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This is where it starts. Next week's good, and last week was great. This is where it starts: TV screens on your TV screen, all of them broadcasting news, "solar flares" and "commercial flights." The TARDIS appears, and the Doctor and Rose step out. Perhaps Adam got sucked down the bog! The Doctor looks around, and starts giving Rose the information: it's 200,000, it's a space station, there's a gate in the corner they should start with. He leans against the TARDIS, Rose double-checks the information, and they grin. She giggles and opens up the TARDIS door, and calls Adam out. He's agog. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it," Rose says, and gives Adam the information she just got from the Doctor. On one level, it's funny: being teacher's pet, carrying on this idea that Rose belongs now, and Adam's just a tourist, being able to step back a few episodes and remember when Rose was so blown away by the fact of travel that she couldn't see the details of the terrain. But on another level, it's not so funny: if you're only repeating the information somebody else gives you, it's not news, it's not legitimate, it's nothing but parroting back the last thing you heard. It's not the news: "Good question," says Rose. Drink. "Let's see. So, um...judging by the architecture, I'd say we're around the year 200,000." Adam is awestruck and impressed; Rose is chuffed at the joke of it. She's playing older sister with Adam, and practical-joking girlfriend with the Doctor, and always the information: "If you listen...engines. We're on some sort of space station. Yeah. Definitely a space station. It's a bit warm in here; they could turn the heating down." Rose indicates the gate, and they follow after, the Doctor delighted.
Out into a gallery, overlooking the Earth. Adam holds onto a railing for support and joins Rose, as she passes the talking stick to the Doctor: "The Fourth Great And Bountiful Human Empire. And there it is, planet Earth at its height, covered with megacities, five moons, population ninety-six billion." Rose -- who looks quite more than amazing enough to make up for last week -- kind of loses track, too, mouth agape. The Doctor: "The hub of a galactic domain, stretching across a million planets, a million species...with mankind right in the middle." Adam faints with a tiny sigh, and the Doctor doesn't even look. "He's your boyfriend," the Doctor says, off-handedly and more than a bit accusing. "Not anymore," Rose jokes, freshly. The quest has started again, and now she has enough time travel on her to be one of the mysterious ones. Adam's worth that at least: the chance for us to see Rose, after the adventures we've seen and the ones we haven't, being the kind of Companion that says vague "run for your life" stuff with that Doctor's grin. How could Adam ever be a part of that?
Episode by Russell Davies, and it's quite good for all that. He's a good guy, and he loves the Doctor. And Rose.
The Doctor begs Adam to "open his mind," (okay?! Of course I love him) walking with his arms around the shoulders of his Companions. "You're gonna like this fantastic period of history. The human race at its most intelligent: culture, art, politics. This era has got fine food, good manners..." Just then, everything goes nuts. A man shouts at them to get out of the way, and all of a sudden Floor 139 comes alive. Food stalls everywhere, strange circus music, lines forming out of nowhere, people everywhere, a full-on bazaar, where there was silence a few seconds ago. A stall-keeper yells at a cute guy with spiky hair to get back, and Rose wonders at the "fine cuisine" the Doctor mentioned. He's thrown way off -- bad sign! -- and checks his funny little watch. Rose digs at him: "That's what comes of showing off: your history's not as good as you thought it was." But the Doctor wasn't the one showing off; his information is fine. It's the world that's off. Noise in the signal. Adam wonders aloud about how there's supposed to be this million-planet federation and all these species, but everywhere they look, it's British people. The Doctor allows that it's a good question, and pauses. "Actually, that is a good question," he repeats, and his face goes quiet a moment before he jumps on Adam, all friendly and Doctor-like: "Adam, me old mate, you must be starving!" Adam says that he's time-sick, and the Doctor says again he needs some grub. A stall-keeper tells the Doctor a cronk burger's "two credits twenty," and calls him "sweetheart," and tells them to stop goggling and get in line.