Folks, today has been a day. Up early racing to hit a deadline at work, sucked into a Production issue that turned out to have nothing to do with my code (but I was of course happy to pitch in and help figure it out), hours of going round and round with bug fixes, right in the middle of it a stupid non-emergency emergency with my mom (she's fine, and it wasn't her fault), and as I write this I am still in the midst of a software release and waiting on final QA sign off. Tomorrow I have to be up extra early because my autistic son is having dental surgery under anesthesia. All I want to do is go to bed, and I can't until this release is put to bed.

So while I am waiting for that to happen, let's talk about Doctor Who.

Terminus - Parts 1 & 2

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

You know how I mentioned yesterday that there had yet to be a bad story in the Fifth Doctor era? Well, it's not that Terminus is actively bad. It's just that there is so little going on for so much run time. The gist is that Tegan doesn't trust Turlough, mostly because Tegan is smart and Turlough is a devious little shit who is also actively under the thumb of the Black Guardian. So Turlough does a Bad Thing, Tegan almost catches him and gives him a bad time about it, Turlough vehemently protests his innocence, and then as soon as he ditches her he does a Very Bad Thing. This results in the TARDIS fusing with a passing space ship and Nyssa being separated from the rest of the group.

Stuff happens, some other stuff happens, there are some space pirates, the ship turns out to be filled with lepers, and Tegan and Turlough wind up trapped together in the service ducts beneath the main ship corridors. Nyssa gets infected with Space Leprosy, the ship docks at the titular Terminus station where Nyssa is hauled off to presumably be euthanized, and the Doctor is stuck with the pair of space pirates.

There is also a giant bipedal space dog in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what his deal is yet. I got excited because I thought he might be a space leopard, but no spots. Ah, well.

As I say, it's not actively bad. It's just a whole lot of shuffling characters around in corridors and very little actual plot. Also, you would think the Black Guardian would pick a better puppet to carry out his evil will. Turlough is never going to be up to the task. He's weasely, but not truly amoral.

Anyway, it looks like I have a new bug to fix before this release can happen. I'd best get on that.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fifth
Companion(s): Tegan, Nyssa, Turlough
Episode(s): Terminus - Parts 1 & 2
Steps Walked: 7,603 today, 2,077,838 total
Distance Walked: 4.09 miles today, 1,062.32 miles total
Weight: 244.98 lbs (five day moving average), net change -62.32 lbs