Today marks the fourteen month anniversary of the day I started this ridiculous project. In that time I have walked 1,460.88 miles on the treadmill while taking 2,808,440 steps, watching 733 episodes and 184 stories of Doctor Who, and losing 57.46 pounds in weight. I have also gone from barely being able to do three push-ups to being able to do over 160 at maximum and have actually started doing 100 push-ups per day as just a normal part of my daily workout and am now adding sit-ups to the mix. In terms of weight, I seem to have pretty much stabilized. I am very slightly lighter than I was a month ago today, but well within a kind of statistical noise pattern. I am totally fine with this. My body continues to change in shape as I build muscle mass, and honestly it is kind of weird-but-satisfying. This has never been about a number for me, but more about feeling well. At this point I surely do feel well. 

As for Doctor Who, this morning I watched my all-time favorite episode of NuWho although it was marred by some technical treadmill issues. So let's talk about that.

Human Nature

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story is pure genius, plain and simple.  Screenwriter Paul Cornell adapted it from his novel of the same name, the premise being that the Doctor and his companion are being hunted by a ruthless family of aliens who are capable of tracking them across all of space and time. The Doctor uses the Chameleon Arch to transform himself into a human, right down to the cellular level, in order to throw off the scent. Given three months of hiding, the Family will simply die off. So it is that the Doctor becomes John Smith, a professor at a 1913 British boarding school, and Martha becomes his servant tasked with reversing the transformation once the danger has passed.

All of that backstory, though, is revealed only through quick flashes of dreams and visions. Aside from those quick snippets, the Doctor does not appear in this episode at all. Instead we get to see David Tennant wonderfully portray an entirely different character, that of kind-but-somewhat-awkward John Smith. Even more surprising, John Smith gets a love interest in the person of Joan Redfern, played brilliantly by Jessica Hynes. It's the one thing that never even occurred to the Doctor to give Martha instructions for.

And yeah, there are scary body-stealing aliens and creepy scarecrow monsters and lasers and explosions, but they are not what the story is about. 

One of my favorite moments is when Joan ask Smith about his family, and he talks about his father Sydney and his mother Verity. These, of course, are references to Sydney Newman who created the show and Verity Lambert who was the first producer. It's a sweet tribute delivered warmly, and it makes me smile every time I watch that scene.

The story also features the first instance in the show's history of straight-up racism towards a companion, as Martha is repeatedly insulted and denigrated for her ethnicity. 

Absolutely everything about this story is masterfully done, When it got to the kissing scene it didn't even bother me, because it is John Smith falling in love and not the Doctor. What bothered me during scene this morning was that my treadmill abruptly came to a stop at that moment.

Just all of a sudden the whole thing powered down completely. You may or may not remember about this time last year when the control board on the treadmill burned out due to lack of proper maintenance on my part. I feared that the same thing had happened again, even though I have been diligent in keeping the belt properly lubricated ever since it was repaired. The weird thing was, if I leaned forward the power would come back on. But if I stepped back it would go out again. A bit of stepping around in various spots showed the same kind of pattern, where if the weight was in one direction I would get power and in any other direction I would get none. That implied a loose connection of some sort, so I pulled the casing off and started probing around. I somehow managed to not electrocute myself, and also found the connection that had been gradually worked loose by the vibration of my steps. Properly snugged back in, I was able to finish my workout but had to cut it ten minutes short because I was running late for work.

So I finished the episode, but I had to guess at step count and distance because the actual numbers were wiped out by the power outage. Today's data is fudged, but I figure it is close enough to count. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Tomorrow, then, I will finish this story and hopefully it will be an uneventful viewing with no power drops. I will honestly scream if my treadmill craps out this close to the finish line. I figure I have about three months left to go. 

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth
Companion(s): Martha Jones
Episode(s): Human Nature
Steps Walked: 6,779 today, 2,808,440 total
Distance Walked: 3.60 miles today, 1,464.48 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 1,514 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 160 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: The Doctor isn't even present, not really
Weight: 249.84 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.46 lbs