. Still, nice to see that toothy thing that was living in an asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back getting some much needed work. Bet his agent's phone doesn't ring much.

I know someone on the blog said that they didn't catch the obligatory Bad Wolf reference but for me they've moved from being brief, subtle, teasers in the background to be shoehorned into the narrative like an ugly sister's foot into the crystal slipper. Crashing headlong into the story with not even so much as a side impact crumple zone to protect us.

And onto the only real downer in the episode, Adam. I've really taken a dislike to this tiresome gimp, and that's one part that's not improving with subsequent viewings. An Adric for the new millennium. And eminently slappable. Such a wussy little turd, thank the lord the Doctor dumped him back in suburbia with a flapping hole in his head (another flapping hole in his head, to match his mouth).

Speaking of suburbia the external shot of Adam's parent's house is the exact same house where Mickey was swallowed by a wheelie-bin in the first episode. Now, two theories spring to mind at this point:

1) That this is all part of the Bad Wolf story arc (I'm sure we'll see a postal ballot being delivered to the same house in episode 9 addressed to a Mr B. Wolf) or

2) Laziness on behalf of the production team.

You, the jury, decide.

One final thought. And I admit that I might be hallucinating here but... Throughout the entire episode I was transfixed by a "lump" that had appeared on Rose's top lip, which I swear wasn't there before. Perhaps, like the 4th Doctor during The Key to Time season, she's been bitten on the lip by a dog. Perhaps Adam's parents little doggie? It's all beginning to make some kind of weird sense...

Max(well) V (Mur)Doc

I liked it. And there's plenty to like:

Simon Pegg: easily the funniest villain we've ever had in the series who still remains threatening. He gives a superb performance as the Editor and it's just a shame that he got, er, splattered. On second thoughts he might not be dead, just drenched in offal. My favourite moment has to be when he tells his minions to check, double check, triple check, quadruple check and when he comes to the fifth he simply waves his hands in their direction in frustration. Brilliant stuff. He gets all the best lines and when he finally goes toe-to-toe with the Doctor some of the exchanges are sublime.

Adam's story: I loved this subplot. It was interesting to see how some people simply aren't cut out to travel in a TARDIS. He wasn't evil, just opportunistic. You could even say he was simply playing the Long Game. I'll miss Bruno; I thought he was a nifty little actor. Maybe he'll come back as the Bad Wolf - after all he's a child genius with:

1. a social stigmata over his implant, so there's plenty of room for resentment
2. loads of high-tech nano-thingymywhatsists coarsing through his body which could make him superhuman and
3. a mobile phone that can get a signal 5 million years into the future (assuming that he's still got it) which might come in handy when it comes to world domination.

Suki: or Michelle Fowler in space. Did anyone else think of Day of the Daleks when we saw her true biog footage? I loved the way she turned out to be a ruthless undercover agent and not a bit of fluff after all.

The Jagrafess: nice CGI, especially the low-angle shots. It's just a shame that RTD is a one-trick pony as far as dispatching the bad guys goes. They always seem to explode with an almighty splatter and plenty of flying gloop.

Tamsin Grieg: a small, but perfectly formed cameo.

The Face of Boe turning up on the Bad Wolf Channel: note to RTD - this had better make sense in the end!

So, plenty to like. But it's not all plain sailing, and there are too many flaws to raise this above an average 7 out of 10. Namely:

• the "biting satire" was more of a light peck
• the Doctor isn't very proactive (this is becoming a worrying trend in this series)
• yet more scenes set in domestic suburbia, although I understood the dramatic counterpoint with Rose's story, I'm seriously fed up with them now. The dog was cute though. And did the set designers forget this was supposed to be 2012?
• the station looked like a cheap version of Babylon 5. And that's saying something!
• the music is too LOUD!

It'll never be a classic, but it's certainly not the turkey some people are claiming it to be.

"Kissing a total stranger...."

Overnight ratings for 'The Long Game' have been posted at Outpost Gallifrey:

Dr Who average - 7.51m (share 38.9%)
Celeb Wrestling average - 2.56m (share 14.1%)

Has anyone thought about what's going to replace the series when it leaves the schedules in just over month's time?  The BBC haven't had a ratings puller like this in that timeslot in years.  Will they take advantage of the fact that people quite like watching drama in the early evening or can we expect some cruddy gameshow?

‘We know what happens to non-entities - they get promoted’

There’s a saying in television: never go back to an old idea. It’s a lesson Russell T Davies could have learned for this week’s episode.

Now ‘The Long Game’ is by means bad Doctor Who. But at the same time it’s not particularly good; it just is. This rather wordy story does have a lot going for it - not least of which some rather sharp digs at the ongoing ‘climate of fear’ that pervades our culture (a factor all the more surprising, given the BBC’s kow-towing position towards our current government). And while this is by no means the first instance this series of RTD using his writer’s licence to have a sharp jab at authoritarianism, at least here it’s more veiled than the less than subtle references to ‘mass weapons of destruction’ and forty-five minute warnings of ‘Aliens of London/World War III’.

But considering Davies first submitted the bare bones of this story to the then Doctor Who production team some twenty years ago, it’s all the more stark just how old fashioned ‘The Long Game’ is. We’ve got the Doctor and co. arriving in a futuristic, though recognisable, environment where it immediately becomes apparent that all is not right. There are some mysterious disappearances; one of the TARDIS crew appears to be working to his own agenda (take your pick from either Adric or Turlough here) and it all ends with the previously apathetic populace (or, on this occasion, the conspicuously sole Cathica) rising up to throw off their oppressors. And not only is RTD apparently reheating one of the show’s tried’n’trusted formats, but ‘The Long Game’ bears many similarities with his own ‘The End of the World’: a far future in which humanity’s place in the universe is subject to alien integration; and lots of talk about plumbing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this supposed to be RTD’s take on reality TV and ‘Big Brother’ as well? I may have missed the edition of ‘Production Notes’ where this morphed from a satire on a bunch of total strangers sharing a house together to what we ended up with. But in terms of ‘reality’, surely the recently ended ‘The Apprentice’ - in which a group of back-stabbing, ladder-climbing executives sought the approval of The Editor (sorry, Alan Sugar) in order to get the keys to their own Floor 500 - sprang more to mind? There is some nice, topical subtext right throughout ‘The Long Game’, but am I alone in getting a bit tired of seeing all drama drawing on the ‘War on Terror’ and media manipulation as some sort of badge of honour. Maybe it’s because it’s all so in-your-face, or maybe it’s because I’ve heard it all before; but somehow I can’t help but think that lines like ‘create a climate of fear and it’s easy to keep the borders closed’ really should sound a lot fresher than they actually do.

And I must say how glad I am to see the back of Bruno Langley’s Adam. We’re not talking ‘Noel Clarke bad’ here (is that possible?) but it astounds me that, having all but chastised the Sixth Doctor/Peri dynamic for its bickering, here we are lumped with another companion who doesn’t delight in the wonders offered him. The basic point is that having someone onboard the TARDIS who doesn’t enjoy time travel is, frankly, a waste of time. And the subplot given Adam in this episode - while again raising the dilemma of what do you do with that second companion - is pretty much unrelated from the main story; Adam’s ‘contribution’ (if you can call it that) is merely to provide the Editor with a name and a background to his two mysterious visitors.

On the subject of this week’s ‘evil genius’, it’s a shame that guest-star Simon Pegg wasn’t blessed with a better episode, as his by turns camp and sinister performance fits the bill perfectly. Pegg certainly makes the most of a rather clichéd role, and it’s worth mentioning at this point how effective this story’s production design is in realising Floor 500’s icy environ. With his bleached hair and eyebrows, Pegg almost fades into the background on occasion, while the blue lighting is a marked counterpoint to the otherwise bland, ‘Babylon 5 without-the-aliens’ look of the rest of Satellite 5. The other principal ‘name’ of the episode, Tamsin Greig, is however a little wasted in her role of the nurse who provides the populace with those rather neat forehead interfaces; allowing her to demonstrate only hints of her kooky charms.

Perhaps more successful is the Orwellian device of having Floor 500 as a kind of future Room 101, only this time as something to be aspired to rather than feared. We really don’t need that rather tacked-on ‘culture of fear’ stuff to underline how mass media helps shape people’s perception of the world, as ‘The Long Game’ works perfectly well as a satire without it. Likewise, the whole stuff with Suki being a genetically-camouflaged freedom fighter/terrorist (take your pick) is rather superfluous, as it would have been just as effective for her to remain an ‘ordinary’ person who finds her dreams of Floor 500 becoming a nightmare. What this all underlines is Russell T Davies’ ongoing pursuit to ‘relevate’ Doctor Who for a modern audience; resulting at times in a rather heavy-handed lecture that completely misses the whole point of science fiction as metaphor.

Other stuff to like or dislike? Well, that whole business of using a mobile to contact your parents across the millennia is already looking a bit stale (and besides, isn’t Rose still giving Jackie updates as to how she is) and the fact that the Jagrafess’ interference has set Satellite 5 back ninety years still doesn’t explain how retro the whole episode looks (suggesting that ‘The Long Game’ was something of a cost-cutting exercise in amongst the excesses elsewhere this series). As for the Jagrafess him(her?)self, then I won’t even bother mentioning my in-built dislike for unrealistic-looking, CGI monstrosities; and instead say how much of a rip-off of Aliens’ Queen he/she is. What else? That ‘clicking fingers’ joke at the end goes on far too long (and robs the final joke of any surprise) and again suggests that, when it comes to rather puerile humour, RTD is in a league of his own. Oh, and will someone please get Murray Gold to turn that bloody music down as - whether good or bad - it’s still drowning out the dialogue far too often.

I did like the ‘vomit-omatica’ though.

What’s interesting is that, given that this is an episode where the Doctor encourages humanity to step free of its confining bonds and think for itself, his last advice to Adam is to ‘be average’ (a case of this Doctor’s continuing animosity towards Rose’s boyfriends?). And does anyone have any idea how this got the title ‘The Long Game’, because I haven’t the foggiest.

After ‘Dalek’ it was inevitable that the next week’s episode would be something of a letdown (even the otherwise fawning ‘Radio Times’ gave it a lukewarm reception). And I’m not concerned by how average ‘The Long Game’ is, but rather with how - after five episodes - Russell T Davies still hasn’t written a memorable script. A case of great producer, poor writer? Either way, that scripting-duties reduction for next year is looking more and more welcome…

Game Playing

I enjoyed The Long Game – not an all-time classic, but still very good and definitely much better than Davies’ last two scripts for the season, the quality being back up there nearer his opening two instalments.

That said, it did feel a bit uneven in places – the pacing seemed strange, perhaps a little too slow, and the frozen vomit bit seemed rather out of register with the rest of the episode. I was a bit concerned at first with some of the similarities to The End of the World, but these worked well in contrasting Adam’s reaction to his first taste of the future with Rose’s. The phoning home, in particular, at first seemed too similar but worked well as a plot device as the episode went on. Liked the little dog, too!

The guest cast were uniformly good – strange to see Pegg and Grieg in roles like that, though! The Jagafress was a nice creation, and there were some good scares – the whole 500^th floor was nicely atmospheric, and the discovering of the body as the head suddenly came down a classic scary Who moment. And was Suki dead or alive at the end? Was she just acting on orders from the Jagafress to keep the Editor there after he'd resigned, or did she still have some fragment of her old self left alive inside? Me, I reckon it was deliberately ambiguous.

It’s just a shame that, once again, the Doctor didn’t really get to be heroic and save the day – I really hope he gets to do more of this soon!

4 out of 5 from me this week.

Fried (walls of) Gold

Sorry folks, didn't like this one much at all. Mostly dull and it didn't pass the three glasses of red wine test  - I was still bored by most of it. What will the kids think to the 'scary' premise? Of course before I start a real moan, there were some great moments (it is Doctor Who after all). Simon Pegg made a great villain, although he would be better suited in Batman - Mr. Freeze meets The Joker via uh, Simon Pegg. He was great, although he didn't have much to do. Billie is still super fine and she really holds things together.

Liked the scene with Tamsin Grieg too - and not just because she was wearing a nurse's uniform. It was just a well done scene and I liked the way Adam's thirst for knowledge screws things up - but especially the way in which he phoned home. Very nice.

Oh - calling the editor in chief Max was funny. It had to be that or Rupert really didn't it.

However yet again we see the Doctor taking a back seat in the action. OK, he hacked a computer, but what else did he do? He looked bored and now I sympathise with his comments that he sometimes felt he was doing the same thing over and over.

To be frank I was mostly bored with this - and it felt too similar to End of the World (down to the reapperence of the Face of Boe). The editor-in-cheif was dull, the threat was dull, the Doctor was dull. Why doesn't Russell just call the show Rose from now on and get it done with. OK, if this had been a Colin Baker story we'd have felt spoilt, but as it stands, this has to be the worst episode so far.

I'm going to watch Dalek again, so there. Be seeing you.