Terminus

Chapter The 139th, concerns Terminus, definition - noun: the end of the line.

Plot:

The Doctor has welcomed Turlough aboard the TARDIS, not knowing that this new young companion is a somewhat unwilling agent of the Black Guardian tasked with assassinating the Time Lord. Only Tegan suspects Turlough, but no one listens to her as she's always moaning about something. Anyway, Turlough's attempts at time machine sabotage cause the TARDIS to lock on to a nearby craft, which is decorated with pictures of skulls everywhere, so obviously must be a safe haven. Nyssa's room is nearest to the ensuing cosmic disturbance, so she escapes into the craft and the others follow her, getting split up as is the fashion. The Doctor and Nyssa meet up with a couple of space pirates, a raiding party whose (space)ship-mates have abandoned them, as it turns out they've raided a plague (space)ship - ferrying victims of space leprosy to a space station called Terminus. In Space.

Nyssa has caught the disease (somehow), and gets taken off by guards called the Vanir. The others follow. Once there, they aren't really in any jeopardy, except for some minor league bullying from the Vanir, as everyone - even a giant glowing red-eyed man-dog called the Garm - actually does want to help cure the people that arrive there. It also turns out that Terminus is at the exact centre of the universe (!) and its engines firing were responsible for the big bang because of some timey-warping (!!). The Black Guardian tricks Turlough into another act of sabotage which starts the Terminus engines again, threatening to destroy the universe, and everything comes to a crescendo with the giant dog-man pushing a lever back to its off position (!!!). Tegan and Turlough spend 90% of the story crawling around in air ducts, by the way, with the former only emerging at the end to be told by Nyssa that she's leaving the TARDIS, and is sticking around to help run Terminus. Tegan gives her a big hug, thereby offering her arms to an ex-leper. Arms to an ex-leper? No? No... I'll see myself out.

Context:

When Terminus came up next on the randomiser, I groaned inwardly. It's one of those stories I never find too appealing for a rewatch. A tired and tatty reputation proceeds it, but being stuck in the middle of a loose trilogy of stories, and writing out a companion, it can't be skipped; so, it tends to be watched only out of a stubborn and gruelling sense of duty. Watched alone without the bookends of the far more fun stories either side (Mawdryn Undead before, and Enlightenment after) is particularly hard. Poor Terminus. If Nyssa didn't leave in this story, I don't know if anyone would ever watch it all, as it's got naff all to do with the 'Black Guardian trilogy' really, as a friend of mine once observed (see below). My unfavourable feeling going in may have been subconsciously broadcast to my viewing mates, as all the children (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) bailed after episode 1, never to return. I watched the remainder of the story from the DVD, an episode a night, on my own. It does get a bit better as it goes along. (I watched without the enhanced CGI, by the way, because - to be honest - I'd completely forgotten until after I'd seen the episodes and was exploring the disc that there were any replacement CGI effects for Terminus).

First time round:

I did catch this on its BBC1 broadcast in February 1983, but don't remember anything significant about that viewing. I wasn't madly in love with Nyssa like some of my peers at that time, so neither her leaving, nor the sight of her in a camisole and petticoat, meant much to me. I remember more about the VHS release, which came out approximately ten years later. This was during my second year at university in Durham, when I'd gravitated towards a group of like-minded (or at least tolerant and slightly nostalgic) individuals who would watch Doctor Who with me. I bought the tape in Volume One in Worthing, my usual supplier of the time, and watched it at home before term started. Then, a month or so later, as I remember it, a few of us visited a group of friends' student digs in Neville's Cross on a Sunday, and watched my tapes of the whole of the Black Guardian trilogy back to back. God, we knew how to live back then. David, long-term fan friend mentioned many times before on this blog, was there, as was Kev B, another friend from his year group. They both must have been visiting for the weekend as they had left Durham the previous year. l remember having a discussion on the day with David about whether it was still worth watching a terrestrial repeat of Doctor Who if you already have it on video  - they were showing old Whos on BBC2 on Friday evenings, but it was something like Genesis of the Daleks or Caves of Androzani on at the time, which I had on tape, so I didn't bother watching; David, on the other hand, thought that any Doctor Who being shown 'live', as it were, was exciting and I should support it. Three-quarters of the way through watching Terminus, Kev B spluttered in frustration "This has got nothing to do with all the Black Guardian stuff". And he was right.

Reaction:

The author of Terminus, Steven Gallagher, is a pretty good writer, and one of only a handful of classic series Doctor Who writers who made a big name for themselves with significant work away from the show (novels and TV series, in his case). His previous script, Warrior's Gate, certainly had some problems during its production, but on the page it sings. So, why's Terminus such a mess? It too had a cursed production, where it seemed everything that could possibly go wrong did, but there's major issues with the script too. No production, however swish, could save it. Just to take one example, consider the mysterious company Terminus Inc. that runs this healthcare institution. As we find out later, the cure they offer does work, although it's hit and miss. So, why does nobody ever return? Why do people keep paying them, if their reputation is so bad (as pretty much every character confirms - it's not just the pirate Olvir's bias). Olvir says that the company continues operating, and nobody complains, because having a relative with the disease is too shameful for anyone to make a fuss. Do we buy that? If someone with enough money or clout paid for someone with the disease to be cured, and they disappeared without a trace, surely they would investigate? How likely is it that only un-rich or un-influential people are affected by Lazar disease?

Well, maybe it is possible, as Lazar disease doesn't seem to be one of those dull diseases that follows logic or anything; instead it claims only the person in the cast whose contract was coming to an end, leaving lots of other people unaffected who had as much or more contact with infected people or atmosphere. It also strikes insanely rapidly, which makes one wonder how anyone could survive an intergalactic trip once they came down with it. Let it also not be forgot that one of the symptoms is to take one's clothes off, wander around in one's undies for a bit, then don some medieval peasant rags. It is indubitably an unusual and interesting disease.

The Garm's motivations at least make sense, but he is woefully badly realised. This era (and pretty much all of classic Doctor Who, to be honest) has its fair share of monster creation being fumbled on the journey from script to screen, but they're not always so damaging to the intent of the story. The Garm as he finally appeared looks like a cuddly big teddy bear. He looks friendly, which of course - he is! He's supposed to look terrifying, so that when we find out later that he's friendly, it's a surprise twist. A key part of the story is fatally undermined, plus, you know, the Garm looks embarrassing throughout too - everyone's a loser. Gallagher's gone on record saying that the original script had the Garm remain unseen, just a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness; that would definitely have worked better, but would have been hard to realise in the studio, and eventually the whole costume would have had to be revealed as the Garm has to help save the day at the end.

Without the terrifying version of the Garm as originally intended, Terminus doesn't even have a pretend antagonist. That's not necessarily a fault, though; I think it's one of the story's few strengths is that Nyssa stirs up a quiet and small revolution amongst characters that aren't big and bad and evil, but just normal - if slightly desperate - people; it suits her character, and it's refreshing that the stakes don't always have to be high. Other positives: Bor is a good character, and nicely played by Peter Benson. And Liza Goddard trying her hardest to make her hard-bitten space pirate character believable, despite everything around her, from her costume and make-up outwards, working against that, is a triumph of determination.

Connectivity: 

Not very much links the black-and-white historical The Reign of Terror to the 1980s space adventure that is Terminus. All I can think of is that their respective first episodes both have a lot of wandering around exploring, with only a couple of guest characters appearing, then the rest of the cast - and the plot - turns up from episode two onwards.

Deeper Thoughts:

Vanessa Feltz's Grandmother. There's clearly much that is risible in Terminus, but a moment that  - though it is indeed silly - had never much registered previously, was part of an early scene. Peter Davison rushes into a room to see the door on the far side rapidly closing, so throws a chair with almost supernatural accuracy into the gap, stopping the door from slamming shut altogether. British TV whimsy-merchant Harry Hill and his writing team must have been tickled by this when researching material for an appearance of Peter Davison on Hill's Alien Fun Capsule programme last year. The result was a game / sketch called Chair Jam in which Peter and the other guests compete to best recreate this historic television event. The clip is online here and it's a lot of fun. If you haven't seen it, a note of caution before you click on that link: you won't be able to see that moment of Terminus the same way ever again. Now, I know that often gets said, but this time I think it's true: every time I watch Terminus from now on (which probably won't be that often, but you never know) the chair moment is going to stick out, and I'm going to think of Harry Hill.

This is a phenomenon of which I'm very familiar: there are lots of moments or lines of dialogue in films or TV shows that have become stuck in my mind by association with something else. Normally, it's experienced the other way round, though; rather than be reminded of something when watching a show, I'm reminded of the show when doing something else. This normally then elicits a quote in recognition, at least in our house. I don't know if 'normal' people do this. A couple of examples: whenever the Better Half or I are involved in any risky or thankless endeavour, one will say to the other "It won't work, will it, Ted?" and the other will reply "No, but we have to try" - this is based on the exchange between Ted and Dougal in the series two Father Ted episode Tentacles of Doom.  When there's no food in the house, and we need to do a big supermarket run, it is consistently known as a 'lentils and wallpaper' shop, after the shopping list Neil starts to write when they need "everything" in The Young Ones episode Flood. There's loads of others too - the semiotic thickness of our day-to-day dialogue is such that, were we not allowed our meta-textual references, it would probably get a lot quieter in our house.

There are obviously lots of Doctor Who instances too, some of which I've mentioned in the blog before. Whenever someone says anything patently obvious in our house, they receive an impression of Mr. Sneed in The Unquiet Dead: "The whole blummin' world can see that!". At least once a day throughout our summer holiday this year, someone sitting at the poolside but not getting in would be told by someone in the pool "You shouldah come intah the wartah wiv us, then we'dah bin tuggevah", parroting what is, I think we can all agree, the finest line of dialogue in The Curse of Fenric. Whenever, there's a discussion about 'fire' or 'leaders' it won't be long before "There were leaders before there was fire; fire will kill us all in the end" makes its entrance (Old Mother's dialogue from An Unearthly Child, done in an exaggerated impression of Eileen Way's delivery).

I'm going out on a limb here a bit, but I think that Doctor Who fans understand this behaviour; a particular Doctor Who fan - Russell T Davies - wrote about it. In an exchange between Lance and Henry in episode six of his 2015 series Cucumber, Lance tells how he once read an article by Vanessa Feltz about her grandmother doing the washing-up, always with the water too hot to the touch. This is also how Lance likes to do the washing up, so: "Every time I wash up, I think of Vanessa Feltz's grandmother. Isn't that ridiculous? Every single day of my life, just for a second, I think of Vanessa Feltz's grandmother. Cos she's in there, she's stuck - she's this tiny little fact that won't go away". Like all good bits of dramatic observation, this made me feel understood, and part of something wider. Since then, all our little family catchphrases and the regular events that invoke them have become known as Vanessa Feltz's Grandmother moments. The only drawback with this is the cognitive pile up: when it's cold and someone wants the fire put on I am reminded of Old Mother's portentous pronouncements in An Unearthly Child which reminds me of Lance and Henry in Cucumber which reminds me of Vanessa Feltz's grandmother. It's a wonder I get anything done!

In Summary:

If Terminus didn't exist, there would be no Chair Jam, and Chair Jam's quite funny; so, that's in its favour.