42 (TV Story)

42
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***42*** was the eighth serial of Season 42 of *Doctor Who*. It was written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Simon Massey and starred Liam Cunningham as the Eleventh Doctor, Kate Ashfield as Hannah Ward & Adrian Lester as Brian Whiteford

## Synopsis

The Doctor, Hannah & Brian follow a distress signal, only to be trapped on a spaceship hurtling towards a sun with only forty-two minutes left till impact.

## Plot

n the TARDIS, the Eleventh Doctor adjusts Hannah and Brian's phones so that they can call anywhere in time and space — an ability he refers to as Universal Roaming. As Hannah is about to call Brian to test it, the TARDIS materialise on a very hot spaceship in answer to a distress signal. The Doctor notes that the spaceship's 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 SS *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.

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." He observes that they're in the Torajii system and that they're using energy scoops for fusion. He thought the scoops might have been outlawed by now; Kath assures him they were due for an upgrade. The Doctor organises Hannah, Brian and Riley Vashtee to open a series of password-protected doors in order to access the control room where the auxiliary engines can be activated. He tells Hannah and Brian to be careful.

The Ship's medical attendant, 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 Kath goes with him to the sickbay where they find Abi, Ashton, and Korwin. 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 is asked of Korwin's status, she states that he's heavily sedated and she needs more time, but she doesn't notice his hands twitching. When she returns to report some very strange results, she breaks off and 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, Hannah, Brian and Riley are opening doors by answering pop quiz-style questions. Riley says they were set by the crew, years previously, after a night of drinking; but when the next question is to find the next in a series of what turned out to be happy prime numbers, the Doctor pops up on the comm with the answer. Riley observes that the crew has changed since they set the questions. The next question category is Classical Music, or, to Hannah, 20th century Earth pop culture. The Doctor is both busy and not sure, so Hannah asks Brian for help. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds the imprint of Abi and concludes that she was instantly vaporised. He reads the medical reports and reasons that Korwin has been infected in some way, and can now vaporise people.

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. 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 a helmeted Korwin standing there. He then backs Erina against the wall as he did with Abi, and opens his visor to vaporise her.

Kath asks the Doctor not to lie about Korwin to spare her feelings. He tells her Korwin is too far gone, then demands to know if there is anything she is hiding. He thinks the attacks are provoked and personal. She says she knows everything about the ship and crew, and no one is hiding anything from her.

Next, Korwin goes to find Ashton, saying, "They are getting too far" and "we must share the light". Korwin grabs Ashton around the head, but instead of killing him, Korwin holds his gloved hands to his head, which begins to smoke.

A helmeted Ashton goes to Hannah, Brian and Riley — presumably the ones who were "getting too far" — and tells them to "burn with me". He reaches for his visor, and they run for an escape capsule in terror and lock themselves inside. The capsule begins to jettison, and Hannah calls for the Doctor.

Ashton tries to override the system and send Hannah, Brian 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 tries to taunt him into raising the visor. At the same time, Korwin finds his wife, telling her, "It's your fault," before he is frozen by Scannell, prompting the possessed Ashton to ignore the Doctor and seek to continue Korwin's work. The Doctor calls them, explaining what's happening, but can't stop the pod; Hannah, Brian and Riley jettison as she murmurs, "Sorry." The Doctor calls Scannell and demands a space suit.

In the capsule, Hannah 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, Hannah and Brian talk with each other, they express how much they've enjoyed the time they've had with each other and the Doctor, and how they love each other, the two then kiss. Riley comforts them.

Scannell tries to talk him out of it, but 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, but he eventually manages it.

Climbing back into the ship, the Doctor 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. Hannah, Brian and Riley come back to the ship grinning until they see the Doctor writhing in pain. He cries for them to stay away, and they stand back in shock as his eyes glow before he tightly closes them. 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 sun — scooped out the heart of a living being. Kath protests that he can't know, but he shouts that the sun is alive in him. She gasps and says checking takes too long and they would have been caught using the illegal fusion scoop. With his eyes still shut, he asks the two women to place him into the cryogenic stasis machine to take him below minus 200 to kill the sun entity in him before the entity uses him to kill them.

Korwin's body begins to twitch.

As Riley runs in, Scannell asks his favourite colour for the password, then shouts in protest when Riley isn't sure of the answer.

The women carry the Doctor to the med centre. Hannah momentarily lets go of him to open the instructions, and he reaches out and calls for her in panic. She reassures him by repeating his instructions as Kath argues that he can't possibly survive the temperatures. Brian tells her he's an alien then shames her away, saying she's done enough damage. The Doctor frantically tells Hannah and Brian he can only take ten seconds in the chamber. He cries in pain, saying it's burning him up, he can't control it, and "if we don't get rid of it, I could kill you. I could kill you all." He confesses he's scared and tries to tell Hannah and Brian about a process which may happen if he dies; they both assures him that he won't.

Hannah starts the freezing process while the Doctor screams, but it is interrupted by Korwin, who turns off the power to the stasis chamber from the engineering department. The temperature had only reached negative seventy, as the somewhat frosty Doctor yells and continues to struggle with the invading entity. He then tells Hannah that she must go to the front of the ship and jettison the fuel, which will return the living particles back to the sun. Hannah protests, as she doesn't want to leave Brian and him, but she runs to tell the rest of the crew to jettison the fuel.

Elsewhere, a shocked McDonnell encounters Korwin. She admits to Korwin that this was all her fault and lures him to an airlock. She apologises to the rest of the crew through her radio, then opens the airlock and tells him that she loves him as the two of them are sucked out into space. Riley and Scannell work on the last door to open while Hannah runs towards them. The defrosted Doctor collapses onto the floor and crawls into the corridor. He calls to Hannah on the comms to say he can't fight it, "give it back or..." He opens glowing eyes as he finishes, "Burn with me." He screams. Hannah reaches the remaining crew as they realise the auxiliaries aren't working and tells them to vent the fuel though they are slightly reluctant to do so.

As the fuel vents and replenishes the sun, the Doctor's eyes clear and the auxiliaries fire on reserves, freeing the ship from the gravitational pull of the living sun. The two remaining crew members hug, and Hannah runs to find the Doctor and Brian, Hannah and Brian hug too, both laughing in relief.

The Doctor, Hannah and Brian head back to the vent room. Scannell and Riley marvel over the size of the unmarred TARDIS, and the Doctor advises they tell the authorities the truth, as the living sun needs care and protection. Hannah and Brian make their goodbyes to Riley. Inside the TARDIS, the two try to joke with a stoic Doctor, who stands there uncomfortably until Brian asks how he's doing, then abruptly breaks the moment with a suggestion – ice skating. Hannah rolls her eyes and seems a bit hurt as she tells him she'll go where ever he'd like, then gasps as the Doctor gives her and Brian their very own keys to the TARDIS. The Doctor thanks them both and smirks a little.

## Cast

* The Doctor - Liam Cunningham
* Hannah Ward - Kate Ashfield
* Brian Whiteford - Adrian Lester
* Kath McDonnell - Michelle Collins
* Riley Kincade - William Ash
* Orin Scannell - Anthony Flanagan
* Hal Korwin - Matthew Chambers
* Dev Ashton - Gary Powell
* Abi Lerner - Vinette Robinson
* Erina Lessak - Siobhan Redmond
* Sinister Woman - Elize du Toit

## Crew

* Executive Producers - Steven Moffat and Julie Gardner
* Producer - Phill Collinson
* Writer - Chris Chibnill
* Director - Coky Giedroyc
* Director of Photography - David Odd
* Production Designer - Chris Wilkinson
* Visual Effects - The Mill
* Make-Up - Davy Jones
* Casting Director - Andy Pryor
* Music - Murray Gold
* Costume Designer - Emma Rosenthal
* Edited by - Tony Cranstoun
* Original Theme Music - Ron Grainer
* Title Sequence - BBC Wales VFX
* Music conducted & orchestrated by Ben Foster

## References

### The Doctor

* The Doctor solves a progression of happy prime numbers.

### Galactic law

* By this time, using energy scoops for fusion has been outlawed.

### Individuals

* Riley uses a Sierpinski sequence to lock Ashton out of the escape pod.
* Scannell has trouble believing the TARDIS is actually a ship.

### Hannah and Brian

* The Doctor begins to tell Hannah and Brian about his ability to regenerate.

### Ships

* Pentallian drives are a component of the ship.
* The doors of the spaceship are deadlock sealed.
* The stasis chamber aboard the *Pentallian* has a Cryofreeze.
* A collision alert sounds aboard the *Pentallian*.

### Music

* The Doctor aptly mentions "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles.
* By this time, the Beatles and Elvis Presley are considered examples of classical music.

## Story Notes

* The episode occurs (approximately) in real time, like the American television programme *24*. 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 the approximate length, in minutes, of a new *Doctor Who* episode, which is the obvious source of the name, since the episode purports to be told in more or less "real time".
* 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.
* Coincidentally or not, the Sun only possesses men, and those it possesses only kill women.
* 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 October 2005.
* The ship was originally called The Icarus. However, *Sunshine*, which opened around the same time, had a ship called The Icarus II. It was renamed The SS Pentallian, after the Pentalion drive mentioned in *Revenge of the Cybermen*.
* The masks worn by the possessed crewmembers were inspired by Cyclops from The X-Men.
* The story originally took place in the Peony system, but it became the Toraji system following concerns that the original name would be misheard as "penis".
* A major set piece involved the Doctor scaling the exterior of the spaceship, until fears were raised about the expense it would incur. Chris Chibnall simplified this to the Doctor's efforts to reach the lever outside the airlock.
* Some of the sound effects in this episode were taken from *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*.
* Michelle Collins filmed her death scene on the first day of shooting.
* The scene in which the Doctor promises to rescue Hannah & Brian from the escape pod was inspired by *The Last of the Mohicans.*

## Continuity

* A Pentallian drive was part of the transmat used on Nerva Beacon. (TV: *Revenge of the Cybermen*)

## Home video releases

### DVD

* This story along with the other stories in Season 42 were released as *Doctor Who: The Complete Forty-Second Season* in 2006.

### Blu-ray

* This story along with the other stories in Season 42 were later released as *Doctor Who: The Complete Forty-Second Season* on Blu-ray.