3.7: 42
Synopsis: A distress signal brings the TARDIS aboard the Pentallian, a ship whose engines have gone dead. The sun's gravity is pulling them in, and they have forty-two minutes before crashing. As the Doctor sets about repairing the engines, he notices that the Captain has been using an illegal form of fusion as fuel, one that requires scooping sun particles.
It becomes clear that possessed crew members have been sabotaging the ship's equipment and killing other crew members. They kill by opening their eyes and frying their victim with a bright light. Martha and a crew member, Riley get chased into and ejection pod by one of them, and it deploys the device, sending them careening toward the sun. The Doctor puts on a spacesuit and exits the craft in order to activate external controls that would bring the pod back to the ship.
As he does this, he looks into the sun and becomes possessed himself. He realises that the sun is alive and is possessing and sabotaging the ship in its distress because of the crew's scooping of its particles. On the Doctor's orders, Martha puts him into a stasis chamber to try and freeze the entity out of him, then demands that the crew dump the particles they had taken from the sun. This satisfies the living sun into retreat.
Golden Comic Moment: "Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and continue iterating 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?" This all, of course, sounds like complete rubbish to a normal person, but the Doctor machine guns it at Martha and Riley as though they were drooling idiots for not knowing. It's a brainy Doctor moment that, paradoxically, winds up making the Doctor actually look like the idiot. Even Martha is rolling her eyes, and usually, she hangs on his every word.
Runner up is when Scannell says that he'll see if the Doctor's scheme will work, and McDonnell says, "Oh believe me, you're going to make it work," with a vaguely threatening tone. The Doctor quips, "That told him!" It's rather childish, and only funny only because, according to the commentary, it was an ad-lib from David Tennant that was left in. We like stuff like that.
Golden Fangirl Moment: "I'll save you!" the Doctor shouts, four or five times as Martha floats toward the sun in a jettison pod. She can't hear him, but he shouts anyway, and stays in the window, within her sight, until she gets too far away to see.
But mute the sound, watch him the way Martha does. Does it not look just a little like he's saying "I love you?" Maybe you have to be an insane Ten/Martha fangirl, but perhaps not!
Fortunately, Martha doesn't see it the way we do, and there isn't a ridiculously difficult conversation later in which the Doctor has to tell her the truth, and she's heartbroken, and then they act like nothing happened... that we know of.
We also like the moment when the Doctor and Martha hug when the danger has been averted. They hug eight times in seasons 3 and 4, and this is by far the most heartfelt, the most unrestrained of them all. Compare it to the one at the end of "The Satan Pit." Amazing, eh?
Cringeworthy Moment: This episode is one of our favorites, and relatively low on cringes. If we had to choose, we choose poor Riley Vashtee getting, in a manner of speaking, shot down by the lovely Martha Jones. We watch her gentle rejection, and the averting of his eyes to hide the sting, as we've seen Martha herself do at least six or seven times now. We hear him tell her he thinks he's found someone to believe in as Martha has, it implies that he feels for her as she feels for the Doctor. The roles are reversed for Martha, just this once, but we take no pleasure in watching it. We also don't like her kissing some other guy. Nope, nope, nope.
Golden Moment: "It's burning me up, I can't control it... I'm scared! I'm so scared!" It is an exquisite, almost operatic, moment. The Doctor is on his back, writhing in pain, screaming, out of control - it's truly, truly upsetting to watch. We have seen the Doctor incapacitated, we have seen the onus left upon the Companion to save him, save everyone.
But we have never, at least not in the twenty-first century, heard or seen the Doctor in such a state of driving panic, or admit to his Companion how frightened he is. It is a turning point for the Tenth Doctor and Martha (especially considering the Doctor's incapacitation, and the spectacularly-executed onus falling on Martha that will come in episode 12), now that he has taken her on as a full-time partner. He is entirely vulnerable, and makes no show of being ready to handle it, and importantly, does not try to protect his Companion from the thing he fears, but trusts her to protect him. Think of all the times when something has gone wrong, and he's glossed it over somehow, or tried to keep his favorite girl out of the fray. True, he's out of commission and has to rely on someone to blast him with cold here, but he does not have to admit how out of his hands it is, and that he's terrified. He doesn't have to try and explain that he might regenerate, but he does. The Doctor doesn't do those things with just anyone.
We'll also point out that when Martha asks if he's ready for the blast, he says, "No!" She steels herself and blasts him anyway. She's showing faith in their relationship, and demonstrating why he's justified in having faith in her. We can't help but picture Rose in this situation. If we're honest, we think she'd be unable to flip that switch, knowing that it could kill him. Especially after he starts screaming.
And because we've got so many "honorable mentions" in this episode, we'd like to honorably mention the moment when McDonnell says, "I love you" to her afflicted his husband and pulls him out the door, sacrificing them both - it's very poignant, and probably orchestrated to be Golden. And how cool is it when "The Master Vainglorious" theme plays for the very first time as Francine Jones hangs up the phone? Mmmwah!
Why I Beg To Differ: DWM likes the "I'll save you" moment. It has lots of reasons. 1) David and Freema are so good in it, both actors having called it an emotional and strenuous scene to shoot, what with their characters being so pointedly scared/daring/brave. 2) The damsel in distress scenario doesn't happen quite so full-on very often because the Companion is usually quite resourceful. 3) The pacing slows down from a frenetic romp to a treatise on death and family. 4) It is shot in primary colors (we're not sure what this has to do with anything). 5) Even though several things about this scenario are implausible, it manages to catch us in the moment and we don't care.
Good reasons, most of them, and we love this moment too, though for different, less artistic, reasons. But we like the Doctor's panic better because it is an example of something very, very rare - rarer, even, than a clever Companion getting herself into a jam she can't get out of. The Doctor is frequently rattled, nervous, uncomfortable, desperate, et cetera, et cetera. But find one single example of him being as balls-to-the-wall terrified as he is when possessed by the sun. Find any other example of him saying, point blank, "I'm so scared!"
One more reason why this is so stirring: ten faces, ten voices, ten personalities - this Doctor is the coolest of them all. He's particularly emotionally demonstrative only when someone else's life is at stake. But he's scared for himself here, as this sun thingie has got him spooked. When a cool guy lets loose so paradoxically, it's just riveting to watch.
It becomes clear that possessed crew members have been sabotaging the ship's equipment and killing other crew members. They kill by opening their eyes and frying their victim with a bright light. Martha and a crew member, Riley get chased into and ejection pod by one of them, and it deploys the device, sending them careening toward the sun. The Doctor puts on a spacesuit and exits the craft in order to activate external controls that would bring the pod back to the ship.
As he does this, he looks into the sun and becomes possessed himself. He realises that the sun is alive and is possessing and sabotaging the ship in its distress because of the crew's scooping of its particles. On the Doctor's orders, Martha puts him into a stasis chamber to try and freeze the entity out of him, then demands that the crew dump the particles they had taken from the sun. This satisfies the living sun into retreat.
Golden Comic Moment: "Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and continue iterating 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?" This all, of course, sounds like complete rubbish to a normal person, but the Doctor machine guns it at Martha and Riley as though they were drooling idiots for not knowing. It's a brainy Doctor moment that, paradoxically, winds up making the Doctor actually look like the idiot. Even Martha is rolling her eyes, and usually, she hangs on his every word.
Runner up is when Scannell says that he'll see if the Doctor's scheme will work, and McDonnell says, "Oh believe me, you're going to make it work," with a vaguely threatening tone. The Doctor quips, "That told him!" It's rather childish, and only funny only because, according to the commentary, it was an ad-lib from David Tennant that was left in. We like stuff like that.
Golden Fangirl Moment: "I'll save you!" the Doctor shouts, four or five times as Martha floats toward the sun in a jettison pod. She can't hear him, but he shouts anyway, and stays in the window, within her sight, until she gets too far away to see.
But mute the sound, watch him the way Martha does. Does it not look just a little like he's saying "I love you?" Maybe you have to be an insane Ten/Martha fangirl, but perhaps not!
Fortunately, Martha doesn't see it the way we do, and there isn't a ridiculously difficult conversation later in which the Doctor has to tell her the truth, and she's heartbroken, and then they act like nothing happened... that we know of.
We also like the moment when the Doctor and Martha hug when the danger has been averted. They hug eight times in seasons 3 and 4, and this is by far the most heartfelt, the most unrestrained of them all. Compare it to the one at the end of "The Satan Pit." Amazing, eh?
Cringeworthy Moment: This episode is one of our favorites, and relatively low on cringes. If we had to choose, we choose poor Riley Vashtee getting, in a manner of speaking, shot down by the lovely Martha Jones. We watch her gentle rejection, and the averting of his eyes to hide the sting, as we've seen Martha herself do at least six or seven times now. We hear him tell her he thinks he's found someone to believe in as Martha has, it implies that he feels for her as she feels for the Doctor. The roles are reversed for Martha, just this once, but we take no pleasure in watching it. We also don't like her kissing some other guy. Nope, nope, nope.
Golden Moment: "It's burning me up, I can't control it... I'm scared! I'm so scared!" It is an exquisite, almost operatic, moment. The Doctor is on his back, writhing in pain, screaming, out of control - it's truly, truly upsetting to watch. We have seen the Doctor incapacitated, we have seen the onus left upon the Companion to save him, save everyone.
But we have never, at least not in the twenty-first century, heard or seen the Doctor in such a state of driving panic, or admit to his Companion how frightened he is. It is a turning point for the Tenth Doctor and Martha (especially considering the Doctor's incapacitation, and the spectacularly-executed onus falling on Martha that will come in episode 12), now that he has taken her on as a full-time partner. He is entirely vulnerable, and makes no show of being ready to handle it, and importantly, does not try to protect his Companion from the thing he fears, but trusts her to protect him. Think of all the times when something has gone wrong, and he's glossed it over somehow, or tried to keep his favorite girl out of the fray. True, he's out of commission and has to rely on someone to blast him with cold here, but he does not have to admit how out of his hands it is, and that he's terrified. He doesn't have to try and explain that he might regenerate, but he does. The Doctor doesn't do those things with just anyone.
We'll also point out that when Martha asks if he's ready for the blast, he says, "No!" She steels herself and blasts him anyway. She's showing faith in their relationship, and demonstrating why he's justified in having faith in her. We can't help but picture Rose in this situation. If we're honest, we think she'd be unable to flip that switch, knowing that it could kill him. Especially after he starts screaming.
And because we've got so many "honorable mentions" in this episode, we'd like to honorably mention the moment when McDonnell says, "I love you" to her afflicted his husband and pulls him out the door, sacrificing them both - it's very poignant, and probably orchestrated to be Golden. And how cool is it when "The Master Vainglorious" theme plays for the very first time as Francine Jones hangs up the phone? Mmmwah!
Why I Beg To Differ: DWM likes the "I'll save you" moment. It has lots of reasons. 1) David and Freema are so good in it, both actors having called it an emotional and strenuous scene to shoot, what with their characters being so pointedly scared/daring/brave. 2) The damsel in distress scenario doesn't happen quite so full-on very often because the Companion is usually quite resourceful. 3) The pacing slows down from a frenetic romp to a treatise on death and family. 4) It is shot in primary colors (we're not sure what this has to do with anything). 5) Even though several things about this scenario are implausible, it manages to catch us in the moment and we don't care.
Good reasons, most of them, and we love this moment too, though for different, less artistic, reasons. But we like the Doctor's panic better because it is an example of something very, very rare - rarer, even, than a clever Companion getting herself into a jam she can't get out of. The Doctor is frequently rattled, nervous, uncomfortable, desperate, et cetera, et cetera. But find one single example of him being as balls-to-the-wall terrified as he is when possessed by the sun. Find any other example of him saying, point blank, "I'm so scared!"
One more reason why this is so stirring: ten faces, ten voices, ten personalities - this Doctor is the coolest of them all. He's particularly emotionally demonstrative only when someone else's life is at stake. But he's scared for himself here, as this sun thingie has got him spooked. When a cool guy lets loose so paradoxically, it's just riveting to watch.