I just noticed that as of this past weekend I had viewed 33.6% of all televised Doctor Who stories while walking on my treadmill. In terms of episode count I am well over halfway there, it's just that once the modern series comes around most of the stories are only one episode, with a few two-parters here and there. As for the Fourth Doctor, I am just about halfway there. I expect I will wrap up Tom Baker before Christmas. So that's pretty cool. As for my workouts, I had fallen back on speed for a while but this morning I bumped it back up. Tomorrow I will try to cross the four-mile mark again in 55 minutes, which I have only done once before. My body shape keeps changing for the better, even if my weight is fairly stagnant. I really need to start mixing in strength training at this point. But not today.

As for today's viewing, I wrapped up K-9's first story and he became an official part of the crew. Let's talk about that.

The Invisible Enemy - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

They really did go all-in on imagination for this story. The bulk of the third episode takes place inside the Doctor's brain  in a Fantastic Voyage pastiche complete with rampaging antibodies fighting off the foreign invaders.

Right off the bat came absolutely my all-time favorite bit of dialog in the entire history of the show: as the Doctor and Leela clones first arrive inside the brain Leela is surprised by a flash of light that crosses in front of her, exclaiming, "What was that?!?"

"Oh," replies the Doctor, "Just a passing thought..."

Ba-dump-bump.

The whole race against time inside the brain works very well, even if the ten-minute clock takes more like twenty minutes to run out. Eventually the Doctor locates the Nucleus with he help of Leela's tracking skills, and they have a microbe-sized showdown. Unfortunately, both clones expire and pop out of existence, while the Nucleus escapes through the Doctor's tear duct and is grown to nearly human size.

And, honestly... it's not great. I mean, ten out of ten for ambition and imagination, but the giant bedbug thing just looks bad. It has four arms, two of which are the real arms of the person in the costume, while the other two are clearly puppet arms connected by fishing line from the upper arms. The thing can't even move on its own, it spends most of the fourth episode ordering its human slaves to carry it around from place to place.

I feel unclean and itchy just looking at it...

Also, Leela continues to be treated as stupid throughout the rest of the story, which she clearly isn't and that's very frustrating. She suggests blowing up the Nucleus once it has fled to Titan, which the Doctor dismisses out of hand. Then he eventually blows up the Nucleus and pointedly takes credit for the idea. It's just not cool. 

So I have really mixed feelings about this story overall. Lots of great model work, some dodgy costume work, lots of problematic anti-female dismissiveness by the Doctor...  In the end, though, the exuberance and brilliance of K-9 lifts up the story and makes it work. I am sure I have seen the next several stories, but I don't remember much about them. I really hope the writers treat Leela better in them, because she deserves much more than she got from this one.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Leela, K-9
Episode(s): The Invisible Enemy - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,414 today, 1,583,942 total
Distance Walked: 3.94 miles today, 789.93 miles total
Weight: 259.00 lbs (five day moving average), net change -48.30 lbs