One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

They're Stacking Up Like Cord Wood!

Apr 12 2017
They're Stacking Up Like Cord Wood!

This morning the treadmill pretty well kicked my butt. I had pushed the speed up yesterday, and I pushed it up another notch today. That turned out to be a notch too far. On top of that, while I already knew about one of the major plot points in today's viewing I was completely caught off guard with the second big moment. While watching the reconstruction of the second and third episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan (which primarily consists of audio and still images), I was not fully prepared for it to cut to real footage for the first big moment. It was a huge gut-punch that left me reeling.

Let's talk about that.

Devil's Planet / The Traitors

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Devil's Planet was pretty much what I expected. The Doctor shows up just in time to get aboard the ship that Bret hijacked at the end of the last episode, and the group of four heroes (the Doctor, Steven, Katarina, and Bret Vyon) escape the planet Kembel.  The rest of the episode amounts to a chase by the Daleks, a forced landing onto a prison planet, and another escape. There is some great interaction between the Doctor and Bret, with the Doctor espousing his "no need to kill" philosophy while Space Security Service agent Bret has a bit more pragmatic and deadly view. The jump ending comes when, after the ship has taken off again, Katarina is grabbed by a resident of the prison planet who has managed to stow away into the air lock. Katarina screams, roll credits.

It's with The Traitors that things truly get grim. The first half is a standoff between the prisoner with his hostage in the air lock, and the others outside trying to negotiate with him. It is a very raw, intense sequence in which Katarina is legitimately terrified while Steven and Bret argue about whether her life outweighs the lives of everyone on Earth. This is ostensibly a children's show, but look at how tense and frightening this sequence is:

If you can't watch that, here is what happens: Katarina makes the decision to hit the button in the airlock in order to dump herself and the stowaway into space, knowing full well that it means her death. There is no daring last-minute rescue, no storytelling trick, just poor Katarina left floating in space. It is a brutal moment, and the first time on Doctor Who that a companion has died. I wish I could say that it won't happen again for a long time, but... I guess we can talk about that on Saturday.

So after recovering from that shocking moment, the three surviving heroes make it to Earth. Unfortunately, they know they have been branded as traitors and they don't know who they can trust, who is not in collusion with Mavic Chen in betraying humanity to the Daleks. Chen himself sends a new agent to track them down and kill them, none other than Sara Kingdom. It doesn't happen in this episode, but in short order she will wind up becoming a companion of the Doctor. But before that happens, there is the second gut punch.

Sara Kingdom arrives at the deserted facility where the group has landed, and although the Doctor and Steven escape, Bret Vyon is shot down and killed. Murdered by Sara Kingdom, because she believes him to be a traitor. Just like that, Nicholas Courtney is gone from the story. Within the space of twenty five minutes the number of heroic lead characters has been reduced from four to two. 

I don't even know where this is going (aside from one significant plot point in the final episode), and I have made a point of not looking ahead. Dammit, Terry Nation, you have sucked me in. I wanted to hate the stupid Dalek story that goes on forever. Instead, you have made me care about a couple of new characters and then cruelly taken them away. It's not nice. But it's damned good storytelling.

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Steven Taylor, Katarina, Sara Kingdom
Episode(s): Devil's Planet / The Traitors
Lead Character Death Rate: 50%
Steps Walked: 6,348 today, 325,719 total
Distance Walked:  3.01 miles today, 148.85 miles total
Weight: 292.02 lbs (five day moving average), net change -15.28 lbs


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