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

Ozzie Loves the Squaddie

Jul 04 2018
Ozzie Loves the Squaddie

It's Independence Day, a day off from work for me (notwithstanding the fact that I did, in fact, fix several bugs and do a code deployment to Production), so I took advantage and did another two-fer today in order to catch up. As of this moment I am on target to complete this ridiculous project on Monday, August 6th. That, of course, presumes that I will not miss any days between now and then. I am so going to take a nap on the plane to Vegas on August 7th...

So anyway, let's talk about Doctor Who.

The Caretaker

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story, written by Garth Roberts (The LodgerClosing Time, and several others) angles for a lighter comedic tone. The Doctor goes undercover at Coal Hill Academy as the temporary Caretaker, while he works to find and eliminate an alien war robot. Over the course of the story he regularly insults Danny Pink, continually insisting the Danny is a PE teacher and not a Maths teacher, and just generally being a complete prick. He is also patronizing and dismissive to Clara throughout the story. Presumably all is redeemed once the alien warbot is eliminated, due in part to Danny's timely assistance. None of that changes the fact that the Doctor shows a complete disregard towards the safety of the students at the school, and continues to be insultingly hostile to Danny. This... is not the Doctor as he has ever been written before. Even the First Doctor, who was regularly a cranky bastard, was never so openly and casually cruel.

That being said, on the whole the story works fine. It's not great, it's not awful, it just kind of does its thing and carries on. I wish I could say that of the next half of today's viewing.

Kill the Moon

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Just kill me if I am ever forced to watch this piece of tripe ever again.The moon is actually an egg, riddled with giant spider-shaped bacteria, rapidly gaining enough mass to have Earth-normal gravity. Once the giant magical space dragon hatches, all of that mass and matter just evaporate -- causing no sudden damage to the Earth. Oh, and then the giant magical space dragon lays an egg the exact size and mass of the previous moon, so the quo returns to its previous status for all things moon-related.

In between there is the section where the Doctor -- the man who has been Earth's staunchest defender and has routinely argued the minority position in order to coax humanity into making better decisions (and frequently failing, but never abandoning the fight) -- well, at the critical moment of decision he just fucks right off and leaves the decision of the fate of the Earth up to a fifteen year old girl, an astronaut who wants to murder the giant magical space dragon with nuclear warheads before it is born, and Clara. He just straight up abandons Clara, basically saying, "Nope, it's your call, I don't have a dog in this race." And then we get a prolonged allegorical abortion debate.

Look, this has never been a hard-science kind of show. There is all kinds of WhateverTechnology,alternate dimensions, and any other kind of wankery that the writers can dream up. Hell, The Celestial Toymaker had everyone running around inside fairy tales and children's books playing nonsensical games. The difference here is that there is not even a hand-wavey attempt at making the physics of this story make even the slightest bit of sense.

But even if there had been, it still remains that the Doctor is a complete and utter prick in this story for no good reason. I love Peter Capaldi so much as an actor, and it physically hurts to see his tenure as the Doctor tarnished by this kind of writing. I hate this story with all the fury of the sun, and it's not even my least favorite Twelfth Doctor story (I'll get there in about two weeks).

By the end of this story, Clara has walked out on the Doctor and declared she will never travel with him again. I don't blame her. I wouldn't want to travel with that prick either.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Twelfth
Companion(s): Clara Oswald, Danny Pink
Episode(s): The Caretaker / Kill the Moon
Steps Walked: 12,699 today, 3,380,259 total
Distance Walked: 6.30 miles today, 1,766.13 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,579 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
Weight: 248.12 lbs (five day moving average), net change -59.18 lbs


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