It's been four days since I last posted, but on three of those days I did work out and watch Blake's 7. So let's get caught up.

Cygnus Alpha

(Blake's 7 Wiki Recap)

I hate doing recaps, so let's make these brief. In this episode Blake, Avon, and Jenna take command of the newly-rechristened Liberator, along with it's (possibly sentient?) supercomputer Zen, and proceed to the titular Cygnus Alpha in order to rescue their fellow prisoners from the previous episode and to recruit crew members in Blake's crusade to bring down the Federation. There on the planet they encounter Brian Blessed chewing scenery left and right as no-one else can. Here, Blessed plays the leader of a religious sect that has subjugated the population of the penal colony by convincing them that they are all infected with a deadly plague that can only be held at bay by the daily medication he and his order provides. Of course that is all hogwash, it is the pills themselves that make everyone sick -- a twist that I saw coming roughly three nanoseconds after the illness and treatment were mentioned. Ultimately Blake is only able to rescue Vila and Gan, who featured prominently in the prior episode. As for Brian Blessed, he gets teleported into deep space to die a horrible death. Oops.

Time Squad

(Blake's 7 Wiki Recap)

This one is interesting, in that it features both an A plot and a B plot. That is a structure that was very common to Star Trek but not so much with British shows like Doctor Who or Blake's 7. The A plot has Blake, Avon, and Vila teleporting down to a planet that does not at all look like an English rock quarry in order to blow up a Federation communications station. Along the way Vila ponders the possibility of being eaten by carnivorous plants, and Blake picks up a new crew member in the person of a telepath named Cally. The B plot has Jenna and Gan dealing with the cryogenically frozen occupants of a space capsule they found drifting with an emergency beacon. Said occupants turn out to be genocidal maniacs, and they are all killed and their ship jettisoned back into space. This story is primarily notable in that, by the end of it we finally have the entire crew of seven characters. It only took four episodes to get here.

The Web

(Blake's 7 Wiki Recap)

In a story that plays so much like a Doctor Who story that I wonder if it was originally pitched there, the TARDIS Liberator is pulled off course after the Doctor's companion Cally is placed under telepathic control and forced to sabotage the ship. The ship becomes ensnared in the titular Web, while the Doctor Blake meets the beings that have summoned them. It is a rogue scientific outpost in which they are performing experiments that have been outlawed for centuries, including the creation of a new life form (called the Decimas) who were initially bred to be slave labor but have which subsequently become sentient. The scientists offer the Doctor Blake the means to escape the Web in exchange for some power crystals, but doing so will result in the genocide of the Decimas. Ultimately the Doctor Blake leads an uprising of the Decimas, the scientists are killed, and it turns out the Web completely dissipates as soon as its creators are no longer there to generate it. Also: if you have ever seen that bit from Dumb and Dumber where Lloyd makes the most annoying sound in the world, just take that sound, crank it to eleven, and pitch it up to screeching levels, and that is the sound the Decimas make during their uprising at the end of the story. It goes on, painfully, for several minutes. It's not a bad episode story-wise, but you would have to pay me cash money to convince me to ever watch it again.

As for my workouts: the bad news is I missed two of my three planned gym workouts this week, primarily because I am in rehearsals four nights per week for a show, and in the morning I am just too exhausted to drag myself out of bed early enough to go work out. That's a bad excuse, but there it is. The good news is, I am still moving in the right direction. For a bit there my five day moving average had me at over five pounds lost in the previous week, and that is just too much to sustain and be healthy and maintainable. As of today have dropped to a much more healthy average of being down two pounds since the previous week. That is a rate I can feel okay about. The weekend is always more aggressive on that front, in that I nearly always spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons out with my son walking around Disney parks, in addition to my treadmill time, so I expect my numbers to hold strong. The graph on the homepage here is already looking better, but I have a year's worth of back-sliding to counter so I have a good long ways to go yet.

It's a daily struggle, and I particularly battle with the Imposter Syndrome on multiple fronts, but today at least I feel good about where things are.

STATS:

Episode(s): Blake's 7: Cygnus Alpha
Steps Walked: 6,627 today, 4,673,837 total
Distance Walked: 2.75 miles today, 2,436.80 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 11,650 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,665 total
Weight: 266.16 lbs (five day moving average), net change -41.14 lbs

Episode(s): Blake's 7: Time Squad
Steps Walked: 6,984 today, 4,680,821 total
Distance Walked: 3.07 miles today, 2,439.87 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 11,650 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,665 total
Weight: 266.58 lbs (five day moving average), net change -40.72 lbs

Episode(s): Blake's 7: The Web
Steps Walked: 6,753 today, 4,687,574 total
Distance Walked: 2.74 miles today, 2,442.61 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 11,650 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,665 total
Weight: 266.64 lbs (five day moving average), net change -40.66 lbs