Mixed news on my floppy right arm today. On the positive side, I did do 50 push-ups, and it did feel stronger than the last time I attempted them a week ago. On the negative side, it still feels weak - stronger than it was, but weaker than I would like. Where my left arm feels properly seated, my right arm feels like a ball joint with a broken nylon bushing, where the joint is just not stable at all. That being the case, I am going to keep off of it for a while yet to let it continue to heal. If I haven't seen any real improvement by next weekend, then I suppose the next step is to see a specialist and get it x-rayed.

In other news, there was a new Doctor today and he was very grumpy and cross. So let's talk about that.

Deep Breath

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This is, first and foremost, a post-regeneration story. As has been common with pretty much every Doctor since Five, there is a period of time in which the new incarnation is "still baking" and not really himself. In this case, the Doctor ends up back in Victorian London along with Clara and a huge T-Rex, and he spends at least half of the tale confused and unsure of himself while Clara struggles with accepting him. Somewhere around the mid-point it finally digs into an actual threat to be defeated, and winds up being a loose sequel or spinoff of The Girl in the Fireplace. Except that where that earlier story was delightful and imaginative, this one is more grim and disturbing. Essentially, a sister ship to the Madame du Pompadour crash-landed millions of years ago, and the clockwork survivors have been harvesting humans to repair themselves ever since.

The Paternoster Gang shows up for their final (to date, and presumably forever) television outing, and right at the end the mysterious character of Missy appears to set up the overall arc of this season. Michelle Gomez of course is brilliant right from the get-go. The big surprise, though, comes when the Eleventh Doctor shows up as he makes a phone call to future-Clara just before he regenerates, basically begging her to help the new version of him. It is the turning point where she finally accepts the Twelfth Doctor fully. 

So here we are in the Twelfth Doctor era, and I will say that Peter Capaldi is easily my favorite actor to play the role. But he isn't my favorite Doctor, largely because I wish they hadn't trodden down the Sixth Doctor path of making him harshly alien for so long, and also largely because he did not get the writing support he deserved (particularly in his first season). Of the twelve episodes this season, I genuinely like three of them, I think five of them are mostly ok, and there are four of them that I think stand up as modern comparisons to Planet of the Giants. That's not a particularly good ratio.

Today's story falls into the "mostly ok" category, nothing horrible but nothing remarkable.The whole T-Rex thing seems like a stupid gimmick, just an excuse to be able to include shots of a T-Rex in the Thames for the trailers, and the giant lizard gets summarily burned up at the end of the first act and never serves any real purpose. Similarly, the Clockwork Men here seem like a pale imitation of the ones from Fireplace. I wish Steven Moffat would have come up with something more original. On the other hand, Clara's crisis of trust in the Doctor is well-written and well-played, and the arc she goes through with that feels genuine.

Tomorrow is another damned Dalek story, which I could really do without, but at least it is not one of the four this season that I hate. The first of those comes up directly afterward, though. Yay.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh, Twelfth
Companion(s): Clara Oswald, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, Strax
Episode(s): Deep Breath
Steps Walked: 10,534 today, 3,340,218 total
Distance Walked: 5.33 miles today, 1,746.01 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 50 today, 6,579 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Weight: 248.00 lbs (five day moving average), net change -59.30 lbs