Doctor Who: The Long Game Rewatch

August 6, 2014 9:42 AM - Season 1, Episode 7

The Doctor, Rose and Brand New Companion, who I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of arrive at Satellite 5 in the year 200000. Something is not as it should be! The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe has taken over the station and is using it to control the lives of the people below. Ultimately the Doctor destroys it by futzing with the environmental systems, but is there a longer game afoot?

This Episode Features

• The Bad Wolf Channel (The face of Bo is pregnant)
• Simon Pegg!
• Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe, the longest monster name in Who history

Trivia

• According to Davies, the concept of "The Long Game" was originally written in the early 1980s and submitted to the Doctor Who production office. Whether it was ever read by the production team of the time is unclear, as Davies received a rejection from the BBC Script Unit, who advised him to write more realistic television about "a man and his mortgage" instead
• The "frozen vomit" that Adam spits out in one scene was in fact a "kiwi and orange ice cube".
• Adam is one of two companions, the other being Harry Sullivan, who had no scenes in the TARDIS interior. He is seen entering and emerging from the TARDIS several times, but he is never seen within the TARDIS itself.
• Adam would later go on to become one of the Doctors most succesful enemies http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Adam_Mitchell
• The fast-food joint on Floor 139 is serving kronkburgers, a ?delicacy? from the DWM comic strip The Iron Legion.
• This episode's working title: "The Companion Who Couldn't."

posted by Just this guy, y'know (8 comments total)

I like this episode just fine, but I find that I have very little to say about it.

...Simon Pegg!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:42 AM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I found this the most Douglas Adams-y of the first series, possibly of the whole of NuWho.
posted by dhartung at 9:18 AM on August 7, 2014

Certainly Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe is a classic DnA style name.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 9:33 AM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can I just say that the Jagrafess is only slightly more sluglike than its obvious real-world analogue: Rupert Murdoch.
posted by rikschell at 1:59 PM on August 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Did I say more? I meant less. Slightly LESS sluglike.
posted by rikschell at 1:59 PM on August 7, 2014

Every so often for a giggle I go and watch that clip from the Doctor Who Confidential which is all about Simon Pegg discussing the problems he had pronouncing that name.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:51 AM on August 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I didn't really like this one, but I can't quite put my finger on the reason. I guess it was the sense of impending doom the hung over life on the station?
posted by ob1quixote at 10:45 PM on August 8, 2014

I'm rewatching this series. This particular episode is very on-the-nose, and it feels like the two threads of this episode - Adam showing that not everyone does well as a time traveller, and the A-plot of the monster controlling Satellite 5 - were underbaked. Like, couldn't you just vent the heat out into space?

Like a lot of things in this first series, there's the germ of a really great idea that isn't quite executed well enough to work.
posted by Merus at 10:32 PM on May 22, 2019