Russell T Davies has said that Adam is supposed to be an unworthy companion. I agree that Simon Pegg and Nine are both underused. I do consider this as a filler episode. I think if this episode was done today in the age of fake news you could have how the news can be manipulated as a bigger part of the story.
Adam did come back in the comics and he was a villan. Im pretty sure its the storyline where he gets all 12 incarnations of the Doctor together. Edit: it was actually only the first 11 incarnations
It wasn't until the last episode, Bad Wolf, that I considered this episode anything other than pure filler. After Bad Wolf, I think it is better seen as ham-fisted fore-shadowing.
The thing is exactly what you were saying about Adam did happen, in the 50th anniversary comic the Rodger Delgardo Master used Adam to set a trap for the Doctors and it ended with Adam reedeeming himself by sacrificing himself to save them, with the ninth doctor and rose getting a rather tearful farewell to him and the later doctors acknoledging him as a true compainion
I actually quite liked this episode, but I wish we got to see more things that are implied in this universe, like the freedom 15, who are they? Whoop, there it goes, nevermind. I have this thing in fiction where if a minor character does something important, it really pleases me so...this episode ticked a few boxes. Also that doctor who talks to Adam was delightfully creepy and pushy, she was giving absolutely everything and I loved it. Oh, and the bit at the beginning where the Doctor told Rose what to say so she could look smart in front of Adam is really cute, but she still points out the sound of engines, proving she could've worked it out by herself...this episode started out so strong. Sigh
I think the first series has one of the best arcs because most of the episodes feed into the finale The episodes introduce the time war, introduce the daleks, introduce the setting of the finale 100 years earlier, show the heart of the tardis so when the finale comes along everything feels earned I don't think RTD did a better series arc than this, the later ones were mostly just the repeated words
I know Adam appears in the Ninth Doctor Chronicles Big Finish Boxset and other people have said he's a villain in the comics. Must have been pretty recently too as they are saying all 12 incarnations. Adam will also never return to Doctor Who (or television in general) as a year or two ago he was convicted of acting... inappropriately with underage girls which ended his career.
He groped 2 woman at a bar while intoxicated and was in a sexual relation ship with a young girl (very young 16) but not underage he was just a creep though . But i dont think he should of been slandered and charged like that .. i mean come on how many piss heads have grabbed a girls bum as a laugh or drunken advance they just took advantage of his stature in the media industry
Ok 1 in the UK the age of consent is 16 which means it is not a crime and perfectly fine to have consensual sex with a girl that age that is the law ( The girl did like him) and 2 Im not in any way bragging about sexual assault but i stand firm on the fact and drunken idiotic grab is miles apart from being held at knife point while someone forces their hands down your underwear once again i say if a random piss head groped a girl in a bar he would get a slap and that would be it but because of his stature he gets taken to court
@@xproflipscarab the problem is that people shouldn't be getting drunk enough to not know right from wrong. Also, having been on the receiving end of drunken inappropriateness, it's easy to say drunken idiot gets slapped and that's it, but what about the person being groped? It doesn't just roll off people like that. And is that now what should be expected? If someone wants to go out they should be ok with someone grabbing them because it isn't by knife point... the first time? The third time? The tenth time? When does legal punishment for inappropriate touching become justified?
I've always though it was a bad idea for the Doctor to just leave Adam on Earth with the information port intact. Just look what happened when Adam's mother inadvertently activates the port only a few minutes after the Doctor and Rose leave. It wouldn't be long before a nefarious private or government facility would discover him and try to reverse engineer this future tech. I'm surprised this was never revisited in a later episode.
I'd love for the overdue reviews to be in a playlist so I could watch/listen to them without having to hunt. Thank you! I enjoy these a lot, but don't always get to enjoy them when they come out.
I think The Long Game played a long game - in that it was setup for the final episodes. But I do like that in this and those, the Doctor seems as if he’s speaking to us, the audience. ‘Look at this. Realize. See. Think for yourselves.’ More so in the finale, but this is a huge subtext of not blindly accepting what you’re told by authority (even if it provides you fun entertainment).
This was my first Doctor Who anything, having seen nothing else the breadth of concept that this episode implied was mind expanding and I fell in love with the 9th Doctor from the exchange with the assistant editor about the problem of impoverished desires.
I know this is the wrong video to say it on, but after watching your "The Ghost Monument" review, I feel the need to say the even if it turns out the Stenza (the guys in cheffield in the first episode) do turn out to be recurring elements during the series, that doesn't make it a "mystery box," as you put it. If they do turn out to be a recurring species throughout the series with little name-drops here and there, although it it connective tissue, but definition there is no "mystery" that is being held over the audience's heads that they're waiting for the finale to find the answer to. Without the mystery, it's not a mystery box. It's just a box.
This was another result of the lower budget for season 1 - it used a redressed set from the last 2 episodes of the season. Ultimately I think Davies was more interested in exploring the idea of the "almost companion" with Adam rather than a deeper dive into the potential of the background of the setting. Overall I can't dislike the episode but I don't love it either. It's just kind of there.
The main thing that i remember about this episode is that i quite liked the direction. I think the director was Brian Grant (? Going from memory there), who was the main director on 'Hex'. That was quite good visually, too. Nice use of colour palettes and handheld camera stuff. I wish they'd brought him back. Also, it took me til halfway through the first season of 'Black Lightning' for me to realise where i'd seen his wife before: it's Cathica!
Maybe if this had been a two=part story instead of "Alien in London" and “WWIII” then they would’ve had more time to explore those concepts you mentioned.
Have you ever read the Ninth Doctor novel "The Stealers of Dreams"? From this review, you might like it (but, even though they're in a society where people are forbidden to lie, there isn't a deep philosophical analysis on it either.)
This episode really frustrated me too, but for different reasons. I've always preferred Doctor Who with multiple companions, so I never liked how Adam was introduced and than immediately abandoned... and for what? Acting selfishly and betraying the Doctor's trust. Plenty of other companions have mistakes and some even worse. In classic Who their was even a companion who actively conspired to get the Doctor killed, but he was forgiven. Heck, Rose is hardly a saint either, as plainly demonstrated in the subsequent where she created a nearly world ending paradox, not even out of purely blind ignorance , but flat out lying to the Doctor's face about her own intentions. As much as I can appreciate the concept of a companion who is unworthy, the execution was fumbled, because Adam just never came across as all that bad. Just someone who made a single mistake and was never given a second chance to make up for it.
I remember on the card for the jagrefess it was installed by the daleks in the past. So my question are the dalek ships hidden away then or do they come in later and hide
When people say this episode is one of the worst of the first series, I'm always confused. The episodes taking place on Satellite 5 are some of the most memorable and fun episodes for me. I barely remember details of most of the other episodes.
I don't know... I kinda like it... not sure why... As for a Big Finish approach to this the only thing I can think of (I've not been listening to their stuff for long) is Live 34, a whole story told in the format of a news broadcast.
So while watching this video I was thinking forward and thought about Captain Jack. While on that train of thought I was trying to think if a season long story would work in Doctor Who like Children of Earth or Miracle Day from Torchwood. Chris Chibnall has shown he can do that with things like Broad church. I would be really interested for you to do a video on that and give us your thoughts
If you want to know what happened to Adam, then read the Doctor Who comic story Prisoners of Time, basically Adam goes around the Doctor's timeline and abducts all his companion throughout space and time
I have not read the comics, so I didn't know that Adam had made a "return" . In my own version of events he was "appropriated" by Torchwood and eventually got killed in the Battle Of Canary Wharf.
Doesn't work, he's from the year 2012 and the Doctor brought him right back there when he dumped him at this episode's end; same reason Nathaniel's thought of "they could have brought him back working for Harriet Jones" doesn't work. Adam's setup works in such a way that bringing him back (even if the actor hadn't sunk his career by being a creep) would be difficult to justify in the present day; best option would be wait a number of years after 2012, then have the actor play him when you can pretend he's NOT 5, 6, 7 years older than his character (again, there's no way the actor is coming back now).
Btw in my own headcanon, Adam ended up either mad, begging on the streets or dissected because of the chip in his head. Or saved by UNIT... and then dissected ;)
I am indifferent at this episode. It has good parts and not so good parts. And i dunmo how i would feel about Adam coming back. Like you i feel he served his purpose of how to be a bad companion. Plus i do feel that the BBC would probably not hire the actor again after wharvhappened and why he was fired from Coronation Street cus i think the BBC are trying to be careful about that stuff (google that actor and figure it out for yourself) so yeah maybe not the best choice.
Just to be clear about the actor who played Adam, Bruno Langley (who was fairly well known in the UK even prior to Doctor Who as an actor in a long running soap opera) could not appear now as he was convicted of sexual harassment and assault of a woman in night club last year.
@@CouncilofGeeks It was a very fast fall from grace, he went from being on one of the most watched shows in the UK on a near daily basis to having his contract immediately cancelled. I doubt he'll ever get a major acting role again, which isn't much of a loss.
The actor who played Adam started playing a main character in coronation street (a British soap opera) so he couldn't come back due to scheduling conflicts.
Actually his schedule has freed up quite a bit since he pled guilty to sexual assault and got terminated off Coronation Street (something I found out after I recorded the episode), not that he's likely to be hired for Doctor Who or anything else for that matter.
There's freaking NOTHING wrong with the episode. Don't get all the negativity. Head and shoulders better than most anything in the Capaldi era, is for sure.
If it wasn't for the fact this station setting is brought up later I would happily skip this on the repeat of this season. It's boring, bar Simon Pegg as he is very funny in most of his roles but he keeps my attention, and even in 2005 the brain thing was uninteresting.
Russell T Davies has said that Adam is supposed to be an unworthy companion. I agree that Simon Pegg and Nine are both underused. I do consider this as a filler episode. I think if this episode was done today in the age of fake news you could have how the news can be manipulated as a bigger part of the story.
I actually do appreciate a quick reminder of the plot before you get started. This isn't an easy to remember episode, save for the ending.
At my age I need all the recaps I can get. Thanks CoG!
Adam did come back in the comics and he was a villan. Im pretty sure its the storyline where he gets all 12 incarnations of the Doctor together.
Edit: it was actually only the first 11 incarnations
Beat me to it!
Yep it was the prisoners of time storyline
I've always liked this episode for Simon Pegg, it's just great to see him in Doctor Who.
It wasn't until the last episode, Bad Wolf, that I considered this episode anything other than pure filler.
After Bad Wolf, I think it is better seen as ham-fisted fore-shadowing.
The thing is exactly what you were saying about Adam did happen, in the 50th anniversary comic the Rodger Delgardo Master used Adam to set a trap for the Doctors and it ended with Adam reedeeming himself by sacrificing himself to save them, with the ninth doctor and rose getting a rather tearful farewell to him and the later doctors acknoledging him as a true compainion
I actually quite liked this episode, but I wish we got to see more things that are implied in this universe, like the freedom 15, who are they? Whoop, there it goes, nevermind. I have this thing in fiction where if a minor character does something important, it really pleases me so...this episode ticked a few boxes. Also that doctor who talks to Adam was delightfully creepy and pushy, she was giving absolutely everything and I loved it. Oh, and the bit at the beginning where the Doctor told Rose what to say so she could look smart in front of Adam is really cute, but she still points out the sound of engines, proving she could've worked it out by herself...this episode started out so strong. Sigh
I think the first series has one of the best arcs because most of the episodes feed into the finale
The episodes introduce the time war, introduce the daleks, introduce the setting of the finale 100 years earlier, show the heart of the tardis so when the finale comes along everything feels earned
I don't think RTD did a better series arc than this, the later ones were mostly just the repeated words
Mgooy True
And this is why series 1 is up there amongst the best imo along with series 4 and series 3.
Series 1 of new Who is the best, hands-down. I've actually got ZERO problem with The Long Game......wtf is everyone going on about, regards this one?!
I know Adam appears in the Ninth Doctor Chronicles Big Finish Boxset and other people have said he's a villain in the comics. Must have been pretty recently too as they are saying all 12 incarnations. Adam will also never return to Doctor Who (or television in general) as a year or two ago he was convicted of acting... inappropriately with underage girls which ended his career.
It's a good comic, I recommend it. Matt Smith interacts with someone fans have been asking for during his run (which is what got my attention)
He groped 2 woman at a bar while intoxicated and was in a sexual relation ship with a young girl (very young 16) but not underage he was just a creep though . But i dont think he should of been slandered and charged like that .. i mean come on how many piss heads have grabbed a girls bum as a laugh or drunken advance they just took advantage of his stature in the media industry
16 is underage for a man of his age. And don't brag about or normalize sexual assault.
Ok 1 in the UK the age of consent is 16 which means it is not a crime and perfectly fine to have consensual sex with a girl that age that is the law ( The girl did like him) and 2 Im not in any way bragging about sexual assault but i stand firm on the fact and drunken idiotic grab is miles apart from being held at knife point while someone forces their hands down your underwear once again i say if a random piss head groped a girl in a bar he would get a slap and that would be it but because of his stature he gets taken to court
@@xproflipscarab the problem is that people shouldn't be getting drunk enough to not know right from wrong. Also, having been on the receiving end of drunken inappropriateness, it's easy to say drunken idiot gets slapped and that's it, but what about the person being groped? It doesn't just roll off people like that. And is that now what should be expected? If someone wants to go out they should be ok with someone grabbing them because it isn't by knife point... the first time? The third time? The tenth time? When does legal punishment for inappropriate touching become justified?
Ngl I forgot this episode existed entirely - only thing I remembered was Simon Pegg so thanks for reminding me - great video
I really loved The Long Game and consider it one of the highlights of series 1. My computer lock screen is actually the Jagrafess.
I've always though it was a bad idea for the Doctor to just leave Adam on Earth with the information port intact. Just look what happened when Adam's mother inadvertently activates the port only a few minutes after the Doctor and Rose leave.
It wouldn't be long before a nefarious private or government facility would discover him and try to reverse engineer this future tech.
I'm surprised this was never revisited in a later episode.
I'd love for the overdue reviews to be in a playlist so I could watch/listen to them without having to hunt. Thank you! I enjoy these a lot, but don't always get to enjoy them when they come out.
I think The Long Game played a long game - in that it was setup for the final episodes.
But I do like that in this and those, the Doctor seems as if he’s speaking to us, the audience. ‘Look at this. Realize. See. Think for yourselves.’ More so in the finale, but this is a huge subtext of not blindly accepting what you’re told by authority (even if it provides you fun entertainment).
This was my first Doctor Who anything, having seen nothing else the breadth of concept that this episode implied was mind expanding and I fell in love with the 9th Doctor from the exchange with the assistant editor about the problem of impoverished desires.
It's so annoying, I keep thinking, _man, it would be great if Simon Pegg showed up in Doctor Who!_
and then I remember, _oh wait, he already did..._
I know this is the wrong video to say it on, but after watching your "The Ghost Monument" review, I feel the need to say the even if it turns out the Stenza (the guys in cheffield in the first episode) do turn out to be recurring elements during the series, that doesn't make it a "mystery box," as you put it. If they do turn out to be a recurring species throughout the series with little name-drops here and there, although it it connective tissue, but definition there is no "mystery" that is being held over the audience's heads that they're waiting for the finale to find the answer to. Without the mystery, it's not a mystery box. It's just a box.
*Sheffield*
The Stenza aren't the mystery box, The Timeless Child is.
This was another result of the lower budget for season 1 - it used a redressed set from the last 2 episodes of the season.
Ultimately I think Davies was more interested in exploring the idea of the "almost companion" with Adam rather than a deeper dive into the potential of the background of the setting.
Overall I can't dislike the episode but I don't love it either.
It's just kind of there.
The main thing that i remember about this episode is that i quite liked the direction. I think the director was Brian Grant (? Going from memory there), who was the main director on 'Hex'. That was quite good visually, too. Nice use of colour palettes and handheld camera stuff. I wish they'd brought him back. Also, it took me til halfway through the first season of 'Black Lightning' for me to realise where i'd seen his wife before: it's Cathica!
Great video! Something about the series-title always bugged me “Overdue Doctor Who Review”, “Overdue Who Review” flows and rhymes better 😂
Maybe if this had been a two=part story instead of "Alien in London" and “WWIII” then they would’ve had more time to explore those concepts you mentioned.
Big Finish has done that. It's called Live 34. Haven't listened to it yet, but I've heard good things.
I have, and it's great.
Have you ever read the Ninth Doctor novel "The Stealers of Dreams"? From this review, you might like it (but, even though they're in a society where people are forbidden to lie, there isn't a deep philosophical analysis on it either.)
After you do The Parting of the Ways, perhaps you should re-assess your old 9th Doctor ranking and see if anything's changed.
Max Scardanelli I third this
@@maxeyre2024 I 4th
This episode really frustrated me too, but for different reasons. I've always preferred Doctor Who with multiple companions, so I never liked how Adam was introduced and than immediately abandoned... and for what? Acting selfishly and betraying the Doctor's trust. Plenty of other companions have mistakes and some even worse. In classic Who their was even a companion who actively conspired to get the Doctor killed, but he was forgiven.
Heck, Rose is hardly a saint either, as plainly demonstrated in the subsequent where she created a nearly world ending paradox, not even out of purely blind ignorance , but flat out lying to the Doctor's face about her own intentions.
As much as I can appreciate the concept of a companion who is unworthy, the execution was fumbled, because Adam just never came across as all that bad. Just someone who made a single mistake and was never given a second chance to make up for it.
Never mind the episode itself. The last minute of it, that's the moment I'm always looking forward to...
There was a graphic novel titled Prisoners in Time in which adam returned
I actually quite enjoyed this episode
I remember on the card for the jagrefess it was installed by the daleks in the past. So my question are the dalek ships hidden away then or do they come in later and hide
When people say this episode is one of the worst of the first series, I'm always confused. The episodes taking place on Satellite 5 are some of the most memorable and fun episodes for me. I barely remember details of most of the other episodes.
Liking Season 11 so far man?
Also schweet Tardis style intro bro😎
I really like that one, at least in retrospect
I totally forgot that this episode existed omg.
The Editor was the ONLY thing I liked about this episode.
I had forgotten about it. I just re-watch it today, and it was okay
Oh, the ceiling shark episode
I don't know... I kinda like it... not sure why... As for a Big Finish approach to this the only thing I can think of (I've not been listening to their stuff for long) is Live 34, a whole story told in the format of a news broadcast.
Yeah, BBC blew their “cool alien”budget in The End of the World.
You should deffo listen to Live 34. My favourite of the Big Finish's I've listened to so far
So while watching this video I was thinking forward and thought about Captain Jack. While on that train of thought I was trying to think if a season long story would work in Doctor Who like Children of Earth or Miracle Day from Torchwood. Chris Chibnall has shown he can do that with things like Broad church. I would be really interested for you to do a video on that and give us your thoughts
Anything with Doctor Who and Chibnall being able to do something, in the same context has aged badly. 🤣
Where do you get all your dr who outfits? Especially the Jodie Whittaker one?
Amazon mostly.
Big Finish could bring back Adam. They’ll make a spin-off out of anything!
If you want to know what happened to Adam, then read the Doctor Who comic story Prisoners of Time, basically Adam goes around the Doctor's timeline and abducts all his companion throughout space and time
What the hell? How does he do that?
When does he get access to time travel?
Probably the weakest of Series 1 but there are some quite elements in it I quite like.
I have not read the comics, so I didn't know that Adam had made a "return" . In my own version of events he was "appropriated" by Torchwood and eventually got killed in the Battle Of Canary Wharf.
Doesn't work, he's from the year 2012 and the Doctor brought him right back there when he dumped him at this episode's end; same reason Nathaniel's thought of "they could have brought him back working for Harriet Jones" doesn't work. Adam's setup works in such a way that bringing him back (even if the actor hadn't sunk his career by being a creep) would be difficult to justify in the present day; best option would be wait a number of years after 2012, then have the actor play him when you can pretend he's NOT 5, 6, 7 years older than his character (again, there's no way the actor is coming back now).
Duh! I had forgotten that "Dalek" was set in 2012!
Btw in my own headcanon, Adam ended up either mad, begging on the streets or dissected because of the chip in his head. Or saved by UNIT... and then dissected ;)
Sounds like maybe it would've done better as a two-parter so they had more time to fully explore the ideas?
The only positive to say about Adam - we only had to deal with him as a companion for 1 episode.
All these years and I couldn't remember the motivation of the villain or what the monster was
I think, maybe, you would nitpick if aliens were present in an episode where they are not narratively justified.
But, if the writer wanted to introduce them, he could rewrite the narrative to justify them…
The long game was playing the long game
I am indifferent at this episode. It has good parts and not so good parts. And i dunmo how i would feel about Adam coming back. Like you i feel he served his purpose of how to be a bad companion. Plus i do feel that the BBC would probably not hire the actor again after wharvhappened and why he was fired from Coronation Street cus i think the BBC are trying to be careful about that stuff (google that actor and figure it out for yourself) so yeah maybe not the best choice.
Just to be clear about the actor who played Adam, Bruno Langley (who was fairly well known in the UK even prior to Doctor Who as an actor in a long running soap opera) could not appear now as he was convicted of sexual harassment and assault of a woman in night club last year.
Yes, I found that out after I shot this.
@@CouncilofGeeks It was a very fast fall from grace, he went from being on one of the most watched shows in the UK on a near daily basis to having his contract immediately cancelled. I doubt he'll ever get a major acting role again, which isn't much of a loss.
The actor who played Adam started playing a main character in coronation street (a British soap opera) so he couldn't come back due to scheduling conflicts.
Actually his schedule has freed up quite a bit since he pled guilty to sexual assault and got terminated off Coronation Street (something I found out after I recorded the episode), not that he's likely to be hired for Doctor Who or anything else for that matter.
He can't come back he has been in trouble with the law in really life
For me, this is the worst adventure of the ninth doctor, even the chapters with the sletheen are entertained, but this is an lost opportunity.
I've always kinda liked this episode to be honest
I sincerely hope after 2 years you got the point of this episode.
Live 34?
There's freaking NOTHING wrong with the episode. Don't get all the negativity. Head and shoulders better than most anything in the Capaldi era, is for sure.
A meh episode you need to watch if you're new to this run.
It ain't great just kinda there.
Yo sup
Definitely one of the weaker episodes of series 1, I feel the concept would work better in a black mirror episode
+
I love this episode, but they killed off adam mitchell.
If it wasn't for the fact this station setting is brought up later I would happily skip this on the repeat of this season. It's boring, bar Simon Pegg as he is very funny in most of his roles but he keeps my attention, and even in 2005 the brain thing was uninteresting.
The title itself is a Long Game with the how the actual arc will be towards the end of the series.
Worst episode of series 1
God I hated this episode. It was so boring and annoying.
Idk i liked this episode idk i liked the plot it sticked in my mind and it was one of my first tah watch.