Terminus

I'm adamant. Please, let us depart in good faith.

Part two of the Turlough/Black Guardian trilogy. This story has the unfortunate luck of being sandwiched between two stories fairly well regarded by Doctor Who fans. Mawdryn Undead is fairly well liked, especially with the return of the Brigadier and Enlightenment has a reputation as being one of the best Fifth Doctor stories period. I can't speak to that as I've not seen Enlightenment yet but I feel it important to give Terminus a chance to stand on it's own and judge it based on it's own merits.

Plot Summary

Under instructions from the Black Guardian, Turlough starts to sabotage the TARDIS. Tegan spots him but he denies doing it. She shows him to his new room, which used to be Adric's, before heading back to the room she shares with Nyssa. Turlough sneaks into the control room and continues with his sabotage.

The TARDIS begins to dimensionally destabilize, with a void appearing in Nyssa's room. Tegan had just left to fetch something from Turlough's room but instead heads to the control room with the Doctor, where they find Turlough. The Doctor runs through emergency procedures and a door appears in the middle of the void. The Doctor, through the visual scanner, instructs Nyssa to head through the door, which she does. The Doctor runs to the room and jams the door with a chair jut before it closes.

The Doctor explains that as part of the emergency procedure, the TARDIS will link with the nearest space ship to create a forms of stability. He heads into the ship to find Nyssa, instructing Tegan and Turlough to wait there. However, Tegan hears a cry for help and thinking it Nyssa, heads into the ship as well. Turlough, under instructions from the Black Guardian, heads after her, accidently knocking loose the chair and closing the door.

The Doctor finds Nyssa hiding in a hallway. They attempt to find their way back to the TARDIS but become lost. They manage to find their way on to the bridge of the ship, but find it empty, the whole ship on automatic pilot.

Tegan and Turlough also become lost. Tegan thinks she hears Nyssa from behind a door and tells Turlough to find something to open the door. He goes looking and stumbles across the hallway where the TARDIS connection is. But he runs back when Tegan begins to scream as a number of bandaged hands try to grab her from the partially open door. He pulls her free and the door closes again.

While this is happening, a pair of pirates named Kari and Olvir blast their way on to the ship. They discover the Doctor and Nyssa on the bridge and hold them aside while they investigate what plunder is available. However, their own ship leaves as the ship they are on begins docking procedures for Terminus. The doors of the ship open and the sick people inside begin to pour out. Olvir realizes that this is a Lazar transport ship and he panics, proclaiming they are all going to die.

Tegan and Turlough also are confronted by a mass of sick people and jump under a grate into the air ducts to avoid them. The weight of the people walking over the grate causes it to jam and the two find themselves trapped in the duct system. They begin to crawl through the ducts, looking for another way out.

Nyssa brings Olvir out of hiding and he informs them that Terminus is supposedly a corporate run hospital for Lazars disease, a leprosy-like disease, but no one, including his own sister, has ever returned from it. The computer informs them that with the departure of the passengers, the ship will be sterilized. The Doctor suggests that they head back to the TARDIS and split up to take two different routes due to the size of the ship.

Nyssa and Olvir head one way but Nyssa begins to tire. She even drops her skirt she is feeling so overheated. An armored guard approaches and takes Nyssa, believing she is infected, with Olvir hiding in the shadows. He follows her as she is taken down an elevator and into the living quarters with the others. She is also informed that she will eventually be taken to see the Garn.

The head of the security team, Eirak, summons the Garm, a dog-like alien, who lives in an area forbidden for the security team to enter. He tells the Garm that one of their own, named Bor, was investigating some odd readings and entered the forbidden zone. They request his return or if he has died, that his armor is returned. The Garm seems to agree.

The guards, called the Vanir, are kept alive due to their ingestion of a company supplied chemical called hydromel. They are also slaves for the company. A new shipment is passed out to the various guards, but Eirak discovers that some of the vials are filled with colored water instead.

Tegan and Turlough continue to wander through the ducts. At one point they cry out and the Doctor hears them, but they are driven off again as the ship continues to go through decontamination. Hitting one dead end, Turlough manages to break through a grate and push deeper into the ship.

Kari and the Doctor enter Terminus with the Doctor very interested in it's location at the center of the universe. They travel down the lift into the control room. They are observed by the guard, Valgard, who attacks the Doctor. Kari manages to get him off the Doctor by shooting his helmet, using the last of the gun's power. With Valgard temporarily stunned, Kari and the Doctor run into the forbidden zone.

In the zone, the Doctor and Kari find Bor who is suffering from radiation sickness. He is trying to build a metal wall in front of one of the engines to block the radiation leak. The Doctor helps him and Bor tells him that one engine already exploded a long time ago and that the other might blow up soon too.

The Doctor and Kari are attacked by Valgard, who followed them into the zone after being promised the leadership position by doing so. The Doctor manages to fend him off and stuns him by crashing him into the metal wall. The Garm, attracted by the commotion, discovers Bor and takes him back to the safe zone.

Nyssa, being the healthiest patient, is selected to be given over to the Garm. Olvir disguises himself as one of the Vanir and follows her down to the forbidden zone gateway. The guard signals the Garm. Olvir fights off the guard and tries to shoot the Garm but his gun has no effect on the creature. The Garm ignores Olvir, unchains Nyssa and carries her back into the forbidden zone.

The Doctor and Kari make their way to the control room of the Terminus ship and discover the dead pilot. Examining the computer, the Doctor realizes that Terminus is a time ship. It developed an engine malfunction and jumped too far back. The computer dumped fuel into the void but the engine exploded anyway, trigging the Big Bang. The ship was able to jump forward just before the full explosion but the pilot was killed anyway. The Doctor realizes that if the second engine explodes, it might trigger an event that would destroy the universe.

Tegan and Turlough manage to get themselves out of the ducts and make their way to the control room. They poke around but are unable to find the Doctor or Nyssa. Turlough decides they must try and find the door to the TARDIS and heads into the hallway to ask the Black Guardian. The Guardian instructs him to create a power by-pass in one of the ducts. He does so as Nyssa finds him. However, as he connects the circuit, a power surge passes through the system. The power surge causes the Terminus computer to begin a countdown for fuel dump from it's remaining engine, potentially causing an explosion.

The Garm places Nyssa outside the radiation leaking engine and waits. Valgard attacks Olvir when he approaches Nyssa but Olvir manages to fend him off. The Garm, content with the exposure Nyssa has had, takes her away. Valgard recognizes Olvir as an ex-military man and tries to lure him into a trap. Olvir ignores him and follows the Garm. Valgard takes Olvir's dropped gun and follows from behind.

The Doctor and Kari try to pull back the lever back that will dump the fuel but it is locked in by the computer. The Doctor decides they need more strength and run back to the border area where they steal the box that summons the Garm and signal him. The Garm comes to see them and they ask his help in stopping the fuel dump. Compelled to obey the request made via the box, he agrees.

The trio heads to the main control room. The Garm manages to push back the lever that will dump the fuel allowing the Doctor to disengage the computer controls. The system subsides and the Doctor thanks the Garm. The Garm requests that if he has served the Doctor well that he destroy the control box, which would free the Garm and allow him to work at curing the others uninterrupted. The Doctor agrees and destroys the box.

Nyssa wakes in an isolated room to find that the radiation has cured of the Lazars disease, though she is still weak from radiation exposure. Olvir finds her and manages to disable the lock on the door. He frees her but they are captured by Valgard. He in turn is found by the Doctor and Kari. The Doctor and Nyssa tell Valgard that they have found a cure for Lazars and can work out a better treatment. Valgard scoffs until they tell him that they can also set up an independent production of Hydromel which will free all of them from the company.

He takes them back to the medical side where the Hydromel is kept. The Doctor unlocks the storage chest and Nyssa examines it, confident that she can synthetize it and perhaps even improve the formula. This convinces the second in command Sigurd, who gives the Hydromel to Bor, allowing him to recover. The three then take control from Eirak with Valgard becoming the head of the Vanir.

In the ship, Tegan and Turlough recover from their shock to find that the ship is powering up to depart. Tegan runs back to the control room to try and stop it while Turlough continues to try and unseal the door to the TARDIS. He succeeds as Tegan manages to give the emergency override order to stop the ship from departing. Angry with his failure to kill the Doctor, the Black Guardian punishes Turlough with a dose of pain that causes him to black out.

The Doctor instructs Valgard to inform the authorities of the companies actions once cured Lazars begin to leave. An emotionally raw Tegan meets them, although the Doctor nearly dismisses her. He is further put on his heels when Nyssa tells him and Tegan that she is planning to stay to help. She intends to work with the Garm both in perfecting the cure and producing more Hydromel, allowing her to use the scientific skills she had trained for. The Doctor and Tegan give her reluctant goodbyes and head back to the TARDIS. Just before they enter the control room, Turlough revives and the Black Guardian gives him one last warning to kill the Doctor or suffer his wrath.

Analysis

Overall, I'd have to say that Terminus, while not terrible, is not a particularly good story. I don't think there is any one thing that you can point to that makes Terminus a less than decent story. It is more death by a thousand cuts with little things going wrong here and there and it just builds up to the point where you find yourself not enjoying anything about it.

If I had to isolate the one or two most significant problems, I would say it's pacing and tone. This is a very dark story both in terms of it's lighting and how it's told. I like darkness but that darkness should be cut with a bit of levity now and again. There are no points in this story where anyone attempts to lighten the mood even with a bit of black humor. Instead, it's all seriousness and that makes things overly dour.

Adding to the dourness is the rather plodding nature of the story. There was a deliberate attempt to keep the characters apart and prevent them from learning anything and it made for a dry story. The only separation that made sense was Turlough's separation as the Black Guardian was riding him hard to kill the Doctor. But the rest of them were only apart to stretch out the story and there was very little interesting filler.

I actually found Turlough and Tegan's adventures through the air ducts the most interesting part of the story because at least there was chemistry between them. Tegan is snappy and a bit acerbic while Turlough holds his own in an innocent but also very cynical way. They're scenes were also mostly on film so they looked nice visually as well.

The Doctor and Kari weren't a bad team, although I can't say much for Kari's very 80's hair. Still, the Doctor seems a bit slow in this one and he doesn't really do much of anything. He follows things around and helps people when he can but it just takes him to nearly the end of Episode Three before he gets involved with the plot in any primary way. Not bad, just plodding.

Filling in for the Doctor in a number of ways was Olvir, a person we know nothing about and I couldn't find myself caring much for. His acting was a little soft as well and that didn't draw me in either. It also didn't help that most of his interactive scenes were with Nyssa who is still less animated than a block of wood. Her attempts to be scared or resist when the Vanir take her away come across as someone who is either being mildly inconvenienced or too tired to care anymore.

Her leaving scene was especially weak. Tegan is playing the scene as emotionally raw as possible, which actually goes overboard in my opinion. Nyssa, by contrast, seems very out of it and indifferent, even if her words suggest that she is sad about staying behind. Only the Doctor seems to get the scene right in being upset about Nyssa leaving and his putting on the "stiff upper lip" about it. It also didn't help that it felt very shoehorned in after a somewhat rushed and overstuffed climax.

I didn't have a problem with the Garm, although I know some fans do. I thought it looked fine and the darkness of the set kept some of it's weaker attributes hidden. I would have liked a better explanation of his backstory both in how he tried to treat those with Lazars disease or why he had to obey the summons of the box like a genie in a lamp. Then once the box is destroyed, the Garm simply disappears from the story with no explanation. He himself was fine, but the circumstances around him were a bit unsatisfying.

The Vanir were fine. In fact, I think they were the one part of the story that was adequately addressed. More could have been said about their slavery or why the company was even putting a front of a hospital for Lazars at all, but for what they were, they worked. I actually rather liked both Valgard and Bor as they seemed to fit their circumstances well. Eirak was ok but I think the actor portraying him was a bit weak as was also Sigurd.

The big twist with Terminus being the cause of the Big Bang was a little underwhelming. The volume of energy actually required to create the Big Bang is enormous. I don't have a problem with the idea that the fuel from the ship provided the spark to an existing set of conditions, even if it felt contrived. But I did have a problem with the idea that if the second engine blew, it would destroy the universe. After the Big Bang, why was there still any of the potential energy that had built up to cause the first Big Bang? I also don't buy that any engine explosion could produce enough energy on it's own to blow the universe. It just seemed like a false threat. Why wasn't it enough to just have it destroy the ship. Was that not enough of a threat to them?

Like I said, this is death by a thousand cuts. A lot of this could be mitigated if the story was at least fun, but it's not. It's dark and dour and even if it's only four episodes, it just seems to plod on. Other than Nyssa leaving, there's no reason to pay much attention to it and my own dislike of Nyssa is such that I can't imagine ever voluntarily pulling this one up and saying that I should watch it again. Once was quite enough for me.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5