I gotta tell ya, I am getting worn out. Aside from my daily treadmill time I am working full-time at my day job plus rehearsing five hours a night for a show I am in that opens in ten days. I am right tuckered out. Today is the first time in two weeks I have walked under four miles, and actually my overall pace was the slowest in a month. I got it done, but holy cow I am looking forward to sleeping in next week while I am on vacation.

I also wrapped up the Key to Time today, so let's talk about that.

The Armageddon Factor - Parts 5 & 6

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

So what did this story finally boil down to? In a twist that shocked absolutely nobody, Princess Astra turns out to be the final segment of the Key to Time. Also: the White Guardian turns out to actually be the Black Guardian. A bunch of running around happens, Armageddon is averted for Atrios and Zeos, the Key to Time is assembled, and then before it can be used for anything at all the Doctor scatters it again across the cosmos. If there was some galactic crisis for which the real White Guardian needed the key, it never became apparent. 

There was one thing I enjoyed in these final two episodes today: the introduction of a Time Lord technician named Drax, who was a real treat to watch. Played by actor Barry Jackson, he comes across as a working class stiff with a thick Cockney accent he claims to have picked up in Brixton Prison while marooned on Earth for a decade. Hes character adds a much-needed bit of levity in a story that sorely needed it.

As for the Shadow, the Black Guardian's puppet, he mostly stood around and chewed up the scenery and spent half his time laughing maniacally. I don't mind a little melodrama, and certainly Doctor Who is filled with more than its fair share of it, but this one just landed with a thud for me.

I just...  for a season long story arc, I expected some kind of actual point to it all. The only upshot of the entire thing is that the Doctor deliberately installs a randomizer circuit on the TARDIS so that he will never know where he is going next. As if he ever knew in the first place. The season started well, the first two stories were strong, and then the whole thing just kind of petered out.

The good news: this story was the last six-parter ever broadcast. True, Shada has six parts and I will be watching the reconstruction of it in a few weeks, but other than that from here on out is is basically four-parters with a few shorter ones sprinkled in. The also good news is that, after several weeks of watching the episodes via streaming media, tomorrow I am back to DVDs for a couple weeks. The bad news is, tomorrow's story is a damn Dalek story. You want to place bets on where it falls in the spectrum between Genesis of the Daleks and Day of the Daleks? I am guessing it is going to be depressingly closer to the latter and not the former...

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Romana, K9
Episode(s): The Armageddon Factor - Parts 5 & 6
Steps Walked: 6,906 today, 1,748,605 total
Distance Walked: 3.45 miles today, 880.48 miles total
Weight: 253.78 lbs (five day moving average), net change -53.52 lbs