42
Story 184, Episode 731, Series 3 Episode 7
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Martha Jones
In a now historical artifact, Chris Chibnall’s first opportunity to write for Doctor Who proper gives us one of the most frenetic episodes ever.
The Review
There’s now constant countdown clock, but the Doctor and Martha have arrived on a ship falling into the sun in exactly 42 minutes, the length of a normal episode. The first time I saw 42 I thought it was a bargain rip-off of The Impossible Planet, it’s still weirdly similar but the pace is turned up to 11. The problems are numerous, the crew has to get through 29 password protected doors to get to the engine controls, and deal with one of their crew saying ‘burn with me’ and frying people to dust. There is no room to breathe anywhere in this episode, by design, and it certainly leaves you gasping for breath at the end of the runtime. Crew members are rapidly killed off by the infected creatures, and Martha and one of the crew is ejected in an escape pod that slowly falls toward the sun. The Doctor withstands the wrath of the sun in his trademark orange spacesuit, managing to reverse the magnetism of the escape pod to bring Martha back home. Martha’s tearful phone call with her mom is one of the only slow moments.
It turns out that the sun is actually alive and it is understandably very angry at some of its fusion energy being scooped on up by the crew. The idea of a living sun that can possess people is pretty powerful, and it becomes clear that this is the crew’s fault. Fusion scoops have been outlawed, and in their haste to sneak off with the sun’s energy the crew never checked to see that it was alive. I do enjoy classic base under siege stories (until they got too repetitive in Troughton’s time), and this is one turned all the way up until 11. When the crew finally avert catastrophe, it’s a sense of relief from us viewers that feel like we’ve been in the pressure cooker too. I certainly liked 42 more on re-watch than I expected it too, and it does make me wonder a tiny bit where this sense of action has gone from Chibnall’s current era. Did he spend too much of it here? We also get some ominous peeks into Harold Saxon, who is having Martha’s mom’s phone tapped with her permission. (Although she refuses to say she voted Saxon despite them supposedly helping save Martha from the dangerous Doctor). Who could that be?
I’m sorry I doubted this episode, it was Good.
9/10 Drama out in space!
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 