Since I started this project on February 20th of 2016, prior to this week I had only missed a total of six days in more than seven months. Them's pretty good numbers. Even an actual, literal hurricane did not cause me to miss a day. Sadly, this week I missed three consecutive days due to an annual planning meeting for work. This past Tuesday I totally should not have missed, I just didn't get out of bed early enough. That night I flew to Texas, spent all day Wednesay and Thursday in meetings and team building events, and then flew home late last night. This morning I finally got back on the treadmill and started watching a new story. So now my tally is missing 9 days out of 224. Still not so bad from a commitment standpoint.

So anyway, let's talk about some Martian mummies.

Pyramids of Mars - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The gist of this story is that, while en route to taking Sarah Jane Smith back to UNIT-era London, the TARDIS is knocked off course and ends up in 1911 stuck right in the middle of an homage to the classic Universal Mummy pictures. There is lots of Egyptology, with mummies and sarcophogi, secret tombs, deadly curses...  you know the drill. The twist is that it turns out that the Egyption god Sutekh turns out to be an evil entity who has been imprisoned on Mars by the Osirons - the aliens who inspired the entire pantheon of Egyption gods.

It sounds like pretty cool stuff, right? Sadly it doesn't live up to its own premise (or at least not so far). The writing is a complete mess, with hackneyed dialog and completely implausible leaps of logic. I was not surprised at all to discover that the original script was deemed completely onworkable and had to be overhauled by script editor Robert Holmes. There was no time to commission a different story, but there really was only so much that Holmes could do to try to polish up this lump of coal. The story certainly has its moments, but they are few and far between thus far.

There is one very nice not to the show's history early on, when Sarah Jane comes into the TARDIS control room wearing a new dress she found in the wardrobe. The Doctor comments that the dress originally belonged to the Second Doctor era companion Victoria. It's a nice call back, and one of the few light and elegant touches in a story that otherwise plods along with all the subtlety of a box of hammers.

It's not the worst story ever, but it is certainly the dullest so far in the Fourth Doctor era. Maybe the second half will be better, but I somehow doubt it. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Sarah Jane Smith
Episode(s): Pyramids of Mars - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 6,862 today, 1,407,635 total
Distance Walked: 3.48 miles today, 698.81 miles total
Weight: 260.22 lbs (five day moving average), net change -47.08 lbs