Today marks the one year anniversary of the day I started this ridiculous project. In that time I have walked 1,224.96 miles on the treadmill while taking 2,369,202, watching 654 episodes and 143 stories of Doctor Who, and losing 60.54 pounds in weight. To say it has been a remarkable year would be a bit of an understatement. I have reached a bit of a plateau, and my personal trainer has instructed me to start doing pushups every day immediately after I finish the treadmill, so today I started with a pitiful 3 pushups. I'll be curious to see how that progresses. Aside from being my long-distance personal trainer, Chuck Rogers is also the author of the very excellent novel Heroes' Road and he wants me to be in fighting shape for when HBO options it as a new series and casts me in the role of.. myself (Lord Miles, Landgrave of Thunisia). I would hate to disappoint him.

In other news, this dropped today and I love it to bits:

Also, I finished The Trial of a Time Lord (and, by extension, the Sixth Doctor) this morning. So let's talk about that.

The Trial of a Time Lord - Parts 13 & 14 (A.K.A. The Ultimate Foe - Parts 1 & 2)

(TARDIS Data Core page for The Trial of a Time Lord, TARDIS Data Core recap for The Ultimate Foe)

I have to say, the big finish to this season-spanning story is a bit of a mess. That is in no small part due to the fact that writer (and former Script Editor) Robert Holmes passed away before he could finish. As such, he gets credit for the penultimate episode while Pip & Jane Baker wrap up with the big finale. Would that Holmes could have completed his story, I am sure it would have been much more coherent.

Instead what we get is a fairly random mixture. The Master is in the Matrix, but although he is certainly pulling some strings he is not the bad guy. The Valyard turns out to be an evil incarnation of the Doctor from "somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnation", and his plan has something to do with destroying all of the Doctor's goodness so that only the bad will survive. Or something.

Much of the last two episodes take place inside the Matrix, where things are very surreal. At one point the Doctor drowns in quicksand, only to effortlessly rise out of it a few moments later without so much as a smear of mud on his clothes. There is quite a bit of running around inside a quasi-Victorian toy factory, with the same actor playing three different versions of himself and representing bureaucracy or something. By the time all the shouting is finished, the entire Gallifreyan High Council has been deposed for high crimes, including stealing the Earth with a giant magnetron and causing the fireball that nearly wiped out humanity.

And in the end, Mel  starts going on again about carrot juice, because the writers couldn't stomach her being an actually-useful character for more than thirty minutes or so.\

It's not bad, it's just not a great payoff to fourteen weeks of buildup. Behind the scenes tensions were high between Eric Saward, the Script Editor, and producer John Nathan Turner. Once the dust settled Robert Holmes was dead, Eric Saward had quit, and Colin Baker was fired. It's all just one big tragic mess, and a sadly weak way for Baker to be shown the door.

So tomorrow begins Day One of the second year of this project. I have twenty four days ahead of me with the Seventh Doctor, and then by Saint Patrick's Day I will have completed watching every single episode of Classic Who. Woo hoo!

STATS:

Doctor(s): Sixth
Companion(s): Mel
Episode(s): The Trial of a Time Lord - Parts 13 & 14 (A.K.A. The Ultimate Foe - Parts 1 & 2)
Steps Walked: 7,317 today, 2,369,202 total
Distance Walked: 4.03 miles today, 1,224.96 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 3 today, 3 total
Weight: 246.76 lbs (five day moving average), net change -60.54 lbs