The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) wakes up, with a spot of amnesia, inside a house… the ‘Big Brother’ house, to be exact. Rose (Billie Piper) is on the set of ‘The Weakest Link’ but it’s not quite as she remembers it from television: instead of Anne Robinson, there’s now a robot host called the Anne Droid. Jack (John Barrowman) is caught in a futuristic version of ‘What Not To Wear’ complete with robot hosts who wish to give him a makeover.

But soon, the Doctor realises not all is what it seems... especially when the occupants of the House are disintegrated, as are losing contestants on ‘Weakest Link’. The Doctor befriends Lynda (Jo Joyner), one of the last House mates, who accompanies him as he breaks out of confinement, only to discover that he’s on a space station – the Game Station, formerly known as Satellite Five, where one hundred years before he thought he’d set humanity to right (“The Long Game”). Instead, humanity has fallen down a dark path, and reality television is a charnel house.

Rose fights for her life in her game, as an opponent, Rodrick (Paterson Joseph) helps her along, only so he can win against her in the final round. Meanwhile, as the robot designers attempt to kill Jack, he breaks out through his own ingenuity (not to mention a curiously-stashed weapon) and meets up with the Doctor and Lynda. The Doctor learns that the station is controlled by the Badwolf Corporation, and realises that someone or something has been playing him for weeks. They attempt to find Rose and break her out, but before they’re able, she loses and is disintegrated.

Dejected, the Doctor is taken into custody, but he, Jack and Lynda break free and end up on Floor 500, which is now run by programmers and a mysterious woman strung up with wires called the Controller. During a solar flare, the Controller tells the Doctor he brought him and his companions here in order to fight her masters who are the true reason why humanity has taken such a wrong turn. Jack locates the TARDIS and discovers that the beams of energy they thought were disintegrator beams are actually transmats – teleportation devices that bring all of the games’ losers to a point in space just outside the solar system...

There, a captive (and very much alive) Rose Tyler comes face to face with the true architects of the ‘long game’ that has ensnared humanity: the Daleks.