If I'm being honest I was not paying as close attention to 42 as I probably should have so take everything I say about it with a grain of salt. The setup of this episode is pretty much exactly the same as The Impossible Planet though the two-parter has more room to flesh out its side characters and slowly unveil its plot. Here we have an in your face countdown that immediately ratchets the tension which made the episode a quick watch with very few dull moments. Unfortunately that rapid fire pacing also meant the overarching story felt underbaked. The idea of a living sun seeking vengeance is interesting but my the time we got to that the story was almost over so we didn't really do much with it. We also don't spend much time getting to know the characters so their deaths didn't impact
I did like how Martha's mum and the Mr. Saxon plot was woven in to the narrative. Both series 1 and 2 were clumsy in their integration of the overarching threads but here it felt like a natural evolution of the story and legitimate subplot rather than just peppering in a word into your scripts to artificially make things feel connected.
Big respect to David Tennant who has to act out this nonsense. He does a remarkable job in what is such an melodramatic episode, even by the standards of Who. I would love to watch this one without the music.
What a disgrace of an episode to be named "42".
Very intense episode! Non stop action
im really not a fan of martha’s unyielding faith in the doctor. he and rose were mutually obsessed with each other (and they spent quite a bit more time together) so it made sense for her to be endlessly trusting of him, but god the doctor just constantly undermines martha and i really dont see a reason for her to be as in love with him as she is. what makes it worse is that shes not ever given very much to do outside of pining for him, thats sort of all her character generally does and it feels really unfair to her, especially as the first black female main character, to be so limited. she deserves better.
Hmm odd. Found it quite meh today, but good last time I saw it. Wonder why.
Shout by kltiBlockedParent2020-12-16T15:42:21Z
OK, so Chibnall wrote mediocre Who long before his turn at the wheel too