I did forty push-ups this morning. Forty! How cool is that? Not so bad for a guy who could barely do three just a few weeks ago. In other happy news, I have an theatre audition in... (checks my watch)... two and a half hours. Wish me luck. I feel good about it, but you just never know. So, lots of good things happening today.

Then again, I watched the second half of the farting alien story today, so there's that. Let's talk about it.

World War Three

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

I don't want to dwell on the negatives (the flatulence, just so much flatulence), so instead I will focus on the good. Penelope Wiltin is just fantastic as Harriet Jones, a political "backbencher" destined to become Prime Minister. She spends most of this episode locked up in the same room at 10 Downing Street with the Doctor and Rose, and she might as well be a companion as far as that goes. What started out as kind of a joke character in yesterday's episode fully blossoms into a force to be reckoned with in this one. It's a great bit of writing and acting, and it lifts the story up to a watchable level.

Structurally the story is the inverse of yesterday, such that where Aliens of London spent its first ten minutes on Tyler family dynamics, this one spends its last ten minutes turning the same soil. The big Slitheen threat is neutralized (along with most of 10 Downing Street) by the thirty-five minute mark, and the rest is setting up Rose to continue her journeys with the Doctor but this time with her mother and Mickey both understanding about the Doctor and the TARDIS.

All in all it is not a bad episode, except that it is because of the ongoing fart jokes. 

The good news is, tomorrow is the episode that for me at least sealed the new series as being a hit. There are eight more episodes in this season, of which six are fantastic and the other two are somewhere between good and pretty good. The worst is behind me, and it's almost four weeks before I will hit another episode that I am actively dreading watching again.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Ninth
Companion(s): Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, Harriet Jones
Episode(s): World War Three
Steps Walked: 7,422 today, 2,572,243 total
Distance Walked: 4.01 miles today, 1,335.26 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 40 today, 323 total
Weight: 249.86 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.44 lbs