I'll be honest right up front: I am phoning this one in today. I overslept, didn't do my usual pre-treadmill workout, and barely managed to get my treadmill time in. Today was a morass of meetings and troubleshooting and re-writing code, and tonight I just want to crawl into bed.

But before I can do that I need to get this done, so let's talk Doctor Who.

The Sontaran Stratagem

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story, a two-parter, is easily the weakest part of the season. Not coincidentally, it is written by the same person who wrote the previous season's damned Dalek two-parter. On the upside, it features a guest appearance by Martha Jones as well as more screen time for Wilfred Mott. It also features the first appearance of actor Dan Starkey, here playing the Sontaran Commander Skorr. He will later be better known as Strax, one of the Paternoster Gang, but I won't get there for a few more weeks. It's nice to see him, though.

As for plot, the Doctor gets a phone call from Martha asking him to come back to Earth. It seams that something weird is going on with a company called ATMOS which has managed to have its combination emissions control and navigation system installed on fully fifty percent of all automobiles on the planet. The company is run by Mark Zuckerberg a dickish young genius who supposedly invented the system, but who actually got it by collaborating with the Sontarans. Some other stuff happens, Martha gets captured and cloned, the Sontarans set off all of the ATMOS devices, and release a poison gas all around the world. Oh no!

It's actually a fairly decent episode, certainly better than the Dalek travesty from last year, but there is a mighty long leap from "fairly decent" to "genuinely good" and this story doesn't quite make it. There are several very nice moments, like when Donna uses her SuperTemp experience to spot something that UNIT's smartest investigators had completely missed, but for the most part it just kinda sits there.

I didn't much like it the first time 'round either, and I honestly don't even remember how the second part resolves. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

*yawn*

I'm going to bed now.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Tenth
Companion(s): Donna Noble, Wilfred Mott, Martha Jones
Episode(s): The Sontaran Stratagem
Steps Walked: 7,584 today, 2,883,568 total
Distance Walked: 4.11 miles today, 1,504.09 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 2,414 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is the Doctor So, So Sorry?: Surprisingly, no
Weight: 250.02 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.28 lbs