"42" was something of an unexpected move for the Doctor Who team. While the sudden about-turn in storytelling styles from traditional mad scientist romp last week to "Bladerunner"-esque space adventure this week (and to Earth based thriller in next weeks helping) was typical, that this re-hashed entirely the glories of last years "Impossible Planet"/"Satan Pit" double bill was curious. It also owed a lot to "Planet of Evil", though you could overlook that, given the time frame. But the fact remains that Doctor Who pub quiz questions and trivia book conundrums of the future will baffle and bemuse if they require us to identify "which New Series story featured a battle against time in a grimy spaceship hurtling towards oblivion while a crew member is possessed by an eerie voice that makes it kill people".

You could see the intention - a Doctor Who, set in real time, which is just non-stop tension all the way. An adventure which hurtles along from start to finish, providing a complete edge-of-the-seat experience. Unfortunately, "42" borrowed all of its tricks from other sources, yet failed to refine or improve any of them. Indeed, a whole lot of new problems were introduced - namely the fact that with only one episode, there wasn't room to breathe or to introduce touches of beauty of stillness like the Doctor's interplay with Rose as he vanished down the pit in "The Satan Pit". The one exception was the marvellous moment of soundlessness as Martha spiralled away from the Doctor in her escape pod. It reminds me of how much can be gained from NOT having relentless music sometimes. "42" also struggled to keep us understanding what, in its mind numbingly simple plot, was actually going on amid the sweat and noise. The whole episode revolving around a series of doors which are opened by pub quiz questions was moronic rather than clever (in terms of both storytelling technique and execution; what ship would actually hide the means to escape a crisis behind a series of doors that lock when it's triggered?) and yet unless you caught a single line of dialogue, you could easily miss just why they were trying to open them at all. Likewise, the reason for the Doctors voyage outside the ship was baffling to us until he'd actually completed it.

But the real problem with "42" was its previously-mentioned debt to its cousin story last year. It's really starting to grate now that the production team persist in making Doctor Who without visiting any alien planets at all - surely this story could have been set on one, with the spaceship scenes set inside a colony or base and the outer-space CGI bits remodelled as the surface of an alien world? Instead we got a space ship that seemed exactly the same as last years, not to mention a similarly faceless crew, an adversary that possessed by making eyes go funny and a 'weak' member of the crew that was targeted for possession. It was virtually a re-write, but no-one had thought to improve characterisation or give us anything new.

What I missed most was moments of clarity and magic. This was witless space adventure, devoid of jokes or moments of pathos. It says something that the best bits (which also didn't fit in with the rest of the story at all) were the odd scenes of Martha's Mum seemingly being bugged by the FBI - at least this provided some identification. But perhaps fans for whom this was made, those that are embarrassed by what Doctor Who is and dearly wanted another episode full of space ships and impressive visuals and looking like some dreary straight-to-DVD Hollywood feature film, can edit those bits out and safely show it to their friends. I can understand the intention in a way - different strokes, and all that, but this was truly the "Resurrection of the Daleks" of the new series. Witless, macho nonsense in place of the usual wonder and adventure that characterises Doctor Who.