Christopher Eccleston: Doctor Who

The Long Game

Doctor Who

The Editor: Now there's an interesting point. Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?
The Doctor: Yes.
The Editor: Aw. I was hoping for a philosophical debate, is that all I'm gonna get: "yes"?
The Doctor: Yes.
The Editor: You're no fun.
The Doctor: Let me out of these manacles and I'll show you how much fun I am.
The Editor: Ooh, he's tough, isn't he?

The Editor: It may interest you to know that this isn't actually the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. It's merely a place where humans happen to live...
[a loud alien growling interrupts]
The Editor: Sorry... It's a place where humans are allowed to live by kind permission of my client.
[the Editor points upwards. Rose and The Doctor look up to see a gigantic mass on the ceiling, which screams, showing large pointed teeth]
Rose Tyler: What is that?
The Doctor: You mean that thing's in charge of Satellite Five?
The Editor: 'That thing', as you put it, is in charge of the human race. For almost a hundred years, mankind has been shaped and guided, his knowledge and ambitions strictly controlled by its broadcast news, edited by my superior, your master and humanity's guiding light, The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe.
[pause]
The Editor: I call him Max.

The Editor: Tell me who you are.
The Doctor: Since that information is keeping us alive, I'm hardly going to tell you, am I?

The Doctor: [to Adam] The thing is, Adam, time travel is 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? Stop asking questions. Go and do it!
[to Rose]
The Doctor: Off you go then. Your first date.

Rose Tyler: I'll let the Doctor describe it.
The Doctor: The Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Planet Earth is at its height, covered with megacities, five moons, population 96 billion, the centre of a galactic domain that stretches across a million planets and species.
[Adam faints]
The Doctor: He's your boyfriend.
Rose Tyler: Not any more.

[first lines]
The Doctor: So, it's two-hundred thousand, it's a spaceship - no, wait a minute - space station, and, er... go and try that gate over there. Off you go.

The Doctor: [the Doctor takes Adam back home to Earth] The whole of history could have changed because of you.
Adam: I just wanted to help.
The Doctor: You were helping yourself.
Adam: And I'm sorry and I've said I'm sorry. And I am, I really am. But you can't just leave me like this!
The Doctor: Yes, I can. 'Cause if you show the head to anyone, they'll dissect you in seconds. You'll have to live a very quiet life. Keep out of trouble. Be average. Unseen. Good luck.

Cathica: And on the Bad Wolf Channel, The Face of Boe just announced he's pregnant.
The Doctor: I get it. You broadcast the news.
Cathica: We are the news. We're the journalists. We write it, package it and sell it. Six hundred channels, all coming out of Satellite Five, broadcasting everywhere.

Rose Tyler: That's what comes of showing off; your history's not as good as you think.
The Doctor: My history is perfect.
Rose Tyler: Well, obviously not.

The Doctor: They've all got chips in their head, and the chips keep going like puppets.
The Editor: Oh, you're full of information, but its only fair we get some information back, because apparently you're no one. It's so rare not to know something. Who are you?
The Doctor: It doesn't matter, cause we're off. Nice to meet you.
[to Rose]
The Doctor: Come on!

Cathica: Doctor, I think if there was any sort of conspiracy, Satellite Five would have seen it. We see everything.
The Doctor: I can see better. This society's the wrong shape. Even the technology.
Cathica: It's cutting-edge!
The Doctor: It's backwards. There's a great big door in your head! You shoulda chucked this out years ago.

The Doctor: [the Doctor, Rose and Adam watch as news is gathered through Cathica] Compressed information. Streaming into her. Reports from every city, every country, every planet. And they all get packaged inside her head. She becomes part of the software. Her brain is the computer.
Rose Tyler: If it all goes through her, she must be a genius.
The Doctor: Nah, she wouldn't remember it. It's too much. Her head would blow up. The brain's the processor. As soon as it closes, she forgets.
Rose Tyler: [indicating Suki and the others] So, what about all these people round the edge?
The Doctor: They've all got tiny little chips in their head connecting them to her and they... transmit. Six hundred channels. Every single fact in the Empire beams out of this place. Now, that's what I call power.

The Editor: Time Lord!
The Doctor: What?
The Editor: Oh yes. The last of the Time Lords, with his travelling machine. Oh, with his little human girl from long ago.