42 (TV story)


 * For the year 42, go to Early human history.

Synopsis
In a distant galaxy, in the 42nd century, a spaceship hurtles out of control towards a boiling sun. The Doctor has 42 minutes to uncover the saboteurs, but with a mysterious force starting to possess the ship's crew, the Doctor and Martha are running out of time.

Plot
In the TARDIS, the 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 systems. The Doctor finds that all the engine-related machinery has been destroyed, and comments that 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 updating the crew on Korwin's status, the crew hears Abi's 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 pub 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 vaporized. He reasons that Korwin has been infected in some way by something, and can vaporize 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 sound 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 vaporizes her. Korwin then goes to find Ashton, saying "they are getting too far", and, instead of killing him, proceeds to infects 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 and this makes the capsule Martha and Riley are stuck in plummet towards the sun. The Doctor gets there seconds too late, but decides not to give up. He puts on a space suit and tells McDonnell he is planning to pull the capsule back to the ship by setting the magnetic pull, a system that is outside the ship.

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.

The Doctor meanwhile struggles to press the magnetic pull control buttons on the side of the ship, although 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. 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 injured 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 get the sun entity out of 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, 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 screaming "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, she 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
 * Sinister Woman - Elize du Toit
 * Countdown Voice - Joshua Hill

Story Notes

 * 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.
 * A spaceship crashing into a sun leaving the passengers little time to escape was also a major plotpoint in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books
 * One of the questions to open the deadlocked doors was "What is your favorite 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 installment 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

Ratings

 * 7.0 million (overnight ratings)
 * 7.41 million (final ratings)
 * 0.89 million (BBC3 repeat)

Myths
to be added

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

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * If the Doctor can turn Martha's phone into a superphone like Rose's with the sonic screwdriver, why did he need to replace parts when he upgraded Rose's phone in DW: The End of the World? Newer technology integrated into the sonic screwdriver or her phone has more potential than Rose's, which needed a hardware upgrade, but the manufacturer doesn't realise.


 * The computer announces the time to impact at somewhat irregular intervals. Also, the time it took for the cast to move around the ship seemed to vary considerably between conveniently quickly or conveniently slowly according to plot requirements. The episode doesn't appear to be told in real-time. Also, it is possible that regular announcements were made, but only some were audible to the viewers, while others were edited out.


 * How does the oxygen in the infected peoples' bodies get changed into hydrogen? That kind of nuclear fusion would require a colossal amount of energy, and leave the bodies a lot hotter than 100 degrees in addition to creating a lot of neutron radiation. Furthermore, it would lead to the bodies literally falling apart at a molecular level. They're being controlled by a being that lives inside the star, so probably whatever mechanism that the creature uses to avoid burning up itself is also protecting the bodies of the infected people.


 * Why is the light from the infected peoples' eyes not visible through their eyelids? And given that they seem to be able to see where they're going with their eyes closed, why do they need the masks with the visors? Perhaps the suits prevent the possessed bodies from burning up too quickly. Also, maybe the light is somehow "turned off" when their eyes are closed.
 * Why doesn't Abi run away from Korwin? There is enough time between her asking for assistance and her death for her to run out the door of the med center. Neither she nor any of the rest of the crew realized at that point that Korwin could- or would- kill her.


 * Why does the screen for the escape pod jump from "Jettison Reactivated" to "Jettison Initiated". Reactivated and Initated mean different things.


 * Why are the controls to remagnetise the escape pod on the outside of the ship? So that if they are using the escape pod to escape from someone (a space pirate for example), that person can't bring them back easily. It is possible that this can usually be overridden by the person in the escape pod.


 * Why don't the bodies incinerate instantaneously that close to the sun? The ship has heat shields.


 * If releasing the material taken from the star solves the problem, then why doesn't the star just do that in the first place? And how, exactly, does it prevent the heat shields from collapsing? The star seemed to be out for revenge, as well as after its material.


 * Does Ashton live or die? Ashton was killed after being trapped in the stasis chamber.

Continuity

 * A Pentallian drive was part of the transmat in DW: Revenge of the Cybermen.
 * The phrase 'Burn with me' is used in DW: Smith and Jones.
 * The Stasis Chamber from this episode is the MRI machine (redecorated) from DW: Smith and Jones.
 * The phrase "You're a long way from home. Half a galaxy away." was also said to Mickey Smith in DW: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 DW: Smith and Jones as the Doctor set the TARDIS controls for Martha's first trip.

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. 

Timeline

 * This story occurs after DWBIT: Crimes and Punishment
 * This story occurs before NSA: Made of Steel

DVD Releases

 * This episode was released alongside Daleks in Manhattan, Evolution of the Daleks and The Lazarus Experiment.
 * It was also part of the series 3 DVD boxset.