NuWho - Series 3, Episode 7 - 42 (Season 29, Story 184)

(Or the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything...)

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Quotes
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"Forty-two minutes until what?" ~ The Tenth Doctor

"So? We fix the engines, we steer the ship away from the sun. Simple." ~ The Tenth Doctor

"Oh listen to you! Defeated before you've even started. Where's your Dunkirk spirit?" ~ The Tenth Doctor

"Each door’s trip codes the answer to a random question set by the crew. Nine tours back we got drunk, thought 'em up. Reckoning was, if we're hijacked, we're the only ones who know all the answers." ~ Riley

"Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits in continuing iteration until it yields one is a happy number. Any number that doesn't isn't. A happy prime is a number that's both happy and prime. Now type it in! I don't know, talk about dumbing down. Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?" ~ The Tenth Doctor

"I can't believe our lives depend on some stupid pub quiz." ~ Martha

"The wonderful world of space travel. The prettier it looks, the more likely it is to kill you." ~ Riley

"It's your fault, Captain McDonnell.You mined that sun! Skipped its surface for cheap fuel. You should have scanned for life! That sun is alive! A living organism! They scooped out its heart, used it for fuel and now it's screaming!" ~ The Tenth Doctor

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Trivia
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The episode occurs in real time, like the American television programme 24. 42 is of course 24 reversed, possibly another tip of the hat to the show. However, technically the events do not occur in real-time in this episode; for example, the countdown timer runs out at approximately 40 minutes into the episode, leaving 2 unaccounted minutes as well as almost the entire pre-credits sequence (itself about 2 minutes). 42 is also the approximate length, in minutes, of a new Doctor Who episode.  Also, Doctor Who returned to television during 2005 - the 42nd anniversary of the franchise.

A spaceship crashing into a sun leaving the passengers little time to escape was also a major plotpoint in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

42 is somewhat similar to the movie Sunshine. Both of these involve a delivery ship, both of these involve possession and both of these involve a ship going out of control to the nearby Sun. Also, the DVD commentary states the ship's original name as written and filmed was the "Icarus", just as in Sunshine, until they edited the name out of the final episode to avoid confusion.

This episode has the shortest title of any televised instalment of Doctor Who broadcast to date and is the only one to date to consist solely of a number.

This episode is similar to the Star Trek: Voyager episode Heroes and Demons. In both episodes, a spaceship takes samples from a star which turn out to be sentient, and is subsequently attacked. In both cases, the conflict is resolved by returning the sample. Coincidentally, the main protagonist of the episode Heroes and Demons is the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram who, lacking a given name, is known in the series as the Doctor.

At one stage the Ood were going to be in this episode, where they were to be possessed again. (DWDVDF 5) Coincidentally or not, the Sun only takes control of males.

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Trailer
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