Satellite Five

Satellite Five is a space station that orbited the Earth in the year 200,000. It has a central cylindrical structure ringed by three hoops. The purpose of the hoops is unknown. Satellite Five is 500 floors tall. Floor 000 is arrivals and departures. Floor 16 is the surgical level. Floor 500 is the editorial level, where management is based, and the place to which everyone aspires to be promoted. The walls are rumoured to be made of gold. In reality, it is very different: cold, abandoned and dilapidated.

Satellite Five went online in 199,909 during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. It is responsible for broadcasting 600 channels of constant news reports. Personnel gather, write, package and sell the news, all from Satellite Five.

News is sorted using brain chip technology. There are two types of brain chip. The first is a small processing chip implanted at the base of the skull. The other is a receptor chip implanted in the forehead. The method by which the receptor chip is activated and the head is opened, to expose the chip for use, is the choice of the implantee. Once the receptor chip is activated, compressed news information is streamed into the person's brain and they become, in effect, part of the software; their brain is the computer. But the brain only processes the information; it does not retain it.

In the year 200,000, the Doctor, Rose and Adam materialise on floor 139 and discover that humanity is being manipulated by an unknown source. They discover that the Jagrafess is subtly manipulating the Empire, retarding its social, economic and technological growth and making it more inward-looking and xenophobic. In this way, the human race has been reduced to slavery without their even realising it.

The environmental systems of Satellite Five had been configured to vent all heat away from Floor 500, keeping it cold enough for the Jagrafess to survive, attached to the ceiling of the main control room. Ultimately captured by the Editor and about to be killed by the Jagrafess, the Doctor and Rose are saved by Cathica, a human journalist, who reverses the environmental systems. The Jagrafess overheats, swells up and explodes, apparently ending its threat and the scheme to hold back the human race. ("The Long Game")

100 years after, Satellite Five has become the Game Station. Run by the Badwolf Corporation, it now broadcasts not only news reports but game shows and reality TV. The contestants are not volunteers, and anyone can be chosen at any time. The shows include a version of Big Brother House on Channel 44,000, The Weakest Link, What Not to Wear, Call My Bluff, Stars in Their Eyes, Bear With Me, and Wipeout. If the contestants fail, they are destroyed. The Game Station is run by the Controller, a pale woman connected to the station at the age of five by dozens of cables, constantly monitoring the transmissions that flow through her.

The Doctor, Rose and Jack wake up to find themselves on board the Game Station. The Doctor has been transported to a future version of Big Brother, Rose is forced to play a deadly version of the Weakest Link and Jack appears in a 2001th-century version of What Not to Wear. Upon escaping, the Doctor discovers that the Daleks have been controlling humanity. They have been hiding their own transmissions within the Game Station signals -- and before that, Satellite Five's transmissions, controlled for them by the Jagrafess. The Daleks are finally destroyed when Rose, having made contact with the heart of the TARDIS and transformed herself into the Bad Wolf, turns every last Dalek in existence to dust. ("Bad Wolf", "The Parting of the Ways", "Children In Need Special")