As I write this, Hurricane Irma has made landfall in the Florida Keys about two hours ago. We are about seven hours away from the leading edge of the storm starting to reach us, and will be experiencing significant sustained winds for most of the night. I may or may not have power tomorrow. So, you know, I've got that going on. On the upside, I watched more of Planet of the Spiders this morning while on the treadmill and it was terrific.

Let's talk about that.

Planet of the Spiders - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The bad guy with the invisible spider on his back escapes the Doctor via some kind of arachnid teleportation, which means he gets clean away with Metabilis III blue crystal. He transports back to the Buddhist meditation center, where he begins to plot how to overthrow the spiders and to take over the world. Apparently he used to be a salesman, and is so miffed about being fired after twenty five years on that job that he sees the only sensible course of action to be global domination. Makes perfect sense.

Meanwhile, there is a mentally challenged man named Tommy who works at the meditation center and who has a particular affinity for pretty things. He sees the crystal and steals it without anyone noticing. He is reading some simple Dick and Jane type books while having the crystal nearby, and it has the magical affect of making  him smart.

Meanwhile the bad guy and Sarah Jane get teleported to Metabilis III, which is now ruled over by super-intelligent giant spiders. We eventually find out that an Earth spaceship crashed a little over 400 years ago, and while the human survivors formed an agricultural colony some spiders from the ship landed up in the mountains with the blue crystals. Over time the crystals made the spiders bigger and smarter, and now here we are with a planet of giant spiders ruling over humans like cattle and plotting to get back the big blue crystal that the Doctor had taken way back in The Green Death and which now has gone all Flowers for Algernon on Tommy at the meditation center.

This is some really nifty writing, with plenty of plot to fill the running time of this six-parter with no real padding at all. What a great story for Jon Pertwee to exit on. Assuming we survive the night and have power, I am really looking forward to the big ending tomorrow.

And, if this is my final entry ever, then....  thank you my dear Imaginary Readers. This has been a fabulous journey and worth every one of my nearly 1.3 million steps so far. I feel amazing, I like how I look in the mirror, and I am pretty confident that - barring the last two episodes of this story -- I have now actually seen every single episode of Doctor Who at some point or another. How cool is that?

STATS:

Doctor(s): Third
Companion(s): Sarah Jane Smith
Episode(s): Planet of the Spiders - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,227 today, 1,295,781 total
Distance Walked: 3.75 miles today, 641.02 miles total
Weight: 260.26 lbs (five day moving average), net change -47.04 lbs