So yeah, I've kind of been looking forward to this story. To my mind, the first Doctor has three truly landmark stories: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Tenth Planet. There are others I enjoy more, such as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, or The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but those first three are the ones which are foundational to Doctor Who. The first story, because of course. The second story, because however sick I may be of the Daleks there is no denying that without them there would be no Doctor Who at all. And today's story, because not only does it introduce the second most popular ongoing villains (in my mind it goes Daleks, Cybermen, The Master) but it also introduces the concept of regeneration. Although, it is worth noting that regeneration doesn't get a name for many more years, not until the Third Doctor reaches his end on the Planet of the Spiders. Of course I have been looking forward to today's story, how could I not be?

Let's talk about that.

What's not to love about The Smugglers? It contains betrayal and other turns of plot, it has a massive brawl between the brigands and the militia with our heroes stuck right between, and it contains the puzzle that leads to the buried treasure. As for me today, my five-day moving average has finally moved back in the right direction. This makes me a very happy boy indeed.

Let's talk about that.

Here we are again, with yet another fine example of how good the historical stories can be. The Smugglers is set in 17th century coastal England, with a small town caught between a churchwarden with a secret, a pirate captain and his bloodthirsty crew, and a clueless squire. There is no need for aliens or monsters to create drama, there are plenty of human monsters to be found. In fact, what little actual footage remains of this story only still exist because it was manually edited out of prints in circulation for foreign broadcast -- footage that was cut for being too violent, and then survived in a file while the rest of the print was lost.

Let's talk about that.

Poor Dodo. Sent off to the country to rest towards the end of episode two, and never given a proper goodbye. Nothing more than a quick note sent at the end of episode four saying she is feeling better, has decided to stay in London, and she sends the Doctor her love. That's about as unceremonious a dumping as you can get on this show. She's the first companion to ever just wander off halfway through a story and never bother to come back. I'd say she will be missed but... really, she won't.  But hey, lots of other cool stuff happened by the end of The War Machines.

Let's talk about that.

Oh, double-edged sword of the moving average. Today is the second day running where my daily weight is down from the day before, and yet the moving average is higher. But that's ok. At least I am not being mind-controlled by a super-computer (as far as I know). Today I started The War Machines, the final story of the third season of Doctor Who, and it's a good'n. In 1966 the notion of networked computers was definitely floating around out there, but even ARPANET would not actually be constructed for a few more years. It was very cutting edge for the show to do a story about a self-aware mainframe computer forging a global network. It seems like Innes Lloyd's production team has found it's stride, and the show is entering a new Golden Age.

Let's talk about that.

So, yesterday and today are frustrating weight days. I made a lot of sustained progress in the past few weeks, so a rebound was pretty much inevitable. It doesn't make it any less demoralizing, though. Still, yesterday was awful and today was halfway back to where I was, so even though the five-day average has taken a nasty turn upwards, it does seem to be just a normal little hiccup and things are hopefully moving back on track. Lord knows my son will have me out walking around theme parks all weekend, so that will help.

Anyway, about the conclusion to The Savages -- wow, what a rip-roaring back half! You know how the most fun part of a home improvement project is the demolition? Just taking a sledge hammer to those crappy cabinets and smashing them to bits? While, the climax of this story has exactly that kind of glee. On top of that, the story marks the exit of Peter Purves as Steven, and he goes out as a triumphant hero in every possible way.

Let's talk about that.

When I first saw the ridiculous helmets the security officers wore in The Savages, I thought they must have been recycled from the Robomen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. But no, that other ridiculously large headgear was stupid in an entirely different configuration. I don't know why the security officers wear those helmets, they seem incredibly impractical to me, but what do I know? I'm not the one harvesting life force from the local natives like some kind of technocratic vampire.

Let's talk about that.

I finished The Gunfighters today, and I really don't have much else to say about it beyond what I said yesterday. On the upside, the character of Johnny Ringo shows up and the actor playing him is quite good. On the downside, that stupid song continues to happen throughout every single scene, frequently repeating the same block of lyrics three or four times. At the time it aired, it was the lowest-rated story in Doctor Who history, and as a result it is also the story that put the nail in the coffin of the pure historicals. It is also the last story to use individual titles for the episodes. From here on out, up until the modern era, there is just an overall story title broken up by part numbers.

Let's talk about that.

Look, it's not that The Gunslingers is awful. It's just not particularly good, either. I will grant you that at the moment there are any number of fine British actors who are able to convincingly play Americans with flawless accents. I'd even be willing to bet that in 1966 there were equally talented actors. Heck, that same year over in Italy and Spain they made The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, one of the greatest spaghetti westerns of the era. One presumes those actors simply weren't available on Doctor Who's 1966 budget, so instead we get the likes of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday performed in mostly proper BBC English with the edges roughed up into something vaguely like a cowboy accent. Oh, and we get an original song. Ugh, that song...

Let's talk about that.

Here is the nicest thing I can say about The Celestial Toymaker: In the Trilogic Game that the Doctor is compelled to play, the Toymaker asserts that the correct solution will take exactly 1,023 moves. Given that there are ten pieces in the stack, and the formula for calculating the number of moves is 2^n - 1, it will absolutely take precisely 1,023 moves to complete the puzzle with no errors. Bear in mind, though, that the moves are extremely mechanical and not in the least bit challenging. Playing methodically and moving one piece per second, it would take around seventeen minutes to complete. Of course, the Doctor was slow-rolling it despite the occasional nudges by the Toymaker. So the playing time lines up pretty well with the hour or so that Steven and Dodo spent playing the other games. So, yay for mathematical and temporal accuracy?

As for the rest, let's talk about that.