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The Doctor and Martha materialise on a spaceship in trouble. It's orbiting a sun, unable to escape its pull and there's 42 minutes left until it crashes. The Doctor and Martha save the day in a thrilling story, involving a living sun, with just seconds to spare.

This episode features a couple of firsts. I'm sure this is the only episode title that is a simple number. (And 42 is surely a hat-tip to Douglas Adams.) It's also the first episode I can recall being told in real time, 42 minutes being the approximate length of an episode.

The main storyline is nothing super-special, but it does keep your interest. It turns out the sun is alive and has been damaged by the ship scooping part of it out for fuel. In retaliation it possesses some of the ship's crew, causing them to damage the ship and kill other crew members, so that the ship will fall into the sun. The crew must reach the other side of the ship to restore the engines and escape. This requires them accessing some 20 or so doors and answering a question in order to get to the next door. This provides much of the dramatic tension.

Martha and Riley hide from a possessed crew member in an escape pod, but are jettisoned. The Doctor goes outside the ship to enable its magnetic lock to pull it back. He realises the sun is alive and it tries to possess him. It's too strong and eventually overwhelms him, but not before he instructs Martha that they must return the fuel. When they do, the Doctor is freed from his possession and the ship rights itself and pulls away from the sun.

The Doctor topped up Martha's mobile phone with universal roaming (cute pun) at the beginning of the episode. She makes three calls to her Mum during the episode. During the second we see a mysterious woman monitoring the calls. She encourages Martha's Mum to keep Martha talking, indicating they're trying to track the call. After the third call it seems she has enough. She thanks Martha's Mum, saying Mr. Saxon will be grateful.

So Mr. Saxon is trying to track the Doctor. And if he can do that, then he must be using some pretty fancy technology.