So, a thing happened this morning. I got an email with a video from none other than Sophie Aldred, a.k.a. Ace, cheering me on in the home stretch of this ridiculous project. When I started well over a year ago I had never actually watched any of the Seventh Doctor stories. For whatever reason I had always kind of mentally filed them away as the sputtering end of a dying show, with low production values and a comedian as the Doctor. I could not have been more wrong. I wound up enjoying that era immensely, and would rank The Curse of Fenric as one of the best Classic Who stories bar none. Sylvester McCoy was impressively nuanced and dark, and as for Ace, well... she absolutely rocked. I will always love Barbara Wright, Goddess the most as a companion, and of course the immortal Sarah Jane Smith was brilliant. I am here to say that Sophie Aldred as Ace stands shoulder to shoulder with both of them, and I would very much love to meet her some day and tell her so face to face.

But in the meantime, here is the video that put a smile on my face all day today:

Sadly, I also have to talk about the crappy Dalek story I finished watching to day. So let's get it done.

Evolution of the Daleks

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Dalek Sec becomes a Human/Dalek Hybrid. There is some Frankenstein mad science in order to turn a bunch of dead humans into Daleks, except the Doctor takes the lightning strike and infects them with Time Lord DNA.  The remaining three Cult of Skaro Daleks turn on Dalek Sec. The Doctor faces them all down in a Broadway theatre, all but one of the bad guys dies, the last remaining Dalek does another emergency temporal shift to escape, and the Doctor saves PigManLaszlo so that he can have a long and fulfilling life with ShowgirlTellulah. It's a happy crappy ending. Roll credits!

I just have nothing kind to say about this story. I hated it when it first aired, and I hated it again rewatching it. I guess there is a kind of clever call-back to Evil of the Daleks in that it involves human DNA giving Daleks free will and leads to a revolt, but I honestly kind of wonder whether that is actually a call back or if the writer had no idea the plot point had already been used before. In any case, all it does is makes me miss a far superior Dalek story.

The good news is, I made it through it and I never, ever have to watch this story again for as long as I live. So there's a mercy.

Tomorrow I've got one more wobbly episode (more a victim of its reach exceeding its special effects grasp), and then I get into an absolutely brilliant run of stories.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth
Companion(s): Martha Jones
Episode(s): Evolution of the Daleks
Steps Walked: 7,664 today, 2,786,398 total
Distance Walked: 4.18 miles today, 1,452.51 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,414 total
Sit-ups Completed: 40 today, 111 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: Not even a little bit. And why should he be? This story is not his fault.
Weight: 249.56 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.74 lbs