Today marks the six month anniversary of the day I started this ridiculous project. In that time I have walked 570.98 miles on the treadmill while taking 1,158,042 steps, watching 338 episodes and 66 stories of Doctor Who, and losing 42.80 pounds in weight. It's been a frustratingly static month, with only about 2 1/2 pounds lost since my last checkin a month ago. Then again, I spent literally half of the month living in a luxury hotel in Las Vegas helping to execute the greatest luxury travel conference in the world. Not only did I miss two days on the treadmill because of it, but I also ate quite a few amazing-but-very-rich meals. I don't even feel bad about that.

The other significant thing that happened in just the past few weeks is that I found out I have bone spurs in my knees. That knocked me back a bit, and made me question this project in its entirety. Fortunately I have found that with a combination of a topical analgesic ointment applied to the knees twice per day plus wearing knee braces while walking on the treadmill, my knee pain has almost completely vanished. I will have to keep a close eye on it, but it seems like as long as I take sensible precautions I can keep right on walking through the entirety of Doctor Who.

Speaking of which, I watched the second half of Carnival of Monsters today. Let's talk about that.

Carnival of Monsters - Episodes 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

As I mentioned, this is my single favorite Third Doctor story (so far, and with Curse of Peladon as a close second). The third episode has the Doctor and Jo pursued by the horrible Drashigs, which follow our heroes out of the containment cell and into the circuitry of the Miniscope. There's a great little scene in which the Doctor tries to explain lateral thinking to Jo, and she manages to both completely misunderstand it while simultaneously using it perfectly. Katy Manning's Jo Grant really does get to shine in this story, very likely because she is once again being written by Robert Holmes (who created her character in the first place). The third episode ends with the Doctor successfully escaping the Miniscope while Jo is still trapped on board the sailing ship from the first two episodes.

Episode four has the Doctor giving a proper dressing-down to both the bureaucratic, bickering politicians and the two colorful carny hucksters who own the very illegal Miniscope. Ultimately, of course, the Doctor is able to rescue Jo from the device whilst also returning all of its prisoners to their original homes from which they were kidnapped, but not before a couple of the Drashigs escape the Miniscope and wreak havoc in the real world. The ending is a recurrence of the running joke in which the Doctor and Jo sneak off while the supporting characters are arguing about what to do with them. There is also a sweet coda in which the sailing ship's passengers finally get to see the next day, having been trapped in a time loop for heaven-only-knows how long.

This is just such an imaginative story, and one that is very cleverly written to seem to have more characters and locations than it really does. For years in we have really reached Peak Third Doctor, and I can only hope the show can maintain these heights for a while. Tomorrow I begin Frontier in Space, which I expect to be fairly bittersweet in that it features Roger Delgado's final performance as the Master. More about that tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Third
Companion(s): Jo Grant
Episode(s): Carnival of Monsters - Episodes 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,053 today, 1,158,042 total
Distance Walked: 3.60 miles today, 570.98 miles total
Weight: 264.50 lbs (five day moving average), net change -42.80 lbs