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Satellite Five was a space station that orbited the Earth in the year 200,000. It had a central cylindrical structure ringed by three hoops. The purpose of the hoops was unknown. Satellite Five was 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 were rumoured to be made of gold, but in reality, it was very different: cold, abandoned and dilapidated.
History
Satellite Five (199,909 - 200,000)
Satellite Five went online in 199,909 during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. It was responsible for broadcasting 600 channels of constant news reports. Personnel gathered, wrote, packaged and sold the news, all from Satellite Five.
News was sorted using brain chip technology. There were two types of brain chip. The first was a small processing chip implanted at the base of the skull. The other was a receptor chip implanted in the forehead. The method by which the receptor chip was activated and the head was opened, to expose the chip for use, was the choice of the implantee, however by default it was clicking of fingers. Once the receptor chip was activated, compressed news information as streamed into the person's brain and they became, in effect, part of the software; their brain being the computer. But the brain only processed the information; it did not retain it.
In the year 200,000, the Doctor, Rose and Adam materialised on floor 139 and discoverd that humanity was being manipulated by an unknown source. They discovered that the Jagrafess was 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 were saved by Cathica, a human journalist, who reversed the environmental systems. The Jagrafess overheated, swelled up and exploded, apparently ending its threat and the scheme to hold back the Human race. (DW: The Long Game)
Game Station (200,000 - 200,100)
100 years after, Satellite Five has become the Game Station. Run by the Badwolf Corporation, it broadcasted game shows and reality TV. The contestants were not volunteers, and anyone could be chosen at any time. The shows included 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 failed, they were (supposedly) disintegrated. The Game Station was 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 flowed through her.
The Doctor, Rose and Jack woke up to find themselves on board the Game Station. The Doctor had been transported to a future version of Big Brother, Rose was forced to play a deadly version of the Weakest Link and Jack appeared in a 2001th-century version of What Not to Wear. Upon escaping, the Doctor discovered that the Daleks had been controlling humanity. They had 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 were finally destroyed when Rose, having made contact with the heart of the TARDIS and transformed herself into the Bad Wolf entity, turned every last Dalek in existence to dust. (DW: Bad Wolf, The Parting of the Ways, Children In Need Special)