Review of Terminus (#126)
DVD Release Date: 10 Aug 09
Original Air Date: 15 – 23 Feb 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough
Stars: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson
Preceding Story: Mawdryn Undead (Five, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Enlightenment (Five, Tegan, Turlough)

Terminus is one of several stories in this Bad Reputation™ series that had made very little impression on me. I had vague recollections of it being Nyssa’s farewell story, and little else. When I pulled out my DVD and looked at the cover I went, “Oh yeah—that furry critter. What was it called?”

Upon further reflection, I remembered a plague ship, Nyssa wearing a short skirt (and later disrobing), and some sort of off-limits space where the critter (for the record, it’s known as the Garm) resided. Anything else—save the presence of the rest of the main cast—was a blur.

As I began re-watching, I realized I wasn’t really going to be able to argue much with this story’s placement in io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking, where it came in at #229 of 254, putting it in the bottom 10%. While there’s nothing overtly bad about it, there’s also precious little that I’d consider good.

Among other things, I’ve never been a big fan of Turlough-as-Black-Guardian’s-tool. That version of Turlough played a small but significant role in moving the action forward—as well as the “cliffhanger” for the entire serial—and I can’t even bring myself to care. Neither Turlough’s plight nor the supposed danger to the Doctor ever feel anything close to believable to me, and I cringed my way through pretty much every Turlough/Black Guardian scene.

Worse, the main conceit of the whole story—a plague “hospital” located at “the exact centre of the known universe”—had me giving serious side-eye from the get-go. When you add in babble about an explosion creating the universe (I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain to intro astronomy students that the Big Bang was not an “explosion” like we understand them on Earth, but merely a sudden, rapid expansion of the universe), it set my teeth so severely on edge that I had a hard time sitting still.

The trappings of the story didn’t do it any favors, either. Everything from costuming (those ridiculous space helmets and the Vanir’s radiation armor) to effects (that model work couldn’t have looked convincing, even in 1983) to sets (the fabric covering the doorways into the Vanir’s rooms looked like something you’d see in a stage play) made it difficult to immerse myself in a story that was already failing at keeping my interest.

This is also one of those cases where the crowded TARDIS proved difficult for a writer to handle. Poor Tegan gets stuck with Turlough the Nth Wheel, hiding below decks on the plague ship, wandering around searching for a way back to the TARDIS for the entire time that the Doctor and Nyssa are working on problem solving at Terminus. She didn’t even have the nominal role of being led around by the nose by the Black Guardian.

That makes it all the sadder for me when the one decent part of the whole, painfully boring serial comes around, and Nyssa informs Tegan that she’s leaving the TARDIS to stay behind and help on Terminus. The farewell between the two women is legitimately touching, and thus feels entirely out of place in this particular story.

I’m sure there are plenty of fans out there who think back on Terminus fondly (perhaps particularly those who enjoyed seeing Sarah Sutton shed a layer of clothing), but I’m afraid I’m not one of them. I found it a legitimate chore to sit through the whole thing, getting so bored I checked the remaining run time with great frequency. If the Fifth Doctor or Nyssa are among your favorites (or you want to see them all), maybe it’s worth a watch, but my recommendation is to give Terminus a miss, lest your boredom become terminal.