Good news, everybody! My bounce back has bounced back. After setting a record low weight last week following an astounding amount of weight loss in under two weeks, I spent the past four days with my weight inching back up in a the expected bounce-back. Today, however, it dropped back down again. Not quite the record low, but enough to show that the overall loss was not a fluke. So that's nice. Also, I have been doing a planking challenge, and this morning I lasted for ninety full seconds. Two weeks ago I could barely hold for ten seconds. I am very pleased. My intention is to spend the rest of November focused on core strength, and then in December I will begin to work on upper body strength. Trust me, all the time on the treadmill has my lower body doing just peachy.

Also, I finished the current story today, so let's talk about that.

The Power of Kroll - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

The Doctor, Romana, and the gun runner Rohm Dutt spend most of the third episode tied up on a rack, sentenced to a slow and painful death as the vines holding the blocks at the head and foot slowly dry out and constrict. It was dramatic and all, but I could help but feeling that the Doctor (being significantly taller than the other two) should have been completely comfortable while his shorter co-victims were stretched to their limit. Physics aside, they of course manage to escape their fate due to the combination of a fortuitous rainstorm plus the Doctor's ability to shriek at the perfect pitch to shatter the overhead window.

One funny bit during that scene was a throwaway line by the Doctor about firing the architect. Why is that funny? Because the BBC's Head of Serials hated the set designs for this story and issued a decree that designer Dog Giles would never work on the series again. Oops. Honesty, though, I thought the sets looked just fine all around, certainly no worse than in any other story of the era.

Anyway, the lead at the mining operation gets progressively more paranoid and bloodthirsty, and when one of his staff dares to question his orders the commander shoots the other engineer in cold blood and threatens the only other remaining employee with the same if he doesn't fall into line. It's not exactly a sad thing when one of the natives runs a spear through him during the final showdown.

The big  not-surprise of the story is that the giant squid-god Kroll was actually a garden variety giant squid who had the good fortunate to swallow the fifth segment of the Key to Time, which caused Kroll to grow to an immense size and live for hundreds of years. In the end the Doctor does a Very Clever Thing which results in Kroll just kind of melting away and leaving behind the key segment. The lone surviving human is left behind with the natives to await rescue from the home world, whilst the Doctor and Romana traipse on back to the TARDIS with the penultimate piece. Poor K9 never even makes an appearance.

On the whole this was a rock-solid story and lots of fun to watch. The middle part of this whole Key to Time business was getting to be a bit of a disappointment, but this story has rescued it. Here's hoping that tomorrow's story will finish the whole thing off with a bang.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Romana
Episode(s): The Power of Kroll - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,457 today, 1,726,842 total
Distance Walked: 4.11 miles today, 868.77 miles total
Weight: 253.40 lbs (five day moving average), net change -53.90 lbs