I have been really lax in updating this blog for for the past month. Some of the reasons are good, some of the reasons are not so good. I hope you will forgive me, my dear imaginary readers, for my lapse. After more than two years of near-daily updates, I got a little behind. But it doesn't mean I wasn't working out or watching Doctor Who, not by a long shot.

As you, my dear imaginary readers, have surely noticed, I am not posting here nearly as often as I used to. The simple truth is that after two full years of writing on this blog very nearly every day, and after watching almost a thousand episodes of Doctor Who and its various spinoffs, I just don't feel the need to write on a daily basis. That doesn't mean that I am not working out, or that I am not still watching Doctor Who. Quite the opposite. It does mean that I have been shaking up my routine. That led to this past week's encounter which I would like to talk about. Here, then, is the tale of how I quite literally worked my ass off for two full years only to be called Morbidly Obese by a perky twenty-something personal trainer.

The First Time Treadmill was located in our bedroom, up against the window and on a carpeted floor. Then, about a year into this ridiculous project, we re-did the floors upstairs replacing the carpet with hardwood. In the process, the Second Time Treadmill got moved to the opposite side of the room and given a proper Command Center with a wall-mounted television screen, a BluRay player, and  place for my Inspiration Poster as well as other memorabilia.

This past week we completely re-did our garage, and in the process the Third Time Treadmill got relocated out there along with the new Epoch Elliptical.

Only a day behind this time... I am getting better! So, yesterday I watched the back half of Kinda on the new Fifth Doctor first season BluRay set. The last time I watched it, I specifically viewed the original broadcast version, of which I said:

It's a shame that the big snake effect at the climax was so dreadful, because all kidding aside the story really was quite good.

This time I watched the version with the enhanced special effects created for the DVD release several years ago. You want to take any guesses on whether I thought it was an improvement?

Yeah, no bones about it. I have lost my focus. I have only been on the treadmill on seven of the last twenty two days. Ok, sure, on four of those off days I was in a yoga class, and that's not nothing, but the fact remains that I have kind of gone off the rails now that I have finished the initial project. I can so easily see myself just slipping back and blowing up to where I was a couple years ago and I desperately do not want to let that happen. Ugh. The whole emotional land mine thing goes both ways...

Ok, so, I haven't posted here in almost two weeks. During that time I watched the very last Doctor Who story on the treadmill, meaning that I have now watched every single episode ever broadcast of any official series related to the program. How cool is that. Then I kinda took a week off. Then I watched An Adventure in Space in Time, doing six miles on the treadmill in one session, which was a bit ambitious after taking a week off. I utterly failed to post about either of those things. Now the past two days I have been watching the BluRay reissue of the Fifth Doctor's first season. Rather than back-writing four different posts, I am just going to roll it all up here in one thing so that I am caught back up. You're welcome.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! My miserable three weeks spent with Wesley Crusher Adric as a companion are at an end! It truly is a Christmas miracle! 

So let's talk about it!

My mind boggles to even say this, but as of today I have walked over two million steps on the treadmill since starting this ridiculous project. How wild is that? No joke, in the past ten months I have walked the equivalent of going from my house to Hartford, Connecticut (where a winter storm is about to dump twelve inches of snow overnight, brr!) Just typing that has made me tired, I think I might go take a nap.

But first, let's talk about today's story.

I have frequently said that I love the pure historical stories of the First Doctor era. While it may well be true that The Daleks saved the show from early cancellation, it is stories like Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Reign of Terror, and The Massacre where Doctor Who really stood out. The entire original remit for the show was to alternate between science fiction stories to hook young viewers, and then historical stories to teach them. By the time the Second Doctor came along, however, that concept was completely abandoned. After The Highlanders in 1966 there has only ever been one other story in which the plot did not revolve around some science-fictional element. It might be set in a historical time period, but there is always some kind of alien menace to contend with. Today's viewing, then, contains the very last Pure Historical story - even including the modern era.

So let's talk about that.

Let us all bow our heads and take a moment of silence for the passing of the sonic screwdriver. First introduced in 1968's Fury from the Deep, the sonic screwdriver was a mainstay of the series for nearly fourteen years from the Second Doctor until halfway through the Fifth Doctor's first season. Producer John Nathan Turner hated it, though, and though it allowed for lazy plotting from the writers. As such, he had it summarily destroyed in the third episode of The Visitation, and it never appeared again in the classic series.

Some other stuff happened as well, so let's talk about that.