"42" is the seventh episode of thethird series of Britishscience fiction television seriesDoctor Who. It was first broadcast onBBC One on 19 May 2007.^[1] It was the first episode written byChris Chibnall, the showrunner and lead writer ofDoctor Who fromseries 11 to the2022 specials.

Separated from theTARDIS, the Doctor and Martha face a race against time as they and the crew of the SS Pentallion try to escape from the damaged spaceship before it falls into a nearby star. Meanwhile, a mysterious entity roams the ship.

According to theBARB figures this episode was seen by 7.41 million viewers and was the third most popular non-soap-opera broadcast on British television in that week.^[2]

TheTenth Doctor andMartha receive adistress signal from the SSPentallian, a human spacecraft that is hurtling towards the star of the Torajii system. The Doctor pilots theTARDIS towards it to help, but after arriving they are separated from the TARDIS by the rising temperatures on the ship. The ship's engines have failed and they have only 42 minutes left before the ship plunges into the star. They need to reach the bridge controls but find themselves separated from them by thirty deadlock sealed doors that are eachpassword encoded. Martha teams with Riley to work their way through the doors, having to answerpub quiz questions in order to open each door. The Doctor helps the engineering team try to repair the engines. Martha uses her modifiedmobile phone to call her mother Francine on present-day Earth to answer one of the questions. Francine asks questions about the Doctor that Martha ignores.

One of the crew, Captain McDonnell's husband, Korwin, has been infected with something that is causing hisbody temperature to rise to incredible levels. They attempt tosedate him while they continue the repairs, but the sedative doesn't work and Korwin escapes. He dons awelding helmet and starts killing crew members before infecting a man named Ashton. As Martha and Riley continue to work through the doors, they encounter Ashton and take shelter in a nearbyescape pod. Ashton launches the pod, but McDonnell freezes him to death in a stasis chamber. The Doctor activates a magnetic control that recovers the pod. He gets infected by the star, and learns that the star is actually a living being and that the crew illegally drew the star's heart to use as fuel, and now the star is trying to recover its lost parts. Martha puts the Doctor into a stasis chamber to save him from the infection, but Korwin appears and disables the chamber. The Doctor insists that Martha leave him and warns the crew to dump the fuel, which should allow them to escape.

Martha relays the Doctor's message to the crew. McDonnell encounters Korwin and apologises to everyone before blowing Korwin and herself out of the airlock. The ship vents its fuel and the engines restart, allowing them to pull away from the star. After Martha calls Francine again, a woman who was monitoring Francine's phone confiscates it and leaves.

The title of the episode was chosen as an homage tothe Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything fromThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,^[3] written byDouglas Adams. Adams was a writer and script editor forDoctor Who in the late 1970s.

The Doctor asks the crew where their "Dunkirk spirit" is, referring to theevacuation andbattle of Dunkirk.

A security question on "classical music" concernsElvis Presley andThe Beatles. The Doctor indirectly refers to the remix of "A Little Less Conversation", andname-drops the song "Here Comes the Sun".

A security question asks for the next number in asequence. The sequence consists of consecutivehappy prime numbers.

The SSPentallian was originally going to have the name SSIcarus. This was changed after the producers learned of the filmSunshine, which also involved a spaceship namedIcarus falling into the Sun.^[4]

Several elements of the episode had been reused from previous episodes. The stasis chamber is adapted from the prop used as the MRI scanner in "Smith and Jones", according to associate production designer James North.^[5] Likewise, the spacesuit the Doctor wears was previously seen in "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" and has since been repainted, according to producerPhil Collinson in the online audio commentary for "42".^[6]

On 12 May 2007, the BBC website published a text-based "exclusive prologue" to the episode. Written byJoseph Lidster, it details the reactions of one of the characters, Erina Lissak, a recent addition to the crew of thePentallian, as the ship's engines stop, a countdown to impact begins, and she unexpectedly meets the Doctor and Martha.^[7]

Doctor Who Magazine reported in the preview for this episode that the title "42" was chosen for the fact the episode is set in approximatereal time.^[8] ProducerPhil Collinson added in an episode commentary that the name was a reference to the real-time US television series24.^[6] Writer Chibnall acknowledged that the title also references the work ofDouglas Adams, which features the number 42, and said that "it's a playful title".^[9]

Chibnall goes on to compare the episode itself to "The Satan Pit", at least from a visual standpoint.^[10]

William Ash later played Sam in theSixth Doctor audio dramaThe Condemned.

Vinette Robinson later playedRosa Parks in theThirteenth Doctor episode "Rosa" co-written by Chibnall, who by this time had become showrunner.^[11]

Originally planned for broadcast on 12 May 2007, this episode was postponed by the BBC due to their coverage of the final ofEurovision Song Contest 2007.^[1] This in turn pushed the rest of the series back a week.

Wikiquote has quotations related toTenth Doctor.

• "42" at theBBCDoctor Who homepage
• "42" atIMDb

• Tenth Doctor episodes
• 2007 British television episodes
• Television episodes written by Chris Chibnall
• Television episodes set in outer space
• Fiction set in the 5th millennium

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