Doctor Who-42

                                  Responding to a distress call,the doctor pilots the TARDIS into the interior of the S.S Pentallion ,operating in the Torajii system and about to crash into the star of that system. The engine of the ship,illegal as it is, has been sabotaged and the crew led by Captain McDonnell cannot bring the engine back online to get them away from their sun. The computer that controls the engine is locked out with a cryptic code based on an old Earth pub quiz. While Martha attempts to crack the code with the help of her mother on the doctors "cell phone" now set for universal roaming along with the Pentallion's engineers,the doctor is set upon with the problem the McDonnel's husband Korwin is in critical condition,and that he abruptly went bazerk and sabotaged the engines. When the ships pysician Abi Lerner discovers his DNA is altering, he vaporizes her-after which he proceeds to walk about the ship randomly doing the same to its crew one by one while wearing a space helmet from the ship.

                             While Martha and one of the engineers named Riley Vashtee attempt to quarantine Korwin and anothe crew member named Ashton who has been infected in the same way, Ashton is killed while Korwin locks the two in an escape pod which is released into the smoldering sun. The doctor himself suits up in order to save Martha and Riley himself-only to find himself affected by the same phenomenon that killed Ashton and is affecting Korwin. While struggling to maintain his identity, he comes to understand the sun is a sentient being from whom Captain McDonnell and her crew have been siphoning what they think is fuel from. It is really bio-matter that allows the life form to survive and its only been protecting itself. When a despondent McDonnell throws herself with Korwin back into the life force of the sun however, the Pentallion is set free for rescue.

                         This is a very emotionally intense story in which all of the characters are forced into touching emotionally vulnerable aspects of their personality. Martha faces her fears of losing her life on Earth and family, the doctor has to deal with potentially losing control of his identity due to the influence of life form within the Torajii sun. Captain McDonnell is of course driven only by her single minded obsession with Korwin, her now departed husband who she is convinced still recognizes her but also is seeking absolution from with what she realizes is her crime against another sentient being. After all the intense character melodrama, the story's most poignant scene is when the TARDIS is about to take off from the Pentallion, the doctor is at an utter loss for words for a few moments from the experience. Of course what he and Martha don't yet realize is the influence of a ghost from the doctors past-now in the personage of Minister Harold Saxon on Earth.