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

I've been a wanted man all my life. What I need now is to be unwanted.

Jul 07 2019
I've been a wanted man all my life. What I need now is to be unwanted.

You know how yesterday I said my goal was to get back below 270 by the 15th? I am sure you do, because I know that you, my dear imaginary readers, hang on my every word. Well, anyway, this morning I weighed in at 270.4. I will grant you that this particular number was reached by way of extreme dehydration after both doing my morning workout and then doing my yard work in the July Florida sun, but I'll take the numbers however I can get them. If it works for high school competitive wrestlers, then by God it should work for me. The flip side of that, though, is that tomorrow I will almost certainly bounce back up a bit. That's just how it works. But the fact remains I am back on the right track. All I have to do is stay on it, which as been (to say the least) a bit of a challenge these past few months...

Onward to this morning's viewing:

Countdown

(Blake's 7 Wiki Recap)

Written by series creator Terry Nation, this episode follows on from the plot points introduced in his previous story Pressure Point. The gist is that Blake has identified a Federation officer who may know where the Control (the Federation's command and control center) is actually located. Problem being, he is on a planet that has just staged a semi-successful uprising against the Federation. I say "semi-successful", because although the rebels overwhelm the Federation base controlling the population, said officer kicks off the titular Countdown on a doomsday Neutron bomb. If not halted in time, the bomb will detonate and kill every living creature on the planet whilst leaving all of the physical infrastructure intact. All the Federation has to do is wait a day or so for the radiation to dissipate, and then can stroll back in and carry on without the pesky native population to worry about any more.

Oops.

Another wrinkle: the mercenary who had been hired by the locals to lead the revolution happens to have a longstanding desire to kill Avon. Which, I mean... who doesn't, really?

So of course the story breaks down into an A story with Blake playing cat-and-mouse with the Federation officer, and with Avon paired up with his nemesis in order to defuse the warhead. It sounds predictable, and to a certain extent it is, but it is also hugely entertaining. Not least because Nation has clearly shown in this series that he is perfectly willing to kill of large numbers of people and to have his protagonists fail miserably from time to time, so there is no real guarantee that Blake will catch his man or that Avon will defuse the bomb.

That being said, Blake catches his man and Avon defuses the bomb.

The upshot of the whole thing is that Blake now knows that Control is located at a place named Star One, along with a clue on how to find it. Also, Avon gets some back story about a woman he once loved who died in Federation custody. Avon is such a deliciously complex character, and this helps explain to some degree why he would still be sticking around with the Liberator crew in their crusade against the Federation.

All in all, excellent stuff and very enjoyable viewing this morning. I continue to kick myself for taking four decades to get around to watching this show. What the heck was my problem?

One random factoid: This is the first episode since the appearance of the Liberator that neither Zen nor Orac appear in the story. Orac gets a mention, but this is the first time that Peter Tuddenham (who voices both) has gotten the week off. Weird.

That's it for today. Could I drop below 270 tomorrow? I doubt it, but stay tuned to find out.

STATS:

Episode(s): Blake's 7: Countdown
Steps Walked: 6,892 today, 4,798,095 total
Distance Walked: 2.99 miles today, 2,491.88 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 50 today, 11,750 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,765 total
Weight: 271.98 lbs (five day moving average), net change -35.42 lbs


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