Doctor: Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companions: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
John Barrowman (Jack Harkness)
Others
Jo Joyner – Lynda Moss
Jamie Bradley – Strood
Abi Eniola – Crosbie
Davina McCall – Voice of Davinadroid
Paterson Joseph – Rodrick
Jenna Russell – Floor Manager
Anne Robinson – Voice of Anne Droid
Trinny Woodall – Voice of Trine-e
Susannah Constantine – Voice of Zu-Zana
Jo Stone-Fewings – Male Programmer
Nisha Nayar – Female Programmer
Dominic Burgess – Agorax
Karren Winchester – Fitch
Kate Loustau – Colleen
Sebastian Armesto – Broff
Martha Cope – Controller
Sam Callis – Security Guard
Alan Ruscoe, Paul Kasey – Android
Nicholas Briggs – Dalek Voice
Production
Directed by Joe Ahearne
Written by Russell T Davies
Script editor Helen Raynor
Produced by Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s) Russell T Davies
Julie Gardner
Mal Young
Incidental music composer Murray Gold
Production code 1.12
Series Series 1
Length 1st of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast 11 June 2005
The Doctor, Rose, and Jack Harkness find themselves separated, waking up with temporary amnesia in various television game shows. The Doctor finds himself in a Big Brother house hosted by the Davinadroid, Rose ends up on the set of The Weakest Link hosted by the Anne Droid, and Jack wakes up facing two female androids who offer to give him a makeover on a show similar to What Not to Wear. All three find out that the shows are more fatal than their twenty-first century counterparts. On The Weakest Link and Big Brother, losing contestants are disintegrated. On What Not to Wear, participants undergo brutal cosmetic surgery. The Doctor escapes from his show by overriding the termination chamber (which is unable to disintegrate him for some reason), bringing along a contestant called Lynda. They discover that they are on Satellite Five, which the Doctor previously visited in "The Long Game". It has been renamed the Game Station and is now under the control of the Badwolf Corporation. Lynda explains that 100 years ago, Satellite Five stopped broadcasting and humanity became confused and lost.
The Doctor, Jack, and Lynda search for Rose. They find her just as she loses the final round of The Weakest Link and is promptly disintegrated. They are arrested, but escape their capture and travel to the control room on Floor 500. There they meet the Controller, a cybernetic human. The Controller uses the cover of a solar flare to speak directly to the Doctor, telling him that her masters cannot hear her during the flare. The Controller used a transmat to hide the Doctor and his companions in the games as her masters do not watch them. The solar flare ends before she can tell the Doctor who is controlling her. Jack finds the TARDIS hidden in a restricted area, which he uses to figure out that contest losers are not actually disintegrated but transmatted off of the station. The Controller begins giving the Doctor the coordinates that the transmat leads to, knowing that her masters will hear. The Controller disappears in a transmat beam and wakes up on a spaceship, where she is killed by her masters. Rose wakes up on the floor of a spaceship and is horrified to see a Dalek approaching her. The Doctor and Jack discover a signal coming from the station that is hiding something at the edge of the solar system. They cancel the signal and reveal a fleet of Dalek spaceships. The Daleks open a communication channel to the Doctor, threatening to kill Rose if he interferes. The Doctor refuses to back down and vows to rescue Rose and wipe out the Daleks.
The episode ends with the Daleks about to invade Satellite Five.
Bad Wolf