it's been a day of ups and (huge) downs, with still more to come, but I want to get this post out of the way now so I don't end up writing it at midnight. This morning my adult autistic son had a blood draw, which can be a battle. He's almost as strong as me, and if he wants to fight something then he isn't easy to physically control. That being said, he surprised us all by not even flinching when the needle went in. He never even complained. How awesome is that? Unfortunately, that happy start was dampened a few hours later when we had to put down our dog Chuy. He had been barely eating, and kept having seizures. Upon taking him to the vet it turned out that he had cancerous masses in his stomach and there was literally nothing that could be done to heal him. Rather than let him suffer any further, we chose to let him rest. It was a very difficult decision, and we are heartbroken. And now, swinging back completely in the other direction, I am about to go to my first rehearsal for my first professional musical theatre production, for which I am very excited. So like I say, it's all ups and downs today.

But mixed in with all that, I started a new Doctor Who story on the treadmill today. So let's talk about that.

The Robots of Death - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The Robots of Death (not to be confused with The Seeds of Death, or The Ambassadors of Death, or City of Death, or The Curse of Fatal Death, or even Robot of Sherwood), surprisingly turns out to be an Agatha Christie pastiche. Sure, there are robots and aliens and all kinds of other science fiction trappings, but at its core the story is about an enclosed environment (in this case a large mobile mining rig) populated with a handful of diverse characters from differing social strata, in which someone is murdered and everyone is a suspect. There is all the same bickering and cross accusations of any Christie story, and the Doctor is reluctantly thrust into the Hercule Poirot role while simultaneously being the prime suspect. We as viewers know very well that the ship's servant robots are the killers (I mean, the title kind of gives it away, so they don't even bother to hide it), but the real question is which person has managed to bypass all of the safety programming and turned their servants into MurderBots?

By the climax of the second episode the body count has grown to four, and the mining vessel has been sabotaged so that it is about to overheat and self-destruct. Surely everyone will die!

I am quite enjoying this story. The chemistry between Tom Baker's Doctor and Louise Jameson's Leela is already firmly in place, and Leela repeatedly demonstrates that she is not just some ignorant savage girl. She has a keen mind, and what she lacks in scientific knowledge she more than makes up for in keen observational skills. I also quite like the robot design. Given that they all have the same face, and differentiate only by the identification plates on their chest, they manage to convey a surprising range of attitude -- able to go from servile to threatening with just a change in posture and a reddening of the eyes. It is also a pretty decent mystery, with plenty of viable suspects and no clear culprit.

Early on there is also a classic scene in the TARDIS control room in which the Doctor attempts to explain the dimensionally transcendental nature of the TARDIS, although Leela doesn't understand at all. As a matter of fact that particular scene is the only one I remember from whenever I watched this story before (probably back in the early 80's on PBS).

So that's it for today, I'm off to rehearsal to become a world famous actor. I'll catch you tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Leela
Episode(s): The Robots of Death - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,280 today, 1,526,245 total
Distance Walked: 3.94 miles today, 759.73 miles total
Weight: 258.46 lbs (five day moving average), net change -48.84 lbs