Biggest thing first: This morning I broke the 60 lb barrier, I am now weigh more than sixty pounds less than I did when I started this project last February. Back in September and October it seemed like I had reached kind of a brick wall, hovering around 260 lbs with no real forward progress, and I had made my peace with the idea that that was my limit. Then in the last week of October the dam broke and I started making progress again. That was when I set a personal stretch goal to weigh in at under 250 at least once before Christmas. I hit that goal the day after Thanksgiving. With this morning's weigh-in at 246 lbs I have completely shattered that goal. So now my new stretch goal is to weigh in at under 240 lbs before my next birthday on January 15th. What is my end point? I have no idea. As I said when I began, my real goal is just to feel better and more healthy, and I have certainly reached that goal. I don't expect to ever see the other side of 200, and I don't know that I would really want to. But holy cow, this project has already been far more successful than I ever imagined it would be, and I still have nine or ten more Doctors to go (depending on how you count).

In other news, I started the next-to-last Fourth Doctor story today. Let's talk about that.

The Keeper of Traken - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

So, the Doctor for some ridiculous reason has left behind Romana and K9 and traveled back to normal space with Wesley Crusher Adric. Right off the bat they wind up visiting the star Mettula Orionsis, home to the Traken Union, which the Doctor describes as, "...a whole empire held together by people just being terribly nice to each other." Also right off the bat they are visited by the Keeper of Traken, who is nearing the end of his thousand-year reign of peace and prosperity. The Keeper spins a tale for the Doctor about how an evil being, know as the Melkur, landed in a garden on the planet of Traken, where it was rooted in place and expected to calcify and collapse over time. Unfortunately it has not, and the Keeper fears that as his life force fails so the Melkur will rise and wreak havoc on the Union.

The Doctor and Adric travel to Traken, and are of course immediately mistaken as evil invaders themselves. This prompts one of my all-time favorite Fourth Doctor remarks: "It's probably the usual misunderstanding. We keep running into this sort of thing."

By the end of the second episode, it is revealed to the viewers that the Melkur is actually some kind of traveling craft, probably a TARDIS, and inside at the controls we see only the burned and withered hand of the occupant who we totally don't know yet is the Master. (Spoilers!). Also by this point we have finally met the new companion, Nyssa, but we don't know yet that she is going to become a companion. 

This is another of my favorite Fourth Doctor stories, so well-written and pivotally important. The entire Traken society is well-drawn, and populated with interesting and varied characters. The evil of the Melkur is a seed that is planted and slowly grows over the course of years, and is very interesting to watch unfold. Best of all, we get Nyssa who is nearly as smart as Adric but without being all annoying about it. She's just a competent person doing competent things, which I always enjoy watching.

One other cool thing: About five years ago my wife and I took a trip to the United Kingdom, and as a part of our visit we got to go to Cardiff and (among other things) go to the Doctor Who Experience. There we saw about a billion really cool things, and one of them was this:

That's the original Melkur prop, and I got to see it up close and in person. It was one of my favorite things on display. As for my wife, she was very patient and indulgent about my squealing with joy when I saw it. She's cool like that.

Tomorrow morning: The Master reborn!

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Adric, Nyssa
Episode(s): The Keeper of Traken - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,422 today, 1,905,012 total
Distance Walked: 3.99 miles today, 967.02 miles total
Weight: 248.50 lbs (five day moving average), net change -58.80 lbs