Still sick, still no new push-ups, and a slower pace on the treadmill today. Blech. Also blech: being sick means bloating up and retaining fluids (mostly phlegm), so I weighed in my heaviest in months today. I feel like a beached whale. It's ok, though, I know it will drop back off as soon as I get clear of this stupid cold or virus or whatever it is. But still, blech.

Speaking of whales, there was a big ol' space whale in today's episode. So let's talk about that.

The Beast Below

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Today was Amy's first trip in the TARDIS. The Doctor took her into space, and then they happened across the Starship U,K. heading out into deep space as a part of the Great Diaspora. So of course they go to visit the ship, and of course there are nefarious things afoot. Ultimately it turns out that the whole ship is strapped onto the back of a Star Whale, which has been held in captivity and tortured for going on two hundred years because the engines were never built and it was the only way to save the citizens of the United Kingdom (minus Scotland, who had gone off on their own). Amy shows her true worth when, just as the Doctor is about to lobotomize the whale to spare it any further pain, she intuits that the whale had actually originally come to help voluntarily. Thanks to Amy's insight, the whale is freed from torture and British humanity is saved. When the Doctor asks how she figured it out, she points out that "...if you are very old and the last of your kind, you just can't stand there and watch children cry."

This is a perfectly serviceable episode. It's not my favorite ever by any stretch, and the character of Liz Ten (who turns out to be Queen Elizabeth the 10th) is pretty cool. It bothered me at the time that Amy was able to see something in the situation that the Doctor didn't, but this time around it was much fresher for me that the Doctor was still reeling from the loss of Donna and the whole Waters of Mars experience. The significance here is that Amy is proving to be exactly what the Doctor's traveling companions should be - a positive influence to bring out his best and keep him from tipping over into the whole Lonely God persona.

So yeah, I enjoyed it about as much as I could for a middle-of-the-road episode watched while being sick.

Tomorrow, though... more damn Daleks, in a story that I almost liked until the final scene. Have I mentioned "blech" yet?

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond
Episode(s): The Beast Below
Steps Walked: 7,315 today, 3,010,389 total
Distance Walked: 3.66 miles today, 1,570.21 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 3,714 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is Anything Cool?: Nope
Weight: 253.66 lbs (five day moving average), net change -53.64 lbs