Category: BBC

The Doctor and Martha arrive halfway across the universe in the Torajii system aboard the SS Pentallian which has exactly 42 minutes before it completes it's catastrophic tumble into a nearby star. Piece of cake for someone like the Doctor to solve right? Not when there's something taking over each and everyone of the crew of the ship, making them hide their suddenly glowing fiery eyes behind work masks! What's gonna happen to our stalwart travelers?

Now sure people might call the idea of using real-time as a blatant rip-off (read as homage) to 24, despite that, that idea works. The episode runs 42 minutes long (minus the credits of course) and each moment causes the Doctor and the Pentallian to fall closer and closer to the star.

As the Doctor runs about in his cons (the red ones this week) to save the day there are lots of moments that stand out, most of them with Martha. A sequence involving her and a crewman trying to open a series of bulkheads to gain control of the ship sees them answering a series of questions and trivia that the ships crew loaded into the system for security, and a wonderfully poignant moment when the Doctor and Martha are separated by an air lock as an escape pod is jettisoned. Neither you nor the Doctor can hear what Martha is saying, but you know she's calling for him to help her, to save her.
Overall 42 is a good episode but after last series' two-parter of The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit, this one almost feels like treading on territory already explored: a confined space, an unknown alien, and an immediate celestial threat.
I instead watched it, gobbled it up as I always do, but then set my sights on next week's ep, the adaptation of a Doctor Who novel, Human Nature.

Let's just say I loved it!

Doctor Who Series 3 airs Mondays on CBC.

This post was Authored by TD, Our Resident Authority on all things BBC

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