The Long Game - The Golden Walls of an Empty Room
Ah, The Long Game. I actually like this episode, unlike a lot of people. The Adam arc, for example, is such a brilliant set-up and contrast to Rose's mistakes in the very next episode, Father's Day, for one thing. But I think most of these aspects have been covered by other rewatch posts, so I want to focus on something a bit different.
I think it's a brilliant commentary on our human society that, when posed the question of what happens on Floor 500, the answer was merely, "The walls are made of gold." This, to me, is not so different to the blinkered vision of present-day ambition. We always want to move up in the world, and we often don't even stop to think what that means. Just because, say, a job pays more, that doesn't mean it's necessarily superior, or that it will actually suit the person in question. For those people on Satellite Five, Floor 500 was seen as superior, but the walls of gold answer to what would seem like an obvious question suggests that no one really stopped to think why Floor 500 was supposed to be better. If people didn't even know what they'd be doing when they got up there, why strive for it? That's the way we're wired, I think. Give humans some competition with each other for some kind of superior position, and of course we want it. We can't seem to help ourselves, on the whole.
"The walls are made of gold" line also reeks of a party line given out in an almost police-state sort of scenario. Satellite Five is structured so that people rarely leave their specific floors, yes. However, the way it's specifically said that "Once you go to Floor 500 you never come back" suggests to me that that's not quite the same of people who have to move to any other floor for some reason. There might be little movement between floors, but I doubt that there's none, considering Adam seemed free to wander about. As such, normally questions would arise about why the people who were promoted to Floor 500 were never seen again. I believe that the people must have been incredibly afraid to question the system, if being given such a flimsy sort of explanation of what Floor 500 was stopped them from doing anything about their concerns about what happened to the people up there. They were looking for a placating answer, and they got one. The idea that the world was verging on a police state is backed up by suggestions made during The Long Game that there was rioting and guerilla freedom groups down on the Earth below, as well as that security both on- and off-planet was particularly tight despite no one knowing why. It's a shame that we never really get to explore just how bad things had gone wrong up to this point; by the time 'Bad Wolf' revisits the issue, things have gone wrong in such a very different sort of way that the damage done during the Jagrafess era seems to no longer matter.
I think it's a brilliant commentary on our human society that, when posed the question of what happens on Floor 500, the answer was merely, "The walls are made of gold." This, to me, is not so different to the blinkered vision of present-day ambition. We always want to move up in the world, and we often don't even stop to think what that means. Just because, say, a job pays more, that doesn't mean it's necessarily superior, or that it will actually suit the person in question. For those people on Satellite Five, Floor 500 was seen as superior, but the walls of gold answer to what would seem like an obvious question suggests that no one really stopped to think why Floor 500 was supposed to be better. If people didn't even know what they'd be doing when they got up there, why strive for it? That's the way we're wired, I think. Give humans some competition with each other for some kind of superior position, and of course we want it. We can't seem to help ourselves, on the whole.
"The walls are made of gold" line also reeks of a party line given out in an almost police-state sort of scenario. Satellite Five is structured so that people rarely leave their specific floors, yes. However, the way it's specifically said that "Once you go to Floor 500 you never come back" suggests to me that that's not quite the same of people who have to move to any other floor for some reason. There might be little movement between floors, but I doubt that there's none, considering Adam seemed free to wander about. As such, normally questions would arise about why the people who were promoted to Floor 500 were never seen again. I believe that the people must have been incredibly afraid to question the system, if being given such a flimsy sort of explanation of what Floor 500 was stopped them from doing anything about their concerns about what happened to the people up there. They were looking for a placating answer, and they got one. The idea that the world was verging on a police state is backed up by suggestions made during The Long Game that there was rioting and guerilla freedom groups down on the Earth below, as well as that security both on- and off-planet was particularly tight despite no one knowing why. It's a shame that we never really get to explore just how bad things had gone wrong up to this point; by the time 'Bad Wolf' revisits the issue, things have gone wrong in such a very different sort of way that the damage done during the Jagrafess era seems to no longer matter.