It was another good day on the treadmill, I notched up the speed a bit again and went further and faster than I ever have before. I came just six-one-hundredths of a mile short of hitting four miles today. I am going to try to notch it up again tomorrow, since I made the full distance today. These past two months have been a frustrating plateau, but I have had so many other things going on that I let myself slack a bit on the treadmill thing. Not that I didn't do it, I've been on it every single day, but I had stopped really pushing myself harder. I have about a one-month window right now to push myself as hard as I can before I run smack into my next big real-world challenge (I start rehearsal on my first professional musical theatre production, which will consume me for two full months). As for Doctor Who, today was a fun little story and notable for a few different things.

Let's talk about that.

The Sontaran Experiment - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story follows on directly from the end of The Ark in Space, with the Doctor and Sarah Jane & Harry taking the transmat from Nerva Station to the surface of the Earth (which does not at all look like an English rock quarry) in order to troubleshoot the circle of transmat refractors on the receiving end of the beam. It turns out that there are several human survivors there from another of the colonies sent out during the Great Diaspora, their spacecraft having responded to a (fake) distress signal before it was subsequently destroyed. Also there is a single Sontaran warrior, Field Major Styre, who lured the humans in order to perform a series of medical experiments prior to a mass Sontaran invasion of human space. Most of the story has our lead characters being separated and then varyingly captured by and then escaping from either the humans or the Sontaran.

The entire story is only two parts, making it the first two-parter since the second season's The Rescue (you'll remember that one as the first appearance of Vicki, after Susan's departure, and containing the single best line of dialogue ever spoken by Sir Ian Chesterton, Man of Action: "Don't worry, if old Cocky-Lickin' comes 'round, I've always got this [gun]!")

The story is also notable for being the first story to be filmed entirely on location since Spearhead from Space, although The Sontaran Experiment was shot entirely on videotape instead of film which makes it a double oddity.

By the end of the story, the Doctor faces Styre in one-on-one combat in order to wear him out while Harry steals a bit of tech from Styre's spherical ship. When our potato-headed villain runs back to his ship to re-energize, he winds up being mashed completely flat by his own energizer thanks to Harry's Doctor-directed sabotage. It's a surprisingly vivid sequence for a children's show, with the Sontaran's head slowly deflating and collapsing in on itself before his entire body flattens to the ground.

Prior to that there are also several other scenes that feature humans who either have been or are currently being tortured by Styre. One man is completely insane after having been deliberately burned and scarred; another dies of dehydration after being chained up to a rock wall for nearly ten days; yet another is placed under threat of being crushed to death by a barbell that continuously gets heavier. When Who fans talk about how the Robert Holmes era turned into a Gothic Horrorshow, they aren't kidding.

Which is cool by me, it's a big part of what drew me to the show to begin with. Doctor Who in the 70's was downright scary, and walked a very thin tightrope between implying horrific things without actually showing any gore. That, contrasted with Tom Baker's alien charisma, makes for an wish treat. Also, Robert Holmes knows how to keep the scripts tight with out dragging in the middle. He steadfastly avoided six-parters unless they were actually something special that demanded the length.

Speaking of which, tomorrow's story is the start of a six-parter and is also the only Dalek story I have actively looked forward to since The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I'm a wee bit excited.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
Episode(s): The Sontaran Experiment - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,370 today, 1,337,844 total
Distance Walked: 3.94 miles today, 662.55 miles total
Weight: 261.22 lbs (five day moving average), net change -46.08 lbs