New Who Review for 42
Posted By Kathleen David on August 18, 2007
This is going to be rather short since I have to finish packing for Cape Cod and have some errands to run before we leave this afternoon. The cats need food and the cat sitter needs litter and some food.
This is a ticking clock episode. 42 minutes to save the ship and figure out the mystery. For the most part it worked for me. Peter did see the problem coming a mile away but then he is a professional writer. There are some interesting phone conversations between Martha and her Mom. I can almost see why Martha’s Dad left considering the pressure that her Mother tried to put on her. Good acting all the way around. And Mr. Tennant gets an award in the tall, thin and tortured category (I am figuring there are going to be about 8 of you who know what I am talking about). So good one off. I did think that the commercials broke the tension that was being created.
However next week is when it gets kicked up to the next level with a delightful script by Paul Cornell called “Human Nature.”
Remember that there will be spoilers in the comments and but only to 42 no discussion of the next episode please.
Also I haven’t any idea how good my internet connection is going to be for the next week so if I go quiet, it’s not anything dire.
I am grateful for packing quickly.
Didn’t see that one, but caught most of another episode during the day (vet appointment broke it up) that I absolutely loved. I don’t know the name of it, but the Doctor wasn’t Tennant, and the companion was Rose. It was set in 1941, with a tampered child looking for its unmarried mother. I wish I’d been able to see the middle, for I liked it the most of any newer episode I’ve seen.
Susan, you’re thinking of either “The Empty Child” or “The Doctor Dances”, as the two comprised a two-part story in the first series of the revamp. An absolutely MARVELOUS story, too — you’re not the only one who loved it. I think it won a Hugo for its year, though I may be wrong on that. Definitely see the whole two-parter at some point. (I’ll say that Lisa and I seriously considered sleeping with a light on the night after we saw the first part. Brr.)
As for 42 … liked it better than the previous few, that’s for sure. Based on the stuff happening back at home with Martha’s mother, there may be some seriously nasty stuff coming up. As for the main problem, I didn’t see it coming (unlike Peter) and probably should have … maybe the degree in astronomy got in the way of me dealing with the idea of a living star. 🙂 It was not the deepest of episodes, but was a very well-paced and entertaining way to spend an hour. I’ll take it.
Can’t wait for “Human Nature”.
TWL
i missed the episode what was the problem?
The two parter in 1941 Britain with the ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack was great. I think the Sci-Fi channel had a DW marathon on in the morning. And yeah, the same thing happened to me – I had to take my cat to the hospital and missed most of the episode.
So the lesson of the day is – don’t leave a small ball of yarn around the house or the overweight cat on a diet will eat it and you’ll miss DW because you had to take your fat cat to get his intestines cut open.
Just know that everything Steven Moffat writes (“The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”, “The Girl in the Fireplace”, “Blink”) turns to gold. 🙂
It was an interesting almost in real time episode. Martha gets completely invited in this time – being given a TARDIS key and everything. Bringing out the universal long distance again was a convenient plot point. Martha is talking to her mother on election day. This probably isn’t the day they left, as opposed to when Rose called her mother in The End of the World. (How is that phone supposed to figure out when she should be calling?) I presume they will return to Earth near that time later this season. Saxon’s people are quite interested and I wonder just what information they’ll be able to get from Martha’s mother’s phone.
The spaceship reminded me of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit from last season. They mention some of that in the commentary. The Captain was one of the people in the commentary. Much was discussed about her not looking glamorous in the episode. She also said that she would have performed her final sequence in the episode differently if it had not been filmed first. The sequence with the Doctor trying to get the escape pod back was first written with him walking on the spaceship more, but they ran out of time or budget to do that.
Neil
By the way, folks should know that SciFi is not scheduled to show an episode on August 31. So, after Friday the 24th’s episode, the next one will not be until September 7.
Neil
“42” may actually be my least favorite of new Who episodes – which is no surprise, since it was written by the same guy who wrote most of Torchwood. The scientific inaccuracies about getting so close to a sun were inexcusable – I’ll forgive a lot, but not the idea that to be burned up by a sun you have to collide with it! It’s one of those things that shows that the writer has so little regard for his subject that he couldn’t do basic research. Also, it was the exact same story as the two-parter the previous season. Ripping yourself off is also fine with me, but at least have the class to give yourself more than one season in between to do so. It’s not as if the episodes it is copying were that great.