The Doctor has 42 minutes to rescue a doomed spaceship… and Martha and himself.
Synopsis
The TARDIS receives and responds to a distress call. They arrive aboard a freighter that is falling into a star. The engines have been sabotaged and the ship is in security lock down. The TARDIS is trapped in the heat venting room and is completely inaccessible.
The first officer (and Captain’s husband) has been infected with something that is causing his body to burn up. Under its influence he caused the sabotage in a deliberate attempt to crash the ship. As he continues his rampage he burns the other crew members to ash or infect them.
Martha and one of the crew work on opening the 29 security doors, while the Doctor attempts to unravel the mystery of the infected crewman and jump start the engines.
Martha and the crewman are trapped in an escape pod and jettisoned from the ship. The Doctor was unable to save her. As she plummets to certain death, she calls her mother, who grills her about the Doctor. It’s apparent that her mother is collaborating with someone who is attempting to trace the call.
The crew begin to subdue the infected crewmen using extreme cold. The Doctor dons a spacesuit and goes outside. He’s able to re-magnetize the pod and bring it back to the ship, but he is infected by the sun. The sun in this solar system is alive.
The Doctor is rapidly being overwhelmed but explains what’s been happening. The ship illegally scooped fuel from the sun, not realizing it was alive. The life still in the fuel tanks is attempting to return home. The Doctor asks Martha to freeze him to free him of the infection, but the Captain’s husband kills the power before she can freeze him. The Doctor warns her to get away and to tell the crew to dump all the fuel.
The Captain corners her husband in an airlock and ejects them into the sun. The crew eject the fuel with just seconds to go and the ship escapes. The infection leaves the Doctor.
They leave, and the Doctor gives Martha a TARDIS key. She calls her mother who tells her it is election day. When the call ends, her mother gives the cell phone to the people trying to trace the call. They tell her that, “Mr. Saxon will be very grateful.â€
Analysis
This is a mile-a-minute episode that hardly let’s up from beginning to end. It’s a straight-forward action tale without much in the way of subplot. Only the Mr. Saxon bits hint at things to come.
It’s nice to see the Martha, isolated from the Doctor, realize how much she believes in him. It’s also interesting to see how desperate the Doctor is to save Martha from death.
Chibnall has turned in a solid, well-paced episode, without much waste. Series 3 of the new Doctor Who appears to have finally hit their stride in terms of pacing, which was haphazard and sporadic during the first two years.
42
by Chris Chibnall
Running a little bit late on the reviews for the last few episodes, and squeezing in time to re-watch them while in Taiwan is a bit tough, but will catch up before the season finale.
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