One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

Ignorance is... what's the opposite of bliss? Carlisle. Ignorance is Carlisle.

Jun 23 2018
Ignorance is... what's the opposite of bliss? Carlisle. Ignorance is Carlisle.

I had a few days last week where I skipped push-ups because my shoulder was hurting. A few days ago I had a massage therapist work on that area, and the good news is he was able to really loosen it up. The bad news is that now my right arm is unusually weak. Yesterday I could barely manage fifty push-ups, and today I got to sixty. It feels like I am essentially doing one-handed push-ups with my left arm, and my right arm is just kind of tagging along. I don't know what that is about, I may have to do some more physical therapy or massage there. It just feels so weird, after so much time of just knocking out a hundred in four sets with minimal struggle (and even then, only in the last ten or so), to now feel like I am fighting right from the first one.

But this was never meant to be about strength training, it's all about time spent on the treadmill watching Doctor Who, and that I did today. Let's talk about it.

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(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Before I get into today's episode, I keep meaning to comment about the opening credits sequence. It got changed up back with The Snowmen after being largely the same since the dawn of NuWho. There have been a few tweaks since the series came back, and the music has been re-scored several times, but it has essentially been your basic time tunnel thing calling back to the Third and Fourth Doctor eras. This new credit sequence, though, is wholly original and only lasts for the final run of Eleventh Doctor stories. It is, without a doubt, the best opening credit sequence of the entire modern series. The switch that happens for the Twelfth Doctor era is clever, and I like it well enough, but this is the one that really stands out for the modern series:

Isn't that just gorgeous? I especially love that it has the flash of Matt Smith's face at one point, the first time the Doctor's face has appeared in the opening sequence since the Seventh Doctor. It's just a scrumptious sequence, and I both wish it had started sooner and lasted longer. Ah, well.

Getting on to today's story, it is a gothic horror tale set in the Scottish Moors in the mid-70's. The "Witch of the Well" has been haunting Caliburn House for as long as it has existed, built four hundred years earlier, and the ghost has been reported in the region for as far back as anyone can remember. Actor Dougray Scott (who famously was originally cast as Wolverine in the first X-Men movie but had to give the part up to Hugh Jackman after a motorcycle accident on the set of Mission Impossible 2) plays the owner of the mansion, assisted by an absolutely lovely Jessica Raine in the role of his empathically-psychic companion. And here I just have to take a moment to compliment her costume design. I don't usually notice costumes per-se, but something about her pitch-perfect 70's attire really caught my eye.


I don't know why, but it's something about the two buttons on the skirt that really sell it for me.

Ms Raine is also notable for playing producer Verity Lambert in An Adventure in Space and Time, where she was absolutely spectacular.

In any case, the Doctor and Clara arrive ostensibly in search of the ghost. Eventually it turns out that the Doctor is really there to talk to the empath, to get her read on Clara.  Not surprisingly, her read is that Clara is a nice, intelligent young woman with nothing to hide. Meanwhile, lots of creepy stuff happens with apparitions appearing, and cold spots, and psychic energy and such. Eventually it turns out that there is a crashed time traveler trapped in a pocket universe just next to the mansion, being chased by a terrifying Crooked Man.

Of course, in the end the time traveler is rescued. Somewhat surprising is that she turns out to be the great great great (and a bunch more greats) granddaughter of Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine, and the blood relation is what was able to amplify her cry for help. More surprising is when, out of nowhere after the entire plot is resolved, it turns out that the Crooked Man in the pocket universe has a Crooked Woman lurking in the mansion, and the whole thing winds up actually being a Crooked Love Story. Bravo for Crooked Romance!

This one was written and directed by Neil Cross, who was also responsible for The Rings of Akhaten.

The good news is, his second time at bat is far superior to his first. As I have said before, gothic horror tends to work very well on Doctor Who. Egyptian imagery, on the other hand, for whatever reasons seems to fall flat. Remember Pyramids of Mars? Not exactly Tom Baker's finest outing. Also, perhaps directing his own script helped in some way. In any case, I like this episode a lot. The last minute romantic twist seems a bit random and tacked on, but not egregiously so. The mid-70's setting is a great aesthetic, especially at a point in the series where there have been so many callbacks to that era of the show. This could easily have been a Third Doctor / Sarah Jane Smith story (minus the "Impossible Girl calls the TARDIS a grumpy old cow" stuff). 

Tomorrow, then, I'll see how many push-ups my numb right arm can do, as we get the first story to take an extensive tour of the interior of the TARDIS.


Call Narm-1-1

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Clara Oswald
Episode(s): Hide
Steps Walked: 7,521 today, 3,280,835 total
Distance Walked: 4.05 miles today, 1,714.97 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 60 today, 6,474 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Is Anything Cool?: Still nothing cool. I think the era of cool-ness has passed now.
Weight: 250.98 lbs (five day moving average), net change -56.32 lbs


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