42

Against all the odds, Chris Chibnall, writer of three and a half very bad Torchwood episodes, writes a blinder. There's little original about '42': a doomed spaceship plunges towards a sun whilst the crew desperately try to save themselves and a mysterious alien presence hunts them down one by one. What makes it work is the titular gimmick, as the episode unfolds in real time, and veteran Doctor Who director Graeme Harper exploits the frenetic pace to astonishing effect. The cast is superb, with former EastEnders star Michelle Collins proving the biggest surprise, and they all put in sweaty and frantic performances. The episode looks great too, from the sunlight bursting from behind the eyes of those possessed, and the rusty, dirt-streaked ship a far cry from the brightly lit gleaming white interiors of the eighties. But this isn't what really surprised me about the episode.

Most of the new series episodes I've liked have been those that have remained truest to the spirit of the classic series and succeeded in spite of the trappings that I associate negatively with Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who. It helps considerably that Chibnall uses a throwaway line to render the Davies ex Machina useless early on, but this doesn't change the astonishing fact that he uses all of the other key ingredients of the new series and it actually *works*. We get pop culture references, but they serve a purpose, as Martha and Riley struggle to crack a series of security questions drunkenly chosen by the crew in the past. We get a judgemental Doctor filled with self-righteous condemnation of the humans and a tendency to portentously declare his refusal to lose a companion, but it also works firstly because David Tennant puts in possibly his best performance in the series thus far. We also get nods to this year's ongoing story arc, and therein lies the biggest surprise of all: integrating the "Mister Saxon" subplot into the series more prominently than was done with the Bad Wolf/Torchwood references previously is proving to be a striking success, as the Doctor is drawn further and further into a trap that he's currently blissfully unaware of. More strikingly, it is inserted into '42' by a contrivance that I thought I never wanted to see again, as the Doctor gives Martha's mobile "universal roaming".

Tying the series to Earth via Rose's ghastly mother felt to me like a squandering of the series' potential, rooting it in real life purely to appeal the stupider members of the audience who won't watch anything that doesn't in some crushingly obvious way reflect their lives. Since Martha has joined, we've only seen her reunited with her family in 'The Lazarus Experiment' and there, as here, we see them serving a more interesting purpose as the mysterious Mister Saxon tries to use them to get at the Doctor via his companion. It's an interesting approach, and it helps here that Martha's desire to 'phone her mum is entirely convincing on both occasions, first to ask her to search the internet for the answer to one of the life-saving questions, and more memorably because she thinks she's going to die. If I was stuck in an escape pod with a hunky young man who's not had sex in ages and is clearly up for it and knew I only had minutes to live, I'd probably think of some other way to spend my remaining time on this mortal coil than phoning my mother, but nonetheless it is an entirely believable reaction. Indeed, most of the emotion on display here works well, avoiding the soap opera leanings of previous episodes largely thanks to Harper's direction: the sight of the Doctor mouthing "I'll save you" through the window as Martha drifts slowly away could have been cloying, but Harper leaves it silent, so we don't get Murray Gold's syrupy musical nonsense telling us how to feel in the most overblown way imaginable. And having Kath appeal to the spirit of her husband inside the monster that he's become is one of the oldest clich?s in science fiction, but Harper's direction, Chibnall's script, and the actors' performance make her sacrifice seem like fitting redemption rather than predictable rot.

The two regulars are, incidentally, very good here. I've already mentioned Tennant, and having demonstrated hammy tendencies in the past, here he avoids the temptation so that the Doctor's agony when possessed by the sentient sun is utterly convincing, especially when he cries out that he's terrified. Freema Agyeman is also very good again, and it's refreshing to see that when faced with death she doesn't start regretting that she hasn't shagged the Doctor, she decides to say goodbye to her mum. She also kisses ??? just before she leaves and tells him he's hot, which pleasingly creates the impression that she's generally looking for a boyfriend rather than specifically obsessing over the Doctor like Rose did. And in that context, her previous musings on whether or not he ever really notices her seem far more acceptable.

Overall, '42' is a great episode, and great in ways that I wouldn't have anticipated. It also proves that Chris Chibnall can write decent, solid episodes when he's not allowed to fill them with juvenile and gratuitous sex, which is something he really ought to learn from.