I have to say, it's a really odd experience to be walking on a treadmill with its constant countdown and then to be watching a show in which there is also a constant countdown. Today's story is the only "realtime" episode in the series history, and was very clearly inspired by the show 24 which was in its heyday at the time. Flip 24 around to 42, toss the TARDIS onto a spaceship about to fall into a sun, and the script practically writes itself.

So let's talk about that.

42

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story wins the prize for shortest title in Doctor Who history, at only two characters.  It seems unlikely it will ever relinquish that title. The story is, by necessity, extremely straightforward. The TARDIS receives a distress call, and materializes inside a spaceship crashing into a sun with only 42 minutes until impact. The TARDIS gets locked inside a room that is flooded with super-heated plasma, so the only option is to get the ship's engines operational before everything goes *boom*. Oh, and one of the crewmembers is possessed by some kind of fire demon.

With everything happening in real time you would think there would not be even a moment to take a breath, but there are actually several interesting diversions over the course of the episode. There is, of course, the mystery of what is possessing crewmembers (it's fragments of the star, which is actually a living being). More interestingly, there is an entire sequence in which Martha gets trapped inside an escape pod with another one of the crewmembers, and the Doctor watches helplessly as Martha drifts away into the sun's gravity well.

I also liked the cleverness of having the crew trapped at one end of the ship, with dozens of doors deadlocked between them and the control room. There is a way to open each door, but it involves (of all things) correctly answering a trivia question for each door. Once chance only, and a wrong answer dooms everyone. Want to get through this door? Well then you'd better know whether it was Elvis or the Beatles who sold more #1 singles prior to the download era. (Elvis. It was Elvis.)

Martha's awful mom also makes another appearance, as Martha calls her several times using the MagicCellPhone, and Awful Mom continues to be awful. She is also, apparently, being manipulated by Harold Saxon - a British politician who has been name-dropped in pretty much every episode so far this year, and who totally won't turn out to be the Master in the season finale. (Ok, yeah, he will. Um, spoilers.)

I like this episode a lot. It is easily my favorite of the season so far, and only loses its place because each and every other episode through to the end of the season is even better. If there is a single week of viewing that I have been most looking forward to in this project, it's the one that I started today. This whole sequence is just that good.

So of course in the end of this one the Doctor Martha does a Very Clever Thing, and the ship is saved with it's only two remaining crewmembers. Martha even gets a little bit of a romance to remind her that literally every man in the universe is more accessible and available than the Doctor (unless, apparently, you are the Sainted Rose). So it's good all around, and was even uniquely suited to be watched on a treadmill.

Tomorrow: My single favorite story in all of NuWho. It's gonna be a good day.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth
Companion(s): Martha Jones
Episode(s): 42
Steps Walked: 7,599 today, 2,801,661 total
Distance Walked: 4.19 miles today, 1,460.88 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,414 total
Sit-ups Completed: 49 today, 160 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: He is mildly sorry that Kath's husband Korwin died
Weight: 249.48 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.82 lbs