Holistic Review: Not the most original of plots, the characters are bland, and it's very slow to heat up (pardon the pun), but by the end, it manages to work.

42 is another in the list of stories with plots that just don't sound very promising. In this case, it was something along the lines of "the Doctor and Martha are trapped in a ship in the middle of the sun" (to paraphrase Outpost Gallifrey), which makes this story sound fairly static. They're trapped in a ship in the sun, and clearly they have to get out, and there's your plot. I realize now that this could also have been the setup for a fairly classic base-under-siege type story, à la the Troughton years, or The X-Files, but that's not the image I had to start out with. (I should also add that this is one of two stories this year - the other being Blink, for which I have much higher expectations - about which I have managed to remain almost completely unspoiled, up until the Outpost Gallifrey graphic-of-the-week. We'll see if I can stay as unspoiled on Blink...) Distressingly, as the actual story started to unfold, my worst fears seem to be exactly what the story was about. The TARDIS materializes on a ship and becomes immediately inaccessible; Martha finds out they're in a ship on course for the sun (not in the heart of the sun yet, but inexorably headed there), and for the next 20 minutes or so, the Doctor, Martha and various crewmembers do nothing but race around trying to repair the ship's systems before they crash / burn up. Oh my gosh, how boring is that! I mean, I don't mind seeing a bit of technical savvy as the ship's engineer repairs some circuit just in time to save the Doctor and Martha from some slavering creature, but to make it the focus of an episode? As Erina said, "Please, kill me now." (And more on that later.)

Thankfully, on repeated viewing I found more to appreciate in the first third of the story. The characters, for one - after seeing 42 once, I couldn't remember the name of a single guest character, with the exception of Korwin. So, rewatching it was a nice chance to try to get to know them a little better. Sadly, I still can't say that I really like them or find them interesting - they're almost all just blah. With one exception, which I'll also get to later. The other nice thing that really helps the story move along in its early stages is the reveal that not only is there a saboteur on board (which is mentioned several times, but all really quickly, such that I almost didn't catch it the first time through), but the man responsible for the sabotage seems to be suffering from some sort of malady, which soon reveals itself to be possession by an entity that enables him to incinerate people with a look. This is a biiiiig help in keeping the early part of the story interesting, and the possessed crewmembers are actually quite scary.

Beyond that, things get a bit sticky again, and it makes me a little uncertain of the way that writer Chris Chibnall handles plot. I enjoyed his Torchwood stories relatively well, but somehow the timing and tone feel a little uneven here... maybe he had to pad out the story to fill the running time, I don't know (but it wouldn't surprise me). For a while, it looks like we're going to be following Martha and Riley through the entire pub quiz, as the questions are set up as potentially difficult composed-when-drunk brain-teasers, Martha keeps having to ask the Doctor for help, and then... it gets totally dropped. Which is kind of a shame, because I always enjoy a good puzzle plotline, but then again, it really doesn't fit here. What was the point of including it? I mean, yes, it's fun, and yes, we get a really cute "Beatles" joke courtesy of Riley, but after those first three questions, we just see Riley and Orin breezing through them as though they were nothing, so why all the set-up? Was it to get Martha to think of phoning her mother? But since she was going to be doing that shortly anyway, in the face of almost-certain death, why not just leave it until then? (And, I would argue, if Martha has to phone somebody to get the answer, why not Tish? She must have known her mother would give her grief about being with the Doctor, whereas Tish would have understood her situation and been just as good if not better at retrieving the information.) Where the story really kicks into gear, I think, is the moment when the escape pod jettisons. I expected Martha to be essentially written out of the story at that point, but no: the Doctor actually stops everything he's doing in order to rescue her. That was refreshingly unexpected, and as a bonus, we got a heart-to-heart talk between Martha and Riley that could easily have been "blah blah cliched backstory infodump" but was really handled very well.

The other thing that struck me pretty immediately was a feeling of déjà vû. The whole look of the story (gritty red-lit futuristic metal structure) is reminiscent of The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, and check out the plot similarities: the Doctor and his female companion land in a deep-space location in an inhospitable environment, staffed by a ragtag crew who are struggling to beat the odds and survive, and the TARDIS is almost immediately lost, but one of the crewmembers has become possessed and may cause them all to be destroyed by the nearby destructive celestial phenomenon. And they re-use one of the spacesuits, too. Granted, this time the crew are hurtling towards the sun instead of just watching a nearby black hole, but I think you get my point. Then at the end, it suddenly turns out that we've actually been watching Planet of Evil the entire time: the Doctor and his female companion encounter a group of spacefarers who are in desperate need of fuel, and have collected a powerful energy source from a celestial body that turns out to be a living organism; it then possesses one of the crewmembers and uses him to kill off all the others (by incineration, since we saw unnaturally-aged bodies in the last story) until they realize their mistake and jettison the last of the stolen material, at which point everyone recovers and the spacecraft is set free. Golly! And there's one more! On my second viewing, I suddenly realized what the title meant. I had originally heard that the story was set in the 42nd century (and maybe it was, but we saw no reference to it here), but then it turned out that it was 42 minutes that the Doctor had to save the ship. And then I went: ohhhhhhhhh. There's a crisis that the Doctor has to solve. He has a limited amount of time to do it. Everybody runs about frantically trying to accomplish things. We get very frequent looks at the countdown clock. It's told in real time. There are several cell-phone conversations, and at least two apparent traitors, if we're counting Mrs. Jones. All we need is a few split-screen shots and for the Doctor to yell "We don't have time for this!" (which actually... he kind of does when Martha's asking him pub-quiz questions) and you could swap the numerals in the title and call it a day. (Ha. Unintended pun, honest.) Believe it or not, that realization actually made me like this story a little more. Now that I can see what they were going for, I understand why they spent so much time racing around doing mundane things. I'm not saying it was the best way to structure a real-time story, but I at least appreciate it a little more now.

Happily, while the plot is teetering on the edge of ennui, David and Freema are given some material to shine with. Tennant does some of his most intense acting yet as the Doctor succumbs to star-possession, screaming in pain and ultimately getting to growl with malicious evil that suits him surprisingly well. The scene in which the Doctor kinda-sorta suggests using the generators to start the ship is an excellent example of how his mind works in so many different directions at once. I was a bit surprised by how offhandedly the Doctor refused to answer Martha's question about the Beatles, but I suppose he was pretty distracted. Given that it was vital information to save all their lives, though, you'd think he'd have been a bit more helpful.

Even though I'm not entirely certain about Chris Chibnall's grasp on characterization and plot, I have to give him major credit for being the first writer to succeed in penning an episode in which Martha doesn't moan about her unrequited love for the Doctor even once. Instead, what we get is her deep faith in him, which is much MUCH better (and an ideal lead-in to Human Nature, I feel sure). Martha actually doesn't get a whole lot to really do in this story, but between her scenes with Francine and Riley, Freema gets some great acting opportunities. I love the moment when she realizes that she's just been screaming at her mum in front of Riley, and gives him a self-conscious little smile, and especially her suppressed scream of frustration when her mother mutters about the mouse being unplugged. Along those lines, she delivers the line "Have you found it?" superbly well, making it very clear that what Martha means is, "Please just tell me what I need to know so I can hang up soon and stop you harassing me." The scenes in the escape pod are wonderful for Freema, with lots of opportunities for great facial acting, and she delivers. She and Riley end up forming a really great rapport, such that I found their little romance entirely believable, which is kind of unusual for me in hour-long shows. Of course, it probably helps that Martha doesn't jump into his arms at the end - she's honest with him, and admits that they probably won't meet again, but steals a little kiss for the road. (Whatever helps her get over the Doctor, I'm all for it.) I definitely would enjoy a repeat encounter between the two of them, just to see if maybe there's something more there. There's also a nice subtle nod to her medical background, as she seems to be automatically comfortable with operating the stasis machine, despite (as far as we're aware) never having encountered one before. (At least, I choose to believe it's a reference to her medical skill, rather than a glaring plot error.) And, hey! We finally get a good look at Martha's (and Freema's?) tattoo! I am a little surprised that they went back to the "my family will never know I'm dead" well again, although I suppose it's natural for Martha to think such things at times of peril... but we just went through this three stories ago, so isn't it a bit soon to be revisiting it?

As I mentioned early on, I really didn't find most of the guest cast to be terribly noteworthy. I mean, they're all perfectly competent, but there are only three that get any real characterization, and two of those are Michelle Collins' stressed-and-sometimes-weepy Kath McDonnell, and Rebecca Oldfield's grumpy-and-slightly-sour Erina Lessak, neither of whom was exactly endearing. Vinette Robinson is nice as Abi Lerner, and she does an awesome death scream, but I can't say that I really grew to like her. Matthew Chambers hardly gets anything to do as Hal Korwin besides act menacing (which he does do very well), and the same goes for Gary Powell as Dev Ashton. Anthony Flanagan gets more screentime as Orin Scannell, but it's limited to, well... running around fixing things and answering pub quiz questions, and amidst all the action, we're never given any time to get to know him as a person either (although I love how awkward he looks hovering in the background during Martha and Riley's kiss). So that leaves the one and only truly successful character of the story: Riley Vashtee, as played by William Ash. To be fair, Riley's just another nameless face too, up until the moment that the escape pod gets ejected. That's a turning point for the story in a number of ways, but as we learn more about his family, and watch him comfort a distraught Martha with a hug and a sweet little kiss on the forehead, Riley turns from just-another-crewmember into someone that we like. So thank goodness for that scene, because to be honest, Riley doesn't get any more development after it, either. (Except that we learn that purple is probably his favorite color. I knew there was a reason I liked him.)

The Torajiian sun-beasts, or whatever they are, work quite well. Despite their thematic resemblance to Anti-Man and Toby of the Beast - not to mention their helmets being reminiscent of the visors in The Invisible Enemy, or the shot of Korwin reaching down for Ashton being reminiscent of the Ambassadors of Death, or his transferring the parasite to Ashton amid lots of smoke being reminiscent of Pyramids of Mars, or eye-weapons of doom having being used in multiple stories (Pyramids of Mars, Image of the Fendahl, The Keeper of Traken, Kinda and Snakedance, to name the most prominent), they still feel astonishingly original, yet also comfortably familiar. It took me quite a long time to think of all the bits of stories that they reminded me of, and I'm sure I've missed out on a few, which is good - they tap a familiar and reliable vein, but they aren't too derivative. I do wish the effect from their eyes was more of a "burning" one - as it stands, their eyes look like they're shooting out beams of fluorescent light rather than fiery sunlight - but it's a minor quibble. "Burn with me" is plenty frightening as a catchphrase to make up for it, especially when David Tennant gurgles "Burn with me, Martha!" I like the notion that when they possess their victims, they sort of bioform them, raising their temperature to 100 degrees (Celsius, I assume) and converting the oxygen to hydrogen... nice touch, although I'm sure it probably isn't scientifically sound in terms of keeping the human body stable. What have I ever cared for detailed scientific plausibility?

One thing that I've noticed a lot before (particularly when trying to find good pictures for this site), but never quite as obviously as in this episode, is the lighting. It has suddenly struck me that the lighting for this show is very often unsubtle in the extreme. I know the John Nathan-Turner era gets blasted a lot for overuse of bright lighting, even on sets that were supposed to be dark and moody, but I think people are going to look back on the Russell T. Davies years as the Era of Bold Colors. 42 is a great example of this philosophy in miniature - most of the ship is blazing red, the medical bay has one vivid emerald green patch, the escape pod is lit in a brilliant royal blue, and the burning sun is an incandescent yellow. It makes for some gorgeous shot composition, but you never see anything in its natural hue. It's almost like a comic book. In the escape pod, for example, Martha is lit red in front, blue from the sides, and yellow behind. It's unreal. It happens all the time in the TARDIS, too, everyone's either blasted with orange or green light no matter where they stand. Take a look at a page of screenshots from the show (at the Tragical History Tour, for example) and see if you don't agree with me.

The ever-reliable Graeme Harper returns to the director's chair, and although this isn't my favorite of his directorial outings, he certainly composes some nice shots, particularly anything involving the escape pod. The sequence of it disengaging and floating away from the ship is brilliantly shot, as we feel Martha's despair when it slowly drifts away, the Doctor's face getting smaller and smaller. So close, but unreachable. Very nicely done. Gold's score is unobtrusive this week, which is good even though it's not particularly memorable, but I do like the scary music (which reminds me of something that I just can't put my finger on) when the camera zooms in to Korwin while Abi tries to figure out his readings. Oh! Oh wait, I can put my finger on it! It reminds me of the music from The Awakening! No wonder I like it. I also like the amazingly fast rat-a-tat-tat sound as Martha pounds on the glass window of the pod; it ups the tension nicely. And the set of the ship exterior is highly convincing, looking very worn and banged-up and rusty. As for special effects, the sun looks awesome, as do the shots of the ship (particularly as it dumps the fuel, some of which seems to splash onto the camera lens), but my favorite effect is unquestionably the glow fading from the Doctor's eyes - even in the red lighting, it looks so real and convincing. Beautifully done!

Minor points:

• "That is hot!" says the Doctor. "It's like a sauna in here!" says Martha. And yet Martha never really breaks a sweat. Even the crew seem lightly-misted at best. And why is it that, when the air-conditioning is apparently kaput, there are still fully-functional ice vents capable of flash-freezing a human being? Couldn't they have used that as a cooling system? Or is it that the air conditioning system's just fine and Kath always keep her ship that warm? (She's like me with my apartment!)

• One Andrew noticed: at the beginning, the ship is shown to be spinning out of control toward the sun. But when the escape pod is ejected, it seems to stay aligned with the airlock the entire time. (Granted, in between - just after Ashton is attacked - the ship seems to be drifting in a much more stable manner, but this still seems like a potential plot hole.)

• So... the TARDIS times its landing so precisely that the Doctor and Martha just have time to leave the room before the temperature rockets up 3,000 degrees? Nice. And very convenient.

• Ohh, that other great set-dressing shorthand (along with the Bold Lighting) makes a reappearance - the Hanging Plastic Strips! Here they're much wider than usual, and adorning the entrance to the medical bay.

• When the tranquillized Korwin starts moving his hands, the music makes it sound all threatening... but why are we supposed to be scared? It just looks to me like he's getting comfortable in his sleep. It's not like he was dead or pretending to be paralyzed or anything.

• A surprising lack of great quotes this week, but to start with, we have:

  Doctor: "Talk about dumbing down. Don't they teach recreational mathematics any more?"

• Followed by the giggle-worthy:

  Doctor: "And Martha, be careful. There may be something else on board the ship."
  Martha: "Any time you want to unnerve me, feel free!"
  Doctor: "Will do, thanks!"

• Oh dear. They didn't even try, did they? As soon as Erina opens the locker door, blocking off the view of the hallway beyond it, I thought: it's going to be a shock if something isn't standing behind there when she closes it. And then she starts muttering and complaining about her lot in life. And then - then! - she moans "Please, kill me now." at which point of course it wasn't even an option not to have Korwin waiting to kill her. Good thing there wasn't a scene like this in the last story or my Cliché-o-Meter would've snapped.

• Now, Kath seems awfully (and understandably) concerned that the Doctor has written off Korwin without being absoposilutely sure he's dead. And given the fact that, at the end of the story, once the stellar-fusion material is ejected back into the star's corona, the Doctor goes back to normal, isn't it possible that she's right? Or is it just that Time Lord physiology can handle things like being heated to 100 degrees or frozen to 200 below, whereas even a possessed human body cannot? It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that along with possession comes some kind of increased tolerance for higher temperatures. I assume the lower temperatures aren't exactly a problem, although it's a bit hard to say for sure. The stasis field seems to be designed to cryogenically freeze people, presumably for later resuscitation, so they must use it on people on a semi-regular basis... but, if that's the case, why is it apparently so painful and potentially deadly to the Doctor and Ashton? Maybe just because of the hot-natured creature inside them, but the Doctor says he can only withstand those temperatures for a few minutes, so the implication is that long-term exposure will kill even him. But if that's the case, and it isn't actually meant to be used on humans, then what's it doing in the medical bay? (And, incidentally, does it fit a whole person inside it? Or can you only cryogenically freeze your upper body? That might explain some of the pain!)

• Gosh, Riley and Martha seem a bit thick. The moment Ashton started saying things like "Burn with me", I would've turned tail and run. And I wonder, would they have been safe just cowering behind the first door? Ashton didn't seem to be able to open it. Or did they assume that he would fry them with his eye-beams through the window? In which case, does one extra window between them really make that much of a difference? And why exactly is hiding in an escape pod a good idea? If he gets any further inside the airlock, they're well and truly trapped - and, as has been shown, they can be remotely ejected!

• Errrr... was someone trying to be deeply philosophical? (shoots look at Chibnall)

  Martha: (discussing her family) "No silence there. So much noise."

• Back to that silly stasis chamber! I'm impressed that Kath manages to kill Ashton with it (see above, re: upper body), but how does she manage to avoid freezing off her own arm? It sure looks like she's sticking her forearm into the chamber as she tries to hold Ashton down.

• I haven't mentioned Adjoa Andoh yet, but she turns in a nice performance in her few scenes, irked with Martha but trying to be supportive in her way (even if her motive was less than pure). But I'm kind of shocked that Francine doesn't get more worried by the way Martha's tallking, all "you know I love you" and "tell Dad and Leo and Trish I love them" and being on the verge of tears. Doesn't she know that this is narrative shorthand for "I'm about to die but I don't want to worry you"?

• And why, when Francine asks her specifically if the Doctor is there with her now, can Martha not honestly answer "No, mum, he's not here."? Well, he wasn't!

• Initially, as the Doctor loiters in the airlock and the dramatic music starts up, and he stares in horror at something in front of him... I was convinced that the returning escape pod was going to threaten to squish him.

• If just looking at the sun infects you with this stellar parasite, then why is it only Korwin who got infected? Surely other people were staring at the sun, like Martha, for instance. (And now that I bring it up, why is it that you don't dare stare at the sun from Earth, for fear of eye damage, but when you're right next to a star, it's okay to gawp?)

• The Doctor accuses Kath of using her fusion scoop to "scoop out its heart!" but given that the ship clearly couldn't have gone anywhere near the heart of the star, surely it would be more accurate to say that it exfoliated the sun instead? Or, if you insist on being more graphic, that she flayed the sun alive? (One does wonder how the ship initially got close enough to the corona to scoop out any of the sun's matter, although I guess they do enter it here - the escape pod seems to be falling through it - so maybe as long as they have control of the ship's systems, it's not a problem.)

• "You've done enough damage," Martha growls at Kath - and yeah, that's probably true, but it was inadvertent (or, at least, she didn't know the damage she was causing) and not out of incompetence, so why not let her help? Way to rub salt in the wound, Martha.

• Martha does spend an awfully long time comforting the Doctor and assuring him that she won't let him die, when she really should just be popping him into the machine and cranking it up to full... but I guess she realized (medical training again? bedside manner?) that he wasn't quite ready to be "put under" yet. Still, our roomful of viewers was close to screaming at her to get a move on.

• Maybe I would've invited yet more cliché by suggesting this, but I don't quite get why Kath meekly cowers in a corner of the room and then gives up and sacrifices herself to kill the Korwin-star-beast. I was expecting her to try to lure him into the airlock, then run outside and trap him, or trip him when he came in the door, or push him out of the way, or something more proactive and less martyr-prone. Besides, if she had only waited a few minutes more, maybe he would have been healed along with the Doctor. (Probably not, but as Kath herself said, we just don't know.) I wondered if perhaps Korwin also had particles in his body that needed to be returned to the sun in order for the ship to escape, à la Planet of Evil, but as Ashton's body didn't seem to prevent the ship leaving, and the Doctor didn't have to throw himself into the sun either, I think we can rule that possibility out.

• Also... where's the escape pod in that airlock? Or was it an airlock to nowhere? And if so... why?

• It surely is a good thing that the Pentallian had a fuel reserve (and an uncontaminated one, at that), because if they had just jettisoned all their fuel, even if the sun allowed the ship to go free, it wouldn't have done any good and they still would have all died! So, thank goodness for emergency planning.

• Probably my favorite line of the episode (although there weren't that many to pick from!):

  Martha: "It was nice... not dying with you."

• When Martha's teasing the Doctor about his uselessness, what's got him so upset? Is he angry that he almost tried to kill the crew? I'm confused. Martha had no need to apologize. And then the Doctor just glares at her when she asks if he's okay... sheesh. At least he gave her her own TARDIS key! Yayyyy! Somehow that makes us all feel better and ignore his odd behavior. There's a lesson for us all: when friends start to question you about your odd behavior, distract them with keys to your house and/or car.

• Interesting ending. We certainly know that Martha's not going straight back for tea, but it'll be interesting to see if she manages to get there in the end. And all this subterfuge with Saxon is interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

• The trailer for Human Nature is vague in the extreme! It seems to give away next to nothing about the actual plot, which perhaps is a good thing as it'll come as a pleasant surprise to those who haven't read the book. (and probably to the rest of us as well!) I'm intrigued to note that not only do we have an Aphasia or Aphasia-substitute, but there seems to be an entire Aubertide family (or substitute thereof), so I guess Paul Cornell didn't completely overhaul the monsters like we thought he was going to... but it'll be interesting to see what he did change, and how Aubertide-like this Family of Blood is.

In summary, it's uneven. If nothing else, trying to write this review amid my flip-flopping opinion has told me that. But if you put yourself into a beat-the-clock action mindset, and enjoy the occasional nice character moment or monstery bit, it's a pretty fun ride. Just don't expect anything deeply engaging. And maybe watch it more than once before you make up your mind about it.