A Doctor Who a Day - Day 6 - Review: The Long Game
- Matty James
- Dec 30, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 2
Doctor Who Series 1, Episode 7, The Long Game
Original Air Date: 7th May 2005
“The thing is, Adam, time travel's like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guide book, you've got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers. Or is that just me?”
Adam is still here! Fucking dick! Never mind, he will get his comeuppance at the end!
This is not a Doctor Who episode I go back to very often, but in hindsight, it's a steady little episode that sets up the finale, where it truly lives up to its name. So, on this, the sixth day of a Doctor Who a day, I am reviewing The Long Game.
Is it as exciting as some of the other episodes in this series? No. Is the monster that good? Or scary? No and no. Is it scarily more on the nose now, than it was when it aired? Very much so. RTD must have had his crystal ball out when he penned this one.
As is the case with most things at this current time, the press is in the gutter. The news is no longer the news. The newspapers peddle their own agendas, social media peddles its own agendas, and the agendas are always of billionaire, little white men. This is basically the premise for this episode, if you replace a twat like Elon with a blob on the ceiling.
"Create a climate of fear and it's easy to keep the borders closed."
Isn't that quote just GB or Fox News in a nut shell?! I don't live in a city so maybe I am sheltered from it all, or my autistic head just isn't seeing it. But where I live, people just go about their business, and everyone, within reason, gets along. Read the papers and you would think everyone is scrapping in the streets.
Let's face it, this country and its media have made a 'celebrity' out of Piers Morgan, a man who spoons out shit that people lap up. A man so vile that he used breakfast TV to rage about Meghan Markle daily, a man who wrote the headline 'EASTBENDERS' after a gay kiss in the soap. Ironic, from a man so obsessed with genitals. How, as a country, do we allow people like him to make millions of pounds chatting shit? How do people think Piers Morgan is telling the truth of the working man and woman? Maybe we deserve him, how fucking depressing.
Sorry, where was I?! Without the ending to this series, and the use again of Satellite Five, I think this may have slid further down peoples pecking orders. But as we now know with some hindsight, there was more to this episode than met the eye.
So what did I actually think of it? This isn't just a filler episode, but neither is it an all time classic. Although it is a slower story than some others, it does have Simon Pegg in it, and as you would expect, he is brilliant. It is a shame he didn't have a slightly bigger part. Pegg and Eccleston sparring is a joy to watch.
The episode has some good moments in it, but I don't have a lot of love for the side characters in this one.
So all in all, it's a good episode in a series full of bangers.
What did you think of this episode? Did you think Adam was a complete prick like I did? Maybe you loved him. Either way, let me know in the comments below.
Comments