20x4. Terminus
Writer: Steve Gallagher
Director: Mary Ridge
Script Editor: Eric Saward
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: Turlough's attempted sabotage at
the Black Guardian's behest results in the TARDIS materializing on a
shuttle bound for Terminus, a spacecraft where victims of Lazar's
disease are watched over by slave laborers with little apparent hope
for a cure. Meanwhile, a malfunction on Terminus could result in a
catastrophic explosion if the Doctor doesn't find a way to stop it.
Review: "Terminus"
plays like some sort of Mad-Lib that got mistaken for a screenwriting
assignment - "Compose a 90-minute television serial using the
following: potentially interesting ideas, half-baked development of
said ideas, drawn-out scenes of people wandering around and chasing
each other on a spaceship, and a threat to the entire universe."
If
there's one thing that distinguishes "Terminus," it's perhaps the
rather grim situation that the Doctor and his companions are forced to
confront. Neither the Lazar victims (who suffer from a disease that
resembles leprosy) nor the enslaved caretakers left at the mercy of a
greedy corporation seem to have much hope of anything changing for the
better. The Lazar victims are mostly just waiting to die, placing
little faith in the promise of a cure, and the slaves don't supply them
with any real reason to think otherwise and are dependent on hydromel
supplies from the company for their own survival. The cure itself is
administered by the Garm, a strange creature that initially seems as
though it may be a threat, but in fact has been doing its best to cure
the plague victims and is perfectly capable of communicating with the
other characters. Even at the end of the serial, it's not as if
everything is resolved perfectly. In fact, the reason Nyssa decides to
stay behind is that she correctly perceives that it will take a lot of
work to get Terminus running as well as it could and should, and she
wants to be a part of that effort.
This is somewhat darker material than typical Doctor Who fare, and while it makes for a more challenging setup, it leaves some pretty
glaring questions unanswered. In general, I found it hard to understand
how this situation arose in the first place. Where did the Garm come
from and who put it in charge of administering the cure? If the cure
actually works more often than not, why does one of the slaves tell
Nyssa that nobody ever comes back from meeting the Garm - has it been
secretly arranging to transport them off the ship? Then there's the
issue of the entire universe being threatened. Apparently Terminus used
to be a time-ship, and the pilot time-jumped the ship forward just
after dumping fuel that resulted in a massive explosion, with the
explosion itself becoming the Big Bang - and now a similar explosion is
impending if the Doctor can't stop it, causing another Big Bang and
wiping out the current universe. I won't bother quibbling with the
science here, but this is presented in an oddly perfunctory manner. If
you're not only going to reveal the origin of the universe but threaten
its complete destruction within the space of 90 minutes, you ought to
build up to it convincingly, not relegate it to a subplot in between
scenes of people running around and hiding in air vents.
The
beginnings of a good story are present in "Terminus," but too many
aspects of the premise are left unexplained, and none of the guest
characters emerge as particularly interesting or compelling. As has
been the case in a number of serials since the show adopted a new style
under John Nathan-Turner in Season 18, it feels like the script is
taking on too many things at once and ultimately doing justice to none
of them.
Other notes:
- Tegan and Turlough do in fact
spend the majority of the serial running around and hiding in air
vents, to the point that the Doctor doesn't even realize until close to
the end that they'd left the TARDIS at all.
- That said, their
conflict at the beginning - where Turlough proves himself capable of
lying and manipulating to cover his tracks - is one of the more
interesting scenes. Although Turlough clearly doesn't want to go
through with killing the Doctor, he's definitely more self-centered and
less moral than your typical companion. While this obviously makes him
less likeable, it does introduce an effective element of
unpredictability into the series.
- I commented in my review of
"Mawdryn Undead" that it was unclear whether the other characters
realized that Turlough is an alien, but it's evident from the dialogue
that they're aware of it at this point.
Rating: ** (out of four)
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