So far today I have worked a full day at my regular job, spent an hour on the treadmill watching Doctor Who, performed onstage in a theatrical production, and now I need to write this blog post before I go to bed. What are the odds that I am just going to copy and paste what I wrote a year and a half ago when this episode first aired? (Hint: the odds are pretty dang good.)

Here I am, driving to the end of this ridiculous project and circling back to nearly a year-and-a-half ago when I wrote about today's episode on its original air date. The funny thing about reaching the end right now is that I am in the midst of finishing a month-long run of acting in a stage show, plus this is my business time of the year at my day job, plus  a few other bits of drama. Still, I am trying to push through to the end of the project in just over a week, so let's get this done.

Merry Christmas in July! Fittingly enough, here at the exact mid-point between Christmases, I have just watched my second Doctor Who Christmas episode in two day. That being said, it is certainly the least Christmassy of all the Christmas episodes to date. So let's talk about that.

Today was the first of two consecutive Christmases. It is also my thirteenth wedding anniversary. In about an hour I will be going out to a very nice dinner with my wife, so I am getting this out of the way first so I can just go out and have a lovely romantic evening and forget about you, my dear imaginary readers.

So let's talk about the end of River Song's storyline.

Today I finished Clara's run on Doctor Who. Granted, she died two episodes ago, but with this show you just have to accept a bit of timey-wimey goodness. More importantly, given what is coming very soon, today's episode contains the very first in-cannon onscreen regeneration of a Time Lord in which the gender changes. It has been mentioned in the past, and of course there is the change from Master to Missy, but this is the first one where the gender change happens unambiguously onscreen. For anyone complaining about Jodie Whittaker as the new Doctor, the foundation was already laid. And if you think it is just the show caving to a bunch of Social Justice Warriors, well, let me point you to this very excellent post at SartorialGeek.com (which I discovered via my friend Riff -- who also happens to be the best Roger Delgado Master cosplayer in the world). In short, from Day One Doctor Who has been a very inclusive and socially aware program. Yes, it has had its faults and missteps, it's not perfect, but this has quite intentionally been in the show's DNA from the very beginning. It's one of the reasons I am such a fan.

But enough about that, let's talk about the deposement of Rassillon. (Is that even a word? I think so. If not, it should be.)

After getting nearly four days behind in writing, once I hit 'Publish' on this entry I will be caught up. This has been a long, tiring, but awesome weekend with five performances of the show I am doing, plus a few other things. I am ready to go to sleep like right now.

So let's talk Doctor Who so I can go to bed.

At the point I completed watching this episode I had taken a cumulative 3,302,141 steps on the treadmill as a part of this ridiculous project. How insane is that? When I started in February of 2017 I had no idea how long it would take or how far I would end up walking, but I never imagined this. As I barrel towards the completion of this project in just over two weeks, it's hard to comprehend just how much this stupid thing has changed me. I feel better, I look better, I have become more successful creatively, it has just been an amazing experience. I figure I have roughly 120k more steps to go, so this is the last big numerical milestone I will hit before the end. I just need to take a moment here and marvel at quite literally how far I have come in the last eighteen months.

Ok, so, now that that's done, let's talk about the first actual death of a companion since Adric helped kill off the dinosaurs in Earthshock.

Still catching up on missed posts, this is number two of the four I need to write today. It would be a little easier if it was an episode I actually wanted to talk about, but as noted historian and philosopher Mick Jagger once pointed out -- you can't always get what you want.

So let's talk about my least favorite episode of Doctor Who.

In  year-and-a-half of this ridiculous project, I have never gotten this far behind in the writing. The past few days has been a perfect storm of work deadlines plus show performance dates, and while I have stayed current in getting my workouts done (aside from completely missing on Wednesday), I just haven't had the time to write my daily posts. So this is the first of three back-dated posts. Hopefully I will be current again by the end of the day.

So let's get down to it, and talk about the futility of war.

Good lord, it's a quarter to midnight and I still haven't written this blasted thing. I've been buried in work all day and only just came up for air. The good news is I did fifty five push ups this morning, and my arm still feels fine. Alternating days seems to be making a difference. For now at least I will keep on that track, and see how it goes.

As for Doctor Who, it was a mighty good one today. So let's talk about that.