What better way to start of a Monday morning in June than to celebrate Christmas? Yeah, these rapid-fire holiday specials are really getting disconcerting. I skipped pushups this morning, mostly because I have a muscle in my right shoulder that is tweaked. I am going to see a massage therapist on Wednesday, so hopefully I can get that sorted out.

But I dd also put in my treadmill time, so let's talk about that.

The Snowmen

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Although new companion Clara made a surprise appearance a few days ago in Asylum of the Daleks, today's story marks the proper beginning of the era of The Impossible Girl. As an aside, it really annoys me that Steven Moffat seems to think that all recurring female characters must be a puzzle box. There's the whole River Song thing, was is The Girl Who Waited, and now we get Clara -- who died in Asylum of the Daleks, died again in today's episode (spoilers!), and will die again at the end of her run. Not that death is any deterrence for Moffat, obviously. It's just that, as much as I like actress Jenna-Louise Coleman and find her to be completely charming, the fact remains that Clara is never allowed to actually be a fully developed person in her own right. For this series she exists as a puzzle for the Doctor to solve. In the next series she exists to be Danny's girlfriend. In the series after that she exists to be the reckless force propelling stories into danger. These are not character progressions, she just becomes fundamentally different from story to story as whatever cipher that Moffat needs to fill in the blanks. For an actress as talented as Coleman, that's just tragic.

Today's story firmly establishes the Paternoster Gang (Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax) as Victorian era detectives, and fleshes out their characters. It also begins with the Doctor having withdrawn from the world, wounded by the sudden and permanent departure of Amy and Rory. Most importantly, today's story marks the return of The Great Intelligence, last seen in the Second Doctor era (and the Brigadier's first appearance) story The Web of Fear. In a nutshell, something is making the snow intelligent, which makes for carnivorous snowmen and a scary ice governess. Of course the Doctor gets pulled in, and even delights in recruiting Clara as his new traveling companion. She even gets her "it's bigger on the inside" moment, which she delightfully inverts by exclaiming that "..it's smaller on the outside!"

And then she dies. Oops.

But then she is alive again in London in 2013, for reasons which will not be explained until next Tuesday. The Doctor is reinvigorated, he has a new female puzzle box to solve, and he's off to the races with his brand new TARDIS console room (one which will last through the remainder of Moffat's time on the show, presumably to be replace this fall with the start of the Thirteenth Doctor).

I wish I had anything more profound to say, but I have lines to memorize and sleep to get, so I am calling it a night.

Tomorrow: WiFi can be deadly.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Clara Oswald, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, Strax
Episode(s): The Snowmen
Steps Walked: 8,650 today, 3,251,026 total
Distance Walked: 4.65 miles today, 1,698.90 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,264 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is Anything Cool?: Yes! Bowties are still cool!!
Weight: 252.32 lbs (five day moving average), net change -54.98 lbs