Supertramp and Earl Grey

In the first few minutes of my siesta early Sunday afternoon I dreamed that I was playing my guitar and singing the Roger Hodgson song “Give A Little Bit” and showing a couple of people how it’s the exact same song musically as another song but I can’t remember what that other song was or whether it only existed in my dream.

I realized today that I really like Earl Grey tea that’s been steeping for hours. It doesn’t work for me with any other kind of black tea.

I got caught up on my journal.

I watched the second episode of the latest season of Doctor Who. This story starts where the first one ended. The Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yasmin have been teleported into space. A ship appears though and a grappling device reaches out. It turns out though that there are two ships and Ryan and Graham have been pulled onto Angstrom’s ship and the Doctor and Yasmin are on Epzo's. Angstrom says she only saw the two she pulled in. She’s looking for a planet called Desolation that has shifted out of orbit. She says it’s the final planet. She finds it and prepares to land.

Meanwhile Epzo’s ship is falling apart. The Doctor tells him their only help to make it to the planet is to disengage from part of his beloved ship. At the last minute he agrees. Angstrom’s ship lands and Ryan and Graham are following her when Epzo’s ship comes crashing towards them. The Doctor manages to put on the brakes before it hits her friends.

The Doctor says she has to find out where they are. Graham asks how and she says she’ll treat it as a chance to surprise herself. Suddenly a sort of electronic gong starts going off repeatedly and Angstron and Epzo know to follow it. They are walking through a desert. Graham complains about sand in his eyes and the Doctor gives him sunglasses that she says she either got from Audrey Hepburn or Pythagoras. Her pockets were empty last episode.

They arrive at a tent. Inside is a man named Ilin but the Doctor figures out that he’s a hologram projected from many light years away. Ilin explains that what is happening on Desolation is the final stage of a race called the Running of the Twelve galaxies. Angstrom and Epzo are the only two contestants left alive out of 4,000. The prize is a lifetime of comfort on a safe world for the winner and their clan. Their goal is to cross the terrain and the mountains and the first one to reach the Ghost Monument wins the prize. The ghost monument appears in the same place every thousand rotations.

The Doctor wants to know what the ghost monument looks like. Ilin conjures up a hologram of it and it’s the Tardis.

The tent must also be a hologram because it suddenly disappears. They follow Angstrom and Epzo to a boat, which they need to take to begin the last stage of the race. Epzo has pulled a gun and is trying commandeer the boat for himself. The Doctor touches Epzo’s throat with her pinkie and paralyses him with Venusian Aikido that she learned from Venusian nuns. One of the Doctors from the 60s used Venusian Aikido too. Ilin had warned them not to touch the water and the Doctor finds out why. It’s populated by flesh eating microbes, which seems to be the only life left on Desolation. The ship’s not working. Ryan figures out that it’s run by a solar battery and Graham discerns that the panels aren’t lined up properly. The Doctor gets it working. Epzo and Angstrom are opposite personalities. Epzo was taught not to trust anyone, including his mother. Angstrom is doing all of this for her family. Her planet has been conquered and devastated by Stenza warriors of the same species as Tim Shaw, whom the Doctor defeated in the first episode. Epzo is carrying an Alfuzian cigar, which he plans to smoke when he wins. The cigar lights itself with a click of a finger. When they get to the boat they have to cross the desert and then pass through the ruins of the dead civilization. Suddenly robot guards appear with laser rifles. They have not fully activated and so they try to sneak past them but then they begin firing. The Doctor tells everyone not to run in a straight line because the robots are predicting their paths. They escape into an enclosed area but it turns out to be a shooting range. While the Doctor is trying to think of how to defeat the robots, Ryan picks up a gun from a fallen one. The Doctor protests but Ryan says he’s trained for this with first person shooter games. He leaves the shooting range and begins taking out the robots, but they get up again and his gun jams so he runs back to the Doctor. She says I told you so. The Doctor finds a way to charge the area with an electromagnetic pulse that collapses the robots. They’ll reboot in five minutes but it gives them time to get past them. The Doctor downloads information from one of the cyberbots that provides a map of the area, which leads her to underground tunnels. Below she finds a big locked door. “I love a big locked door!” she declares, and then opens it with her sonic device. Inside is what seems to have been a laboratory. She reads an inscription left behind by scientists that had been abducted by the Stenza, tortured and forced to find new methods of mass destruction.

Meanwhile Epzo has gone for a nap but things that look like discarded pieces of dirty cloth that have been lying around all over the place come to life and attack him while whispering. The Doctor and the others hear his muffled cries and Angstrom uses a knife to cut him free. The living rags are all over the place but as the Doctor and the others try to escape, their way is blocked by the robots. 
The robots shut off the life support and so the Doctor and the others are forced to climb to the surface and their exit finds them in the acetylene fields. They are surrounded by the bio-engineered rags that whisper that they can sense a deep fear in the Doctor of someone called the Timeless Child. She is shocked that they know about it and tells them to get out of her head. As the rags close in the Doctor tells the others to dig into the sand with their feet. The rags grab hold of the Doctor and she tells them to enjoy their feast. She says to Graham, “You know what some people enjoy after a feast?” Graham says, “Oh yeah! A nice cigar!” He grabs the self-igniting Alfuzian cigar from Epzo’s belt and tosses it in the air as they all drop into the depression they’ve made with their feet in the sand. The Doctor snaps her fingers and the air above them bursts into flames, incinerating all of the living Remnants. 
They reach their goal and Angstrom and Epzo begin to argue about who is going to claim the prize. After a suggestion from the Doctor the rivals enter Ilin’s tent together and claim a draw. At first Ilin refuses to honour it but Epzo threatens to hunt him down if he doesn’t and so a draw is declared. Ilin agrees but refuses to help the Doctor and her team. Epzo and Angstrom are teleported away and the tent disappears leaving the Doctor and the others stranded. 
The Doctor is dejected and feels she’s failed her friends. She says they’ll be dead in one day but the others refuse to give up and tell her that they have each other. Suddenly there is a faint but familiar noise. The Doctor pulls out her sonic and calls out, “It’s alright! It’s me! Stabilize!” At the top of the hill the Tardis half appears. The Doctor says, “Come to daddy! I mean mommy! I mean I really need you!” The Tardis materializes, the Doctor runs to it and caresses it. She tells it she’s lost her key but it lets her in. The Tardis has redecorated itself it looks less bright and Star Trekkie than the last design. The architecture seems like a crystal cave where the crystals are the colour of embers and the machinery looks more organic. The Doctor tells her friends she can take them home now.