Here's a fun and obscure drinking game for all of you classic Doctor Who fans: Watch the last three episodes of The Ambassadors of Death, and every time General Carrington says the words "moral duty" take a drink. Not only will you get completely plastered, but it will probably dramatically improve the perceived quality of the story.

Let's talk about that.

I can't even begin to think of anything witty to say about this story today. I watched it, I walked three and a half miles on the treadmill, I want to go to bed.

So let's talk about that. Briefly.

After my huge weight loss last week, I am now in serious bounce-back territory and that's frustrating. So I just continue to plug away and do my thing, one foot in front of the other, and remind myself that daily numbers make me insane. It doesn't help that the current story is most certainly sagging in the middle. How many times can Liz Shaw be kidnapped in one episode? She managed it twice in under 25 minutes today. Good lord, I still have two more days on Ambassadors of Death, and I might just break down and start drinking while I am on the treadmill before this is over.

Let's talk about that.

There is a sequence in the first episode of The Ambassadors of Death in which some music plays that is clearly meant to be an homage to the song A Whiter Shade of Pale. In fact, the TARDIS Data Core says that the song is actually played, but it certainly wasn't there at least on the Region 1 DVD. I am very curious whether the wiki is wrong, or if there as a clearance issue for the DVD release and the music had to be subbed in with a sound-alike. Either that's the case and they did a very nice job of filling in the section, or else composer Dudley Simpson did a lovely job of evoking the song without infringing to begin with. Either way it is a nifty sequence showing a rescue space capsule docking with a drifting and unresponsive Mars capsule. As for the rest of the story so far?

Well, let's talk about that.

Yesterday morning the air conditioning at my house went out. For those of you, my dear imaginary readers, who do not know, I live in Central Florida where on a typical Saturday in July it is roughly equivalent to the surface of the sun outside. Being a weekend, it was difficult to get a repair person out to look at it, and so by this morning it got to be well over 90 degrees inside my home. Because I would never want to disappoint you, I got on my treadmill anyway to watch the final episode of The Silurians. As it turns out the big final threat at the climax of the story was a Silurian plot to increase the surface temperature of the Earth by destroying the Van Allen Belt and thus make the climate unlivable for the human race. I'm just sayin' that as I plodded away on my treadmill, sweating away in the stultifying heat, I could viscerally relate to the story.

Let's talk about that.

Before I get to Doctor Who I need to crow a little: I did a fair bit of acting throughout high school and college, but I hung it up around the time my son was diagnosed as being autistic. That was more than twenty years ago. Last December I dipped my toes back in, and was cast in a professional drama at the Orlando Repertory Theatre, although it was a very small show. I vowed that in 2017 I would do at least one show, and just yesterday I received an offer (which I accepted) to appear in the Garden Theatre's production of Annie this winter. I had auditioned all the way back in early May, and was so grateful that by that point I had been doing this Time Treadmill project for three months already. If I hadn't already lost a bunch of weight and built up some stamina, the movement audition would have killed me. So I have you to thank, my dear imaginary readers, for cheering me on through this process hand helping me to not only get in better shape but to live my dream. This is no small community theatre production, but a serious professional show at a well-respected theatre in the region. As of yesterday afternoon, I am an actual paid, working, professional actor, and that is pretty cool.

And on top of that, I still get to watch Doctor Who every single day. How sweet is that. And speaking of Who, today's viewing of The Silurians unexpectedly swerved from being an Invasion story to being a Plague Outbreak story.

Let's talk about that.

There is an old adage, sometimes referred to as the law of the instrument, which basically says if you're only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a  nail. That pretty well summarizes the real conflict in the two episodes of The Silurians I watched today. Sure, the lizard people are a threat, but the Doctor clearly understands that the real crisis will come if the Brigadier sends squadrons of armed men down into the caverns.

Let's talk about that.

Ah, now, this is some proper Classic Doctor Who we've got going on today. There's a scientific research station, built into the caves of Wenley Moor in Derbyshire, and as one might expect they have Dug Too Deep and Awakened Something Dangerous. This story has everything you might want: brilliant but aloof scientists, driven but blinkered administrators, dark and scary caverns, a giant lizard (dinosaur?) prowling said caverns, and prehistoric intelligent Homo Reptilicus adversaries lurking about in the shadows.

Let's talk about that.

As you may (or may not) know, in addition to this blog I also have a mostly-daily blog about my obsession with all things octopus called Octopodal Motion - Tenticular Gesticulation. You can imagine my excitement,then, when the climax of Spearhead from Space featured the Third Doctor being assaulted by the gloriously-tentacled body that the Nestene Consciousness has grown for itself. It was a good morning, is what I am saying.

Let's talk about that.

Before I get to Doctor Who I need to brag. Dudes, check it out! This morning I not only weighed in at my lowest weight since starting this project, but definitely at my lowest weight in the past ten years and possibly in this millennium. How weirdly serendipitous is it to hit this milestone on the same day I started a brand new era of Doctor Who? Of course, I also hit this milestone on the same day that I am going to an Independence Day pool party where I will be eating mass quantities of grilled burgers and hot dogs,  not to mention plenty of potato chips and almost certainly drinking non-trivial quantities of adult beverages. I'm just sayin', tomorrow I might not still be below 270. In the meantime, I started watching Spearhead from Space this morning.

Let's talk about that.