Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Doctor Who Season 1 Episode 12 Bad Wolf

Doctor Who Bad Wolf 12/13
The three TARDIS travellers find themselves separated, waking up with temporary amnesia in various reality television and game shows. The Doctor finds himself in a Big Brother House, Rose on the set of The Weakest Link hosted by "Anne Droid", and Jack facing two gynoids, Trine-e and Zu-Zana, who offer to give him a brand new image.
The Doctor befriends Lynda, one of the Housemates, and learns that there are several thousand similar reality and game shows occurring all over where they are located. He slowly remembers that somehow, they were transmatted from within the TARDIS to here; a force with enough power to penetrate the TARDIS shielding cannot just being just running games here, and sets off to try to get out of the House.
However, Lynda notes that the only way to leave the house is either to win the game, or to be voted off, which results in being disintegrated in a white corridor leading to the exit. Horrified, the Doctor asks Lynda if the risk of death is worth it, but Lynda notes they are not given a choice; people are randomly selected and transmatted to the games.
The Doctor destroys a camera with his sonic screwdriver, forcing his eviction, and he moves into the corridor, waiting to be disintegrated, but it never comes; the Doctor believes someone brought him here and wants him alive. He invites the remaining houseguests to join him, but only Lynda comes along.
Outside, the Doctor discovers they are back on Satellite 5, a century from when they were last there. The Doctor momentarily pauses when he realizes the Satellite, now called the Game Station, is operated by the Bad Wolf Corporation. Further discussion with Lynda reveals that when he stopped Satellite 5 prior, all information broadcasting ceased, and society collapsed; the reinvention of Satellite 5 as the Game Station and its programming only continued to help keep the human population as sheep.
Jack, meanwhile, has found his way to the Doctor by tracking his bicardial respiratory system, having escaped from the gynoids before he was cut open and repurposing their "defabricator" as a weapon. Realizing that Rose is still in the system, he frantically begins to try to search for where she is through a computer terminal.
Rose, due to being out of her century, does not fare well in answering the questions on her show, but the others leave her in play; those eliminated each round are disintegrated by the Anne-droid. One of the contestants explains that he would keep her to the final round due to her lack of knowledge on the questions, so that he can win the credits offered by the Badwolf Corporation; Rose realises, like the Doctor, that those words have been present in their previous adventures, and if they are here, her presence has been planned.
She makes it to the final round and loses just as the Doctor, Jack, and Lynda burst into the studio; she tries to run over to them but is disintegrated by the Anne Droid. Distraught, the Doctor allows himself and Jack to be captured and interrogated by guards, but just before they are transported to a penal colony, he and Jack knock out the guards, take their weapons, and head to Floor 500.
In the control room, Jack ushers the programmers away from their consoles with his gun, while the Doctor investigates "the Controller", a young girl wired into a large device. A programmer explains that she was "installed" into the system when she was five, and since then, all she sees is the programming that occurs in the station, and thus does not recognize the Doctor. The programmers also note that they suspect there is something more going on, hinted by unauthorized transmats and encoded signals.
When a solar flare hits the station, momentarily blocking transmissions, the Controller calls for the Doctor, and tells him that her "masters" cannot see what she is doing due to the flare. She tells him that she had seen him through the broadcasts, and brought him to the station, hiding his crew within the games to protect them from the masters, but she cannot say who they are. Jack discovers the TARDIS in a side room, and using the console, discovers that what they thought was disintegration was really a secondary transmat system; Rose and the others are simply located elsewhere.
The Controller gives the Doctor the ending coordinates of the transmat just as the solar flare ends; the masters discover her deception and transmat her away from the station. The Doctor traces the coordinates to the edge of the solar system, finding empty space. However, he recognizes that another signal send by the Game Station, installed by the same group that installed the Jagrafess in Satellite 5, and terminates it; revealing a fleet of nearly 200 Dalek spacecraft, carrying nearly a half a million Daleks.
Rose regains consciousness aboard an alien spacecraft, and finds it filled with Daleks. As she watches, the Controller appears on the ship, and is killed by a energy weapon from one of the Daleks. The Daleks open communications with the Station, and warn the Doctor to not intervene or they will exterminate Rose. The Doctor steadfastly refuses: he states that he will rescue Rose from the fleet and wipe the Daleks out, despite having no weapons at his disposal. The Daleks terminate the transmission and take the Doctor's warning as hostile, and initiate their invasion of Earth, leading into the episode's cliffhanger.

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