One of the nice things about getting back into an exercise program after slacking off for a bit is that the universe tends to reward you right away in order to encourage you. Case in point, I weighed in more than three pounds lighter this morning than I did yesterday. Of course that is not any kind of sustainable momentum, but I am confident that the awful trend lines in my five day moving average will start turning back around handily in short order. I have what I think is a very reasonable goal of being comfortably back below 260 well before Thanksgiving, and to finish the year back below 250. 

In the meantime, today I started in on Torchwood: Children of Earth, and holy cow did it deliver.

Children of Earth: Day One

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This right here? This is what I was hoping for from Torchwood from day one. Three years later, at least I finally got it in Day One. This was originally aired as a five day event series, run on five consecutive nights, which means it was designed from the get-go to be binge watched several years before the dawn of binge watching. Being a single long-form story spread across five full hours, it also means the writing gets to be a slow build with lots of character exploration punctuated by bits of terror. It is just so good!

The story involves all of the children on the planet stopping simultaneously at 8:40 am GMT, and then again at 10:30 am. The second time around, the children first scream for an impossibly long time without taking any breath and then start chanting en mass "we... we... we... WE ARE COMING...". Both times, after the trance end the children just carry on with whatever they were doing with no memory of what happened.

Oh, and aside from all of the children in the world, one singular adult stops and chants with them as well. He turns out to be the sole survivor (escapee?) from a busload of Scottish children who were apparently just given to a mysterious alien race known only as the 456 (so named because of the radio frequency upon which they communicated with the British government).

Against all of that we get to finally meet Ianto's family, discover that Jack has an adult daughter and a young grandson, and Gwen finds out that she is three weeks pregnant. We also get a magnificent performance by Peter Capaldi as a government appointee who is intimately involved with the dark secrets of the past British appeasement to the 456. We also get a very nice misdirection with a new doctor who is clearly auditioning to become NewOwen, at least right up until the point that he isn't.

Oh, and at the end of the episode a mysterious group of government military baddies plant a bomb in Jack's belly (unbeknownst to him, because he was shot dead twice consecutively by said baddies, and awoke post-surgery with no idea what happened), and then freaking blow up the Hub!!!

It's just so, so good. This week is easily going to be my most enjoyable time spent with Torchwood, and I am already weeping that by Friday it will all be over and I'll be stuck with Miracle Day. Ugh.

But at least I have four more days of Torchwood bliss to re-experience, so I will take the good while I have it.

STATS:

Featuring: Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams, Ianto Jones
Episode(s): Children of Earth: Day 1
Steps Walked: 8,080 today, 3,912,087 total
Distance Walked: 4.10 miles today, 2,047.43 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 50 today, 7,923 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,029 total
Weight: 261.46 lbs (five day moving average), net change -45.84 lbs