Jemma Redgrave

            On Christmas morning after yoga I finally finished memorizing “Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?” (Arthur, Where'd You Put The Corpse?” by Boris Vian. I did a search and found two sets of chords, one in C minor and the other in D minor. I'll start trying them out tomorrow. 

            I did a shortened song practice and just worked on parts of a few songs I wanted to play. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before breakfast. I had three strips of bacon, an egg sunny side up and a toasted Montreal style bagel while watching the fifth episode of the most recent season of Doctor Who.

            At the end of the previous story the Doctor had been turned into one of the statue-like quantum beings known as the Weeping Angels. In that form she is transported to a Division ship where she meets Awsok the head of Division. She had briefly met her before, not knowing who she was. Awsok reveals herself to be Tecteun, the Gallifreyan who found the infant Doctor by the entrance to a wormhole between universes and raised her as her own child. She explains that the Flux was created by Division to kill the Doctor because the Doctor betrayed and fought against Division to protect the universe. All of the Doctor's memories of having been an agent of Division have been erased but Tecteun shows the Doctor a fob watch that has preserved all of them. 

            Meanwhile, Yasmin, Dan and Professor Jericho have been trapped in the early 20th Century for three years. They have spent their time searching for the date of the end of the world while assassins keep trying to kill them. They travel to the mountains of Nepal to seek the wisdom of a hermit who lives there. The hermit has three words for them with no explanation, “Fetch your dog.” Yasmin realizes this relates to Karvanista the Lupari warrior they met earlier in the series. Near the Great Wall of China they write a message for Karvanista to observe from space, “Fetch Your Human.” He sees it but can't travel back in time. They journey to Liverpool where they meet Joseph Williamson, who is a real historical figure who built labyrinths of tunnels kilometres long under his property in Liverpool for no explicable reason. But in this story each of the tunnels is behind a door that leads to a different time and place in the universe. The places and times behind the door have recently changed because of the Flux.

            In 1958, the Grand Serpent, who appeared earlier in the season as the corrupt government figure that Vinder's job was to guard on his home planet, is now on Earth. When the Serpent began having people killed Vinder reported him and that's how Vinder ended up on the remote observation ship at the beginning of the season when the Flux began. Now the Serpent is calling himself Prentis. He makes friends with a general who has been made the head of a new organization for studying extraterrestrial life called UNIT. He presents himself as an expert on extraterrestrials and so the general hires him to help run UNIT. Prentis gathers more and more power within UNIT until 2018 when Kate Stewart, the daughter of General Lethbridge Stewart is the leader of UNIT. She realizes he's an alien and threatens to expose him. But when he tries to assassinate her she goes into hiding. When Prentis lowers Earth's defences to allow a Sontaran invasion Kate becomes the leader of the resistance. 

            Meanwhile Bel, while following a Passenger signal has stolen a Lupari ship. Karvanista beams aboard to get the vessel back. Vinder is following the same signal and finds the Passenger. The Passenger absorbs him and inside of it Vinder finds Dan's girlfriend Diane. 

            Swarm and Azure arrive at Division and kill Tecteun. They are about to do the same to the Doctor at the end of the episode.

            I weighed 86.5 kilos before lunch. I ate an entire bag of barbecued chips with a beer and then a can of root beer while watching the final episode of the most recent season of Doctor Who. 

            This story begins with Swarm trying to disintegrate the Doctor by touching her. She has been wearing a conversion plate to survive having been transformed into a Weeping Angel form. She removes the plate just before he touches her and she is split into three Doctors in different places and times. One of them stays where she is but another appears before Karvanista and Bel and the other comes to the tunnels under Liverpool where she reunites with Yasmin, Dan, and Professor Jericho. Azure and Swarm plan to destroy the universe with the Flux but they want to put it into a loop so that the destruction happens over and over again forever. 

            Vinder and Diane escape from inside the Passenger. 

            One of the Doctor copies, Yasmin, Dan and Jericho make it to 2021 through a tunnel where they meet Kate Stewart. Kate has the Tardis and so the Doctor takes it. The Doctor on the Lupari ship crashes it into Sontaran headquarters but is captured. Karvanista reveals he is a forgotten companion of the Doctor. The Doctor with the Tardis rescues the captured Doctor while she is being tortured by Prentis. 

            The Flux kills the Sontarans, the Daleks, the Cybermen, and Jericho. The Doctor uses a passenger to absorb all of the Flux and save the universe. Swarm and Azure take the Doctor to Atropos to sacrifice her to Time. But since the Flux was destroyed, Time is still bound to Space and so it destroys Swarm and Azure. Time spares the Doctor. The three Doctors become one again. The Doctor drops the fob watch containing her lost memories deep in the Tardis. Dan officially becomes a companion. 

            Kate Stewart was played by Jemma Redgrave, who starred in the movie “I'll Be There” and the mini series “The Grid” and “Bramwell.” She's the the granddaughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and the niece of Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. 

            This was a complicated and confusing season of Doctor Who. Apparently Russell T Davies, who started the reboot of Doctor Who in 2005 will be returning as the show runner in the next season. That might be interesting since he created many of the classic characters that are used in the series. 

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon to Bathurst and Bloor. During the whole ride I only saw two other cyclists on the road. I weighed 87.1 kilos when I got home. 

            I made stuffing from sautéed onions, a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread and the usual poultry seasonings. It's the smallest amount of stuffing I'd ever made because instead of a a turkey I stuffed a small chicken. I find turkey is just too large for someone who lives alone and I always end up throwing some away, Besides that I think chicken tastes better than turkey. In the last half hour I put french fries in the bottom of the pan under the chicken. I had a leg, some stuffing, french fries and gravy with a couple of beers while watching “Black Widow.” 

           This was a much less complicated story than Doctor Who. It begins when Natasha Romanov is a child in Ohio with her younger sister Yelena and her parents. It looks like a happy and normal life but Yelena seems to believe in it more than Natasha. The father Alexei comes home from work and suddenly tells his wife Melena and the kids that they all have to leave in a hurry. They drive to a shed where they have a plane stored but as they are boarding it the feds arrive with guns blazing. The plane starts to move with Alexei still on the ground and firing at the US agents. Then he runs and we see that he clearly has super strength. He catches the plane and hangs onto the wing while still firing at the feds. Melena gets severely wounded and Natasha has to pilot the plane while Melena tells her what to do. They get away and fly to Cuba where suddenly they all have Russian accents. Alexei is greeted by his boss Dreikov as The Red Guardian.

            I remember the Red Guardian from the comics in the 60s. He was an enemy of Captain America and a Russian super soldier. He was basically the Soviet Union's version of Captain America. 

            The girls are injected with something to knock them out and then carried away. 

            The main story takes place after the “Captain America: Civil War” movie. Natasha is hiding out from the feds. She has a trailer in a remote area of Norway and she's received mail from the Budapest safe house that she keeps but doesn't bother to look at. Natasha is attacked by The Taskmaster who has the ability to mimic the fighting abilities of anyone she sees. At first Natasha thinks the Taskmaster is after her but she's after the mail from Budapest. Natasha escapes with the case of vials the package contained and she goes to Budapest. 

            We are taken back two weeks when a grown up Yelena is working as a Black Widow assassin. She goes after a rogue Black Widow and kills her but just before she dies she sprays Yelena with a gas that releases her of the mind control that made her follow the orders of Dreikov. 

            Natasha arrives at the Budapest safe house and fights Yelena but that's just until they know they can trust each other. It is Yelena that sent the vials of anti mind control gas to Natasha. 

            It is made clear at this point that they are not really sisters and that Alexei and Melena are not really their parents. They were Russian spies embedded in US society. 

            They are attacked by Black Widows and after they escape they decide they need to find the Red Room and shut down the Black Widow operation. They decide to break Alexei out of prison in Siberia. There is a dramatic escape and we see that the Red Guardian still has his powers even though he's gotten a bit fat. But after all that Alexei reveals he has no idea where the Red Room is. They find Melena in a remote area where she does mind control experiments on pigs. She welcomes them and there is a family reunion. Yelena has an emotional breakdown because she really believed they were her family all those years ago. Melena seems to betray them all because Dreikov's agents capture them. They are taken to the Red Room which is on an enormous ship in the clouds something like the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Once they are there Melena shows herself to be on their side. Natasha gets to Dreikov by disguising herself as Melena. Dreikov introduces Natasha to Taskmaster who turns out under her mask to be his own horribly disfigured daughter but now perhaps the most powerful of the mind controlled Black Widows. After Taskmaster leaves the room Natasha tries to attack Dreikov but she can't because he has pheromones that prevent Widows from harming him. He reveals how he recruits Widows as children from all over the world. Sometimes they are taken or sometimes they are simply disadvantaged girls with no options. Once Natasha has the information she needs from Dreikov she smashes her own face down on his desk, severs her olfactory nerve so she can't be affected by Dreikov's pheromone lock and begins to attack him. He escapes and Natasha copies the information on the Widows and their locations from his computer. She has a fight with several Widows until they begin to overpower her. At this point Yelena drops a gas bomb containing the antidote and the Widows are freed of mind control. Melena destroys one of the engines that holds the Red Room in the sky and it begins to fall. She and Alexei escape in a plane. Yelena falls from the ship but Natasha grabs a parachute and dives through the sky after her. She saves Yelena and then fights Taskmaster in the sky on the falling debris of the Red Room. On the ground she frees Taskmaster from mind control with a vial of gas. Natasha gives Yelena the locations of the remaining Widows and the last vial of gas. Natasha goes back to reunite with the Avengers. 

            The after credits scene takes place after the last Avengers movie when Black Widow is dead. Anyone who saw that movie knows that Natasha and Hawkeye fought over which one of them was going to sacrifice themselves to acquire the Soul Stone. Natasha sucker punched Hawkeye, jumped over the cliff, and died so that her soul would take the place of the stone. In the final scene of the Black Widow movie Yelena is visiting Natasha's grave when she is accosted by her new boss Valentina who gives her her next assassin target. It's a picture of Hawkeye. She tells Yelena that he's the one responsible for Natasha's death. 

            Yelena was played by Florence Pugh, who is a British actor. She starred in the movie Lady Macbeth, King Lear, The Outlaw King, Fighting With My Family, Midsommar, and Little Women. She starred in the miniseries The Little Drummer Girl. It looks like she will be the new Black Widow in any Marvel movies or shows. She's already appeared as Black Widow in the TV series Hawkeye, trying to kill him. I find it a little sad that they killed off Natasha. She looks a lot more like the Black Widow from the comics than Yelena does.