Terminus

Dear Gary—

Terminus is brilliant; it is the only explanation I have for it being the simplest of tales possible told in the most inexplicably incomprehensible way. I’m at the edge of my seat throughout just trying to figure out what is going on even though the events are quite straightforward.

The plot in its simple version: Turlough sabotages the TARDIS at the orders of the Black Guardian and they crash with a leper ship. Tegan and Turlough get separated from the group and spend the time crawling through tunnels under the floor. Nyssa becomes infected with the disease but is cured and decides to stay behind to perfect the less than perfect, hit or miss treatment. The Doctor teams up with a raiding party, learns the ship is about to explode, and averts catastrophe. The End.

Now here is how it plays out:

“You look so sweet when you get angry.” Having just sabotaged the TARDIS at the command of the Black Guardian, Turlough is trying to allay the suspicious Tegan, but he’s not doing a very good job. Reluctantly Tegan shows Turlough to his new room in the TARDIS, which was once Adric’s and still littered with his presence. This is a very nice opening sequence.

Next we get some rather tense moments when the damage Turlough has done begins to take effect causing dimensional instability in parts of the TARDIS. It is curious that the Doctor immediately assumes this is somehow caused by whatever Nyssa was working on in her room and I wonder why Tegan doesn’t take this opportunity to tell the Doctor how she caught Turlough with his hand in the roundel, but oh well. Fearing for Nyssa’s safety the Doctor refocuses the TARDIS scanner to view the interior.

So far so good. An excellent start to the story.

“Go through, Nyssa; it’s your only chance,” the Doctor shouts to his frightened companion on the scanner screen as a mysterious door appears before her. “Where are you sending her,” Tegan asks to which he responds, “I don’t know, but if she stays in the room she’ll die.”

But wait a minute—couldn’t she go out the other door, the door that has always been there and that will lead her into the TARDIS and not out of it and into the unknown? Especially since only moments after Nyssa disappears into that unknown the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough come rushing into the room she just left and not a one of them dies.

The explanation for the mysterious door: “The TARDIS found it. There’s a failsafe; on impending break-up, it seeks out and locks onto the nearest spacecraft.” That’s actually rather good.

The Doctor follows after Nyssa telling Tegan and Turlough to stay put. Of course Tegan and Turlough are not going to stay put.

OK now, what’s happened to the door? And what’s with the mysterious metal robot contraption with grasping arms? Who’s howling—is there a full moon? What in the world is on the heads of the two raiders Kari and Olvir? Why is Nyssa crouching like an ostrich with its head in the sand? Oh look, the door’s back. Wait, now it’s gone again. Thank goodness Kari and Olvir have taken their bubble helmets off, but why exactly does their ship abandon them?

And now Olvir is wigging out as the liner docks and a voice commands debarkation. “This is Terminus, where all the Lazars come to die,” he shouts. “We’re on a leper ship! We’re all going to die!” That accounts for the shuffling mass of shrouded people flooding the corridors all of a sudden.

End of Episode One. All in all an interesting and suspenseful first episode. I’m sticking around for more.

After retrieving the cowering Olvir and tapping into the computer banks, the Doctor learns that Terminus is at the exact center of the universe and that it is here where the Lazars are sent to be treated but that no one ever leaves alive. I really have to wonder about The Company running the place. How exactly are they making money on this? Are people actually paying to be sent there knowing that nobody has ever returned? Or are communities paying The Company to cart off the diseased? Either way it doesn’t seem like a very profitable endeavor.

Tegan and Turlough are still roaming around beneath the floor with a red cloaked skeletal figure of armored death above them and another one of those robotic cleaners. Scene shifts and we have some more armored figures. The Vanir—I just love these guys.

Bor wanders off into the ‘Forbidden Zone’ and Valgard runs to their leader Eirak, the red cloaked figure from before only now he's taken his helmet off . . . hold on . . . is that Lestat? 

“Valgard,” Eirak says when informed that Bor is sure to die, “we’re all dying.” Walking death. I love these guys.

Meanwhile Nyssa, pointing to this tiny fragment of ticker tape she holds in her hand that contains the layout of the massive ship, determines that their party should split up to find their way back to the TARDIS, and logically Nyssa goes with Olvir while the Doctor teams with Kari.

Wait a minute; Nyssa is taking off her skirt. Is she hot or something? No, she says she feels as though she is going to burst, not that she is burning up. And Olvir doesn’t even notice that she is now half naked. This is where I realize that the serial is rising to the level of brilliance. It’s the only explanation.

Now the diseased Nyssa practically handcuffs herself to this little robot drone and meekly stumbles off with it as Olvir stands by. Presented to the Vanir, Nyssa asks where she is being taken. “They don’t usually speak,” a surprised Valgard muses to himself. I wonder why. Later scenes will prove that the disease does not render them mute.

Oh, and now Sigurd is copping one of the vials. “Bitter sweet taste of life.” What a wonderfully unnecessary bit of depth. I love these guys.

So when did Nyssa cut her thumb? And did it really bleed all over the place like that?

Valgard waves his hand over a box and look—a huge, rotund, cute and cuddly, dog-faced monster appears. The Garm.

Cut to the Doctor and Kari somewhere; even after repeated viewings I’m still rather vague on what is ship and what is Terminus. It doesn’t help to have Tegan and Turlough crawling around under the floor interspersed with scenes of the Doctor running around the corridors and Nyssa being taken off as a Lazar. I’m just not really sure when they leave one vessel for another; I suppose the corridors with the skulls on them are the space liner and all of the metal scaffolding areas are Terminus.

At any rate, Valgard catches the Doctor and declares he is going to kill him. Then, after threatening him with his long rod he's been carrying around and that would make a decent weapon if need be, he bizarrely drops it in favor of strangulation.

End Episode Two. I’m definitely sticking around for more of these hunkalicious Vanir and to find out what the heck that Garm thing is.

Kari manages to be of some use to the Doctor with her gun, even if it is on its last legs of a power pack, and the two venture into the ‘Forbidden Zone.’ Now I can only wonder about the radiation everyone keeps talking about. I seriously doubt that the armor the Vanir wear is going to protect them and I have to question why the Doctor and company are not affected or seem worried about it in any way.

Nyssa has been covered with a Lazar robe and learns that the guards can’t be bribed. So if the Lazars have tried bribery in the past to get out of this hell hole, I doubt that they paid to get in to begin with, and I again wonder how The Company is making a profit. The Lazars also seem to know a lot more about Terminus and about the Garm than one would think.

Eirak discovers the swapped out vial with Sigurd standing right there. Wonderful. And now a game of dare between Eirak and Valgard. I love these guys. Except, how is it that they never notice Pretty Boy Olvir roaming freely about the place, at least not until he dons a disguise of armor?

“You’re weird, Turlough.” Tegan and Turlough have finally emerged from under the floor and are sitting disconsolately discussing whether or not they could kill somebody.

A singing Bor collapses at the Doctor’s feet and hints at the unstable nature of the place.

Does Pretty Boy really think he can break Nyssa’s metal shackles with his bare hands? He is rather adorable, though, the way he keeps trailing along behind her after he first pathetically watches her being carried off time and again.

“You have not destroyed the Doctor.” I’m starting to get annoyed with this Growling Guardian distraction. And are Tegan and Turlough really going back below when they spent the first half of the story trying to escape from there?

Poor Nyssa, freed from one set of shackles only to be re-shackled in a different location. What was the point of that?

The Doctor has come to the heart of Terminus—the Big Bang, Event One. Now wait a minute. Terminus used to time travel? What was it doing time traveling back to the beginning of it all? Was it a leper ship at that time? When the explosion occurred thus creating the universe and sending Terminus billions of years into the future . . . . I don’t know where to start with that. Did The Company wonder what happened to their time traveling ship and went looking for it to find it billions of years out? Or did Terminus simply jump ahead into the future and then got stuck and The Company came along, found the defunct ship and took it over for its leper colony? And if so, what of its original owners?

But now, hold on. The first explosion resulted in the creation of the universe and the second, according to the Doctor will destroy it? Why exactly? The first event was a complex chemical reaction that occurred with the combination of just the right circumstances at the right time. So are all of those or similar circumstances present to reverse the process billions of years out? And, uh oh, Turlough pulls a cord and the control panel in the heart of Terminus blows up and the Lever of Death is activated? Never mind. Moving on.

End of Episode Three. I’m sticking around because . . . What the heck!?

“Oh, no, Nyssa!” Pretty Boy Olvir keeps losing that girl. And again the question, what was the point of moving Nyssa from one shackle location to another only to now be carried off once more by the Garm? (By the way, what of the other Lazars? Seems rather inefficient to be doing this process one Lazar at a time.)

Back to the Doctor and the Lever of Death. Inspiration—get the Garm to deal with it. Brute strength. Never mind that the Doctor has countermanded countless computer countdowns-to-death in the past. At least Tegan is able to stop the ship’s launching sequence by blindly flipping a couple of switches and pounding on the console unit (“I don’t believe it;” neither do I, but there you go--genius).

Oh no, Turlough’s getting a blinding flash from the Guardian’s crystal!

Wait—the Garm can talk?

Apparently the cure only works on half naked people because Nyssa has lost her robe and is in her undies again. And oh that Olvir, he really is pathetic.

“Is this necessary?” Thank you Garm for that laugh-out-loud moment.

The Garm stops the Lever of Death and the Doctor flips some switches and pulls out some cables to avert disaster. In payment for his deed the Doctor frees the Garm by simply dropping the control box on the floor. Not a very sturdy device apparently, I’m surprised it hasn’t been accidently destroyed long before now.

Valgard still stands in the way. “This is Terminus; no one’s happy here. Staying alive is all that counts.” But Nyssa changes all that and Valgard is convinced.

“Nyssa, I’ve been so worried.” Hmmm, I don’t think the Doctor has given her a second thought this whole time, but whatever.

Bor is still alive: “It’s a relief; I am hoping for something rather better on the other side.” Sigurd defies Eirak to get some Hydromel for Bor. Valgard convinces the Vanir that they can be free of The Company. Eirak returns and Valgard takes his reward of command for returning from the ‘Forbidden Zone’ with the intruders and the Vanir back him up. These guys are the greatest.

Nyssa determines simply by glancing at the Hydromel through its glass vial that she can not only synthesize it but actually improve upon it. And with the help of the Garm . . . oh now wait one minute. What exactly is this Garm? How did that box control him? Why did he have to be controlled if he is more than willing to help? Why did the Garm never speak to the Vanir? And what is this—there are actually survivors of this disease? Why does the outside world not know about it? Nor do any of the Vanir know about it. What do they think they’re doing there to begin with? And if they think there are no survivors of the cure, what do they think happens to all the dead bodies? And a massive dose of radiation is the cure? Or is it Hydromel? Or a combination of the two? What exactly cured Nyssa? And why do they assume that Nyssa is the only one to have contracted the disease while they’ve been there? Turlough does say several times that he feels sick. And if the Vanir can be cured along with the other Lazars what incentive will they have to stay on? And . . . . Gah!

Ah, here comes Tegan. But there goes Nyssa. “She’ll die here.” Nyssa is going to stay with the Vanir (assuming they decide to remain, but why they would . . .) and with the Garm, and somehow she is going to turn Terminus into a proper hospital. It is a fitting farewell. (I kind of hope that a cured Sigurd, the Vanir with a touch of larceny in his heart of gold, sticks around with her.)

Turlough is recovering from his flash induced sleep with just a touch of a headache.

“This is your last chance! I shall not say that again! Kill the Doctor!” (I can only hope he keeps his word, but somehow I doubt it.)

End of Terminus.

Brilliant. It’s the only possible explanation I can think of, Gary.