42 (TV story)
42 was the seventh episode of the third series of Doctor Who. It marked Martha's first trip as an official companion to the Doctor as her previous travels were part of the Doctor's thanks for helping him in Smith and Jones. It also showed that Harold Saxon was interested in the Doctor and was using Mrs Jones to try locating him through Martha.
Synopsis
The Doctor and Martha follow a distress signal, only to be trapped on a spaceship hurtling towards a sun and cut off from the TARDIS. With only forty-two minutes left till impact, can they save the day? Also, something else is on the ship and it wants everyone to burn.
Plot
In the TARDIS, the Tenth Doctor adjusts Martha's mobile phone, enabling it to call anywhere in time and space - an ability he refers to as Universal Roaming, a 'frequent flyer's privilege'. As she is about to telephone her mother, Francine, they materialise on a very hot spaceship in answer to a distress signal, and the Doctor notes that the engines are not operating. They open the door to the next room and are pulled through by three members of the crew, who then slam the door shut. The captain, Kath McDonnell, explains that the engines have cut out and left the ship, the S.S. Pentallian, on a crash course with a local star. A nearby monitor announces that the projected time until impact is 42 minutes. The Doctor suggests evacuating the crew aboard the TARDIS, but the ship has begun venting excess heat through the room in which the TARDIS materialised, rendering it unreachable.
The Doctor organises Martha and one of the crew to open a series of password-protected doors in order to access the control room where the auxiliary engines can be activated. Meanwhile, the others move to the main engine room to try to fix the engines. The Doctor finds that all the engine-related machinery has been destroyed, and comments that the method suggests "someone knew what they were doing."
Ship's medic Abi Lerner calls the main engine room to say that Hal Korwin, the captain's husband, is having some sort of seizure. The Doctor tells everyone else to continue trying to save the ship, but, once in the sickbay with Abi and Korwin, finds that the others have followed him. Korwin is lying near a stasis chamber with his eyes closed, screaming in agony, crying, "It's burning me!" before the Doctor sedates him. Once Korwin is unconscious, the Doctor instructs Abi to test Korwin to find out what is wrong with him; then the Doctor and McDonnell return to the rest of the crew.
While Abi updates the crew on Korwin's status, the crew hears her screams for assistance as Korwin gets up and backs Abi against the wall, saying in a deep voice, "Burn with me". As he opens his eyes, a blinding light comes out and Abi screams in terror.
While the Doctor runs to Abi's aid, Martha and crewmember Riley Vashtee continue to open doors by answering pop quiz-style questions set by the crew, years previously, after a night of drinking. The questions include a crew member's favourite colour, and the next in a series of what turn out to be happy prime numbers. To answer another question, on 20th century Earth pop culture, Martha rings her mother for help - unaware that Francine has knowingly had her call tapped by a young woman who is presumably a government agent. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds the imprint of Abi and concludes that she was instantly vaporised. He reasons that Korwin has been infected in some way by something, and can vaporise people somehow.
McDonnell is at first unwilling to believe that Korwin could be responsible for sabotaging the ship and killing Abi, but then relents and alerts the rest of the crew to avoid him. Dev Ashton, working on the engines, sends Erina Lessak a message asking for more tools. She mutes the intercom and mutters under her breath about the injustice of being sent on every errand as she goes to the control cupboard. She sarcastically ends her spiel with "Just kill me now." When Erina closes the door, she turns to find Korwin standing there. He then backs Erina against the wall as he did with Abi, and vaporises her. Korwin then goes to find Ashton, saying, "They are getting too far", and, instead of killing him, proceeds to infect Ashton. Ashton goes after Martha and Riley - the ones who were "getting too far" - who in terror lock themselves in an escape capsule.
Ashton tries to override the system and send Martha and Riley plummeting towards the sun, but Riley is trying equally hard inside the capsule to stop this from happening. Ashton finally just destroys the system when the Doctor arrives and questions him. At the same time, Korwin is frozen to death by Scannell and McDonnell, prompting the possessed Ashton to ignore the Doctor and seek to continue Korwin's work. The Doctor calls them, explaining what's happening, and demands a space suit.
In the capsule, Martha implores Riley to have faith in the Doctor, wondering why he has not found anyone in his life to have faith in - his family is all but gone and he has no romantic attachments. However, she is surprised when, in answer to her question, he looks directly at her and says, "I already have." Resigned to her fate, Martha phones Francine once more and, unwilling to divulge her predicament, instead tells her mother that she loves her and tries to get her to simply converse about her life, until Francine's probing of whether the Doctor is with her causes a tearful Martha to end the call.
At the same time, the Doctor puts on his suit and goes outside to magnetise the ship in order to pull the escape pod back from the sun. Elsewhere in the ship, McDonnell lures Ashton into the medical bay and freezes him to death in the stasis chamber. Outside, the Doctor struggles to press the magnetic pull control buttons on the side of the ship, and he eventually manages it. Climbing back into the ship, he looks at the sun and stares into it, realising that "it's alive", before he too is infected by the same entity as Korwin. The escape pod returns to its launching point.
Martha and Riley come back to the ship grinning until they see the Doctor in pain. McDonnell arrives and the desperate Doctor angrily explains to her that because she illegally mined the sun for fuel, without checking for life signs, she has seriously angered the living being within the sun. He tells them that the sun is alive in him, and tells them how they can save/stop him. He has his eyes shut, like Korwin, and asks the two women to place him into a cryogenic stasis machine to kill the sun entity in him. Before he goes in, he cries for Martha to stay with him, telling her that he is scared. He tries to tell Martha about a process which may happen if he dies; Martha assures him that he won't.
Martha starts the freezing process but it is interrupted by Korwin (a corpse possessed by what remains of Torajii in him), who turns off the power to the stasis chamber from the engineering department. The Doctor then tells Martha that she must go to the front of the ship and jettison the fuel, which will return the living particles back to the sun. Martha runs to tell the rest of the crew to jettison the fuel while the defrosted Doctor appears to lose the fight against his possession, collapsing onto the floor and uttering, "Burn with me".
Elsewhere, a shocked McDonnell encounters Korwin. She admits to Korwin that this was all her fault and lures him close to an airlock. She tells him that she loves him and apologises to the rest of the crew through her radio, then opens the airlock and the two of them are sucked out into space. Martha tells the rest of the crew to vent the fuel, which ends the crisis by replenishing the sun and freeing the ship from its gravitational pull, and also ends the sun creature's control over the Doctor.
The Doctor and Martha head back to the entrance of the TARDIS, where Martha kisses Riley goodbye. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor thanks Martha for saving him and as a further sign of acceptance, gives Martha her own key to the TARDIS, another "frequent flyer's privilege". Martha calls her mother back, who invites her over for tea and informs her that it is Election Day. Martha accepts, assured that the Doctor will bring her home in time. After Martha hangs up, we see the woman, and two other men, tapping Francine's phone again. Confiscating the phone, the woman asks Francine if she has voted. She says she has, but doesn't say who she has voted for. The woman thanks her for all she has been doing, saying, "Mr. Saxon will be very grateful."
Cast
- The Doctor - David Tennant
- Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman
- Francine Jones - Adjoa Andoh
- Kath McDonnell - Michelle Collins
- Riley Vashtee - William Ash
- Orin Scannell - Anthony Flanagan
- Hal Korwin - Matthew Chambers
- Abi Lerner - Vinette Robinson
- Dev Ashton - Gary Powell
- Erina Lessak - Rebecca Oldfield
- Miss Dexter - Elize du Toit
- Countdown Voice - Joshua Hill
Crew
| Executive Producers Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
References
- Pentallian drives are a component of the ship.
- Mr. Saxon is mentioned when Martha rings her mum.
- The Doctor upgrades Martha's mobile phone to 'Universal Roaming', but he uses his sonic screwdriver rather than the 'chip' method he used on Rose's first phone.
- The doors of the spaceship are deadlock sealed.
- The Doctor tries to tell Martha about his ability to regenerate, but Martha interprets his comments about nearing death as a morbid mindset and ignores him and tells him to concentrate on surviving.
- The Archangel Network icon is briefly seen on Martha's phone.
- The Doctor offers to take Martha ice-skating on the planet of Kur-ha.
Story notes
- The transmission of 42 was postponed to the 19th of May (rather than the 12th) because of the BBC's broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest.
- The episode occurs in real time, like the American television programme 24. 42 is of course 24 reversed, possibly another tip of the hat to the show. However, technically the events do not occur in real-time in this episode; for example, the countdown timer runs out at approximately 40 minutes into the episode, leaving 2 unaccounted minutes as well as almost the entire pre-credits sequence (itself about 2 minutes).
- 42 is also the approximate length, in minutes, of a new Doctor Who episode.
- The number 42 has many significant meanings in Earth pop culture and in relation to the Doctor Who franchise (although whether any of these were intentionally referenced by the episode title is a matter of debate):
- 42 was the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, according to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Coincidentally, Douglas Adams was a writer and script editor for Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era, and a reference to the book's lead character, Arthur Dent, is made in The Christmas Invasion.
- Elvis Presley died aged 42.
- 42 minutes was the length of the Beatles' last performance atop Apple HQ.
- Doctor Who returned to television during 2005 - the 42nd anniversary of the franchise.
- 42 is also a significant number on the TV show Lost.
- A spaceship crashing into a sun leaving the passengers little time to escape was also a major plotpoint in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
- One of the questions to open the deadlocked doors was, "What is your favourite colour?", a reference to the questions asked by the bridgekeeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- 42 is somewhat similar to the movie Sunshine. Both of these involve a delivery ship, both of these involve possession and both of these involve a ship going out of control to the nearby Sun. Also, the DVD commentary states the ship's original name as written and filmed was the "Icarus", just as in Sunshine, until they edited the name out of the final episode to avoid confusion.
- This episode has the shortest title of any televised instalment of Doctor Who broadcast to date and is the only one to date to consist solely of a number.
- The use of a visor to block the heat rays from the infected persons may be a tip of the hat to Marvel Comic's X-Men character Cyclops.
- This episode is similar to the Star Trek: Voyager episode Heroes and Demons. In both episodes, a spaceship takes samples from a star which turn out to be sentient, and is subsequently attacked. In both cases, the conflict is resolved by returning the sample. Coincidentally, the main protagonist of the episode Heroes and Demons is the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram who, lacking a given name, is known in the series as the Doctor.
- At one stage the Ood were going to be in this episode, where they were to be possessed again. (DWDVDF 5)
- Coincidentally or not, the Sun only takes control of males.
Ratings
- 7.0 million (overnight ratings)
- 7.41 million (final ratings)
- 0.89 million (BBC3 repeat)
Filming locations
- St. Regis Paper Company, Sudbrook, Caldicot
- Cwrt-y-Vil Road, Penarth
- Nippon Electric Glass UK (now known as Trident Park/part of Trident Park), Cardiff Bay
- BBC Studios, Upper Boat, Tonteg Road, Treforest Industrial Estate, Pontypridd
Production errors
Continuity
- A Pentallian drive was part of the transmat in TV: Revenge of the Cybermen.
- The phrase 'Burn with me' is used in TV: Smith and Jones.
- The Stasis Chamber from this episode is the MRI machine (redecorated) from TV: Smith and Jones.
- The phrase "You're a long way from home. Half a galaxy away", was also said to Mickey Smith in TV:The Girl in the Fireplace.
- As Martha prepares to slide the Doctor into the stasis chamber, she asks, "Are you ready?" and he replies, "No." This is the same exchange, characters reversed, used at the end of TV: Smith and Jones as the Doctor sets the TARDIScontrols for Martha's first trip.
- The Doctor uses a spacesuit he finds on the ship, the same type of spacesuit that he used when he visited Sanctuary Base 6 around the same time period. (TV: The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit) He would later use the same suit from Sanctuary Base 6 when he went to Bowie Base One in 2059. (TV: The Waters of Mars)
- The Doctor mentions being able to withstand a temperature of 200 degrees below zero. The Doctor did survive having his body temperature lowered to 200 below while nearly being frozen as a museum exhibit in the First Doctor story TV The Space Museum.
- The helmet worn in this episode is one of the hats that can be collected in GAME: The Eternity Clock. The "burn with me" tagline is also referenced by the Eleventh Doctor.
Prologue
- Main article: 42 Prologue
To promote the episode, Joseph Lidster wrote a short story entitled 42 Prologue focusing on Erina Lessak and the events leading up to the episode. The story, which expands on the backstory of Erina and other characters, was published exclusively on the BBC's Doctor Who website in May 2007. [1]
Home video releases
- This episode was released with Daleks in Manhattan, Evolution of the Daleks and The Lazarus Experiment on the Series 3 Volume 2 DVD.
- It was also part of the series 3 DVD box set.
External links
- BBC Website - Prologue to 42
- BBC Official Episode Guide for 42
- 42 at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: 42 at The Whoniverse
- 42 at Shannon Sullivan's A Brief History of Time (Travel)
- 42 at The Locations Guide
