Wow, I got lazy in August. I mean, sure, I crossed the finish line and then took some well-deserved time off. But after a year-and-a-half of daily posts, I only worked out on 1/3 of the days in August. That changes in September. I am still working my way through the Tom Baker Season 12 BluRay set, and will be for another five days, and then I will start in on Torchwood. As for today, I had a unique pop-up-video style viewing. So let's talk about that.

Holy cow, I didn't intend to take another five days off. It just kinda happened. I don't even have any great excuse really. I mean, yesterday was a mess because a service technician was supposed to be here between 8am and noon so I didn't want to treadmill in the morning and be interrupted. I figured I would do it on my lunch break. Instead, the technician didn't show until mid-afternoon, and by then my day was shot. I had no time in the evening. So that's one weak excuse and four days with nothing but laziness to blame. I'm a complete fraud and failure. Ah, well.

On the other hand, I performed a structural redesign on the Time Treadmill and then watched the back half of The Ark in Space today, so let's talk about that.

Check it out, the Blu-Ray release of Tom Baker's first season was successful enough that the BBC just announced Doctor Who: Peter Davison Complete First Season coming this December on Blu-Ray. For those readers who happen to be my wife: no, I have not pre-ordered it yet, and yes it would make a lovely Christmas gift. The set includes remastered versions of all 26 episodes from Season 19, including the very excellent Castrovalva, the last true pure historical story Black Orchid, and of course Jonny Lee Miller's television acting debut in Kinda. It is a really solid season with only a few missteps (I'm looking at you, Four to Doomsday), and I am really looking forward to revisiting these episodes in a few months.

Speaking of revisiting new episodes, I watched the first half of the Blu-Ray version of The Ark in Space today and it was pretty awesome. Let's talk about that.

Usually when I title these posts, I pick my favorite line of dialog from the episode(s) I watched that day. At first I would always try to give the title some context in my post, but eventually I gave up on that as being more effort than it was worth. In any case, I had no trouble at all picking the title for this post, at the point where the Brig exasperatingly says, "Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets..." As it turns out, I like that line so much that I picked it as the title for when I watched this episode the first time around. Oops. So instead I went with my second favorite bit of dialog, from the end of the story when the Doctor decides he is tired of UNIT and wants to scamper off and see the universe again.

So let's talk about that.

After eighteen solid months of being on the treadmill dang near every day, it's not especially surprising that I am not all that eager to hop back on after basically two weeks off. But here I am. I decided that, rather than jump right into the next spinoff (Torchwood), I am going to take some time to enjoy the recently-released BluRay of Tom Baker's fantastic first season as the Fourth Doctor. So I started in on a re-watch of Robot. So let's talk about that.

So... I took ten days off. That was weird. After crossing the finish line last Monday, the next day was all prepping to leave on a trip. Then I flew to Las Vegas for work, spent several days running around like a madman (I registered 22,000 steps one day, going back and forth between Aria and Bellagio), then got home a couple days ago and still kind of avoided the treadmill. But this morning I was too antsy to ignore it any longer. This morning I started in on Doctor Who spinoffs.

So let's talk about that.

I did it! As of about 7:30 am this morning I completed watching every single episode of Doctor Who that has ever been broadcast (including reconstructions of the 97 currently-lost episodes), all while walking on a treadmill. During the past eighteen months I have taken 3,630,973 steps walking 1,897.84 miles, and watching 275 stories and 843 individual episodes. I have reached the end of Phase One of the Time Treadmill.

So let's talk about the final (for now) episode.

Five hundred and thirty days ago, I set foot on the Time Treadmill and watched both the original unaired version of An Unearthly Child and then the version that was first broadcast on November 23, 1963. Since that day I have walked almost 1,894 miles on the treadmill and have taken over 3.6 million steps. I lost close to seventy pounds of fat and put back on about ten pounds of muscle, lost nearly eight inches in my waist, and have now (with one last exception) watched every single episode of Doctor Who ever broadcast -- including reconstructions of the 97 currently-missing episodes. Tomorrow morning I will cross the finish line when I view Twice Upon a Time. Today I watched the two part story that wraps up the storylines for both Bill Potts and Nardole, not to mention Missy.

So let's talk about that.

As this ridiculous project draws to a close, I am in a literal mad dash to the finish line.Because I am traveling for work in a few days, and because I absolutely want to be done with Phase One of this thing before I go, I have to double up on episodes this weekend. That means that today I visited both Mars and ancient Scotland. How cool is that?

So let's talk about Martians, Victorians, Romans, and Picts.