Terminus Part One

The one where the TARDIS merges with a passing spaceship...

Turlough is not your average Doctor Who companion. His overriding trait is that he's self-serving, always looking for ways to help himself and further his own cause. He's desperate to return to his home planet (what he was doing masquerading as a public schoolboy on Earth in 1983 remains unexplained) and even made a pact with the devil (aka the Guardian of Darkness and Chaos) to try and achieve his aims. In exchange, the Guardian wants Turlough to kill the Doctor, which is why the lad now finds himself masquerading not as a public schoolboy, but as the Doctor's companion. It's an interesting direction to take for the series, making one of the Doctor's supposedly trusted allies an imposter, a traitor looking out only for himself.

Turlough meddles with TARDIS tech found behind the wall roundels, operating the blue switches before almost being rumbled by a highly suspicious Tegan. It's perfect that Tegan would not trust this boy, and the rather heated conversation between them proves that tensions run high. Tegan regards Turlough as unreliable, dangerous and patronising, while he sees her as rude, argumentative and stubborn. Both of them are right, to be honest!

Tegan shows Turlough to his room, which is actually Adric's old room. Are there only two bedrooms aboard this vast, labyrinthine TARDIS? Tegan and Nyssa seem to share the same room, while Turlough inherits someone else's rather than gets a new one of his own. There's a nice bit where Turlough regards Adric's room as childish, and vows to clear away the late orphan's stuff. Tegan seems wistful as she looks at some of her friend's belongings, and tells Turlough to do what he wants.

The first five or so minutes of this episode are steeped in character moments, as we learn more about Turlough, and Tegan's reaction to him. A rather skimpily dressed Nyssa spends her time synthesising enzymes and reading her biochemistry handbook, while the Doctor is completely absent for over seven minutes. It's nice to experience the lives of the companions without the Doctor for a while, seeing how they lead their lives when danger isn't upon them.

This doesn't last very long though, because sneaky Turlough removes the TARDIS's space/ time element, which is obviously A Bad Thing To Do. The controls go haywire, and a strange fuzzy interface starts to eat its way into the ship, as the exterior dimensions begin to merge with the interior. It's a fascinating idea, reminiscent of Nightmare of Eden when the Empress partly merged with the Hecate, and is typical of the hard science concepts favoured by Warriors' Gate scribe Steve Gallagher.

As the infection increases, a spooky skull design appears on a section of Nyssa's bedroom wall. When the wall swings open, the Doctor encourages Nyssa to step through in order to escape the increasing instability. On the other side of the door, the TARDIS has latched on to the nearest passing spacecraft, and the two vessels become dimensionally fused.

As soon as that spooky skull pattern appears, musician Roger Limb introduces a doomy, ominous strand to the soundtrack, foreshadowing his masterpiece work on The Caves of Androzani. It sounds funereal, baleful and menacing, coupled with the plaintive synth stabs to create a uniquely downbeat score. I often find Limb's work quite bland (Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity), but his work here really helps to set the tone for what's turning out to be quite a gritty tale.

The Doctor goes through the wall (after wedging it open with a casually thrown chair) and searches for Nyssa, eventually finding her crouching in a corner, head in hands, like a scared hedgehog. It has to be one of the least convincing examples of hiding seen in Doctor Who!

Unwisely following the Doctor into the ship, Tegan and Turlough encounter a seriously crap robot, just for one brief scene, which is not seen again all episode. The robot seems to be made of flailing metal arms and a rotating light for a "head", and reminds me of the FX-7 medical droid from The Empire Strikes Back (but crapper). Tegan also has a nasty encounter with some bandaged, grabbing arms which reach out from a partially open cell. They smear their way around her body and across her face, until she's rescued by a less-than-urgent Turlough. It's a pretty grubby experience for her, and leaves the viewer wondering who is imprisoned behind all these skull doors.

Dick Coles' set design is relentlessly grim. It's grey and drab, with the occasional skull motif lining the walls, and takes on a mournful, slightly depressing quality when coupled with Limb's doleful score. Terminus is not a fun story by any stretch of the imagination, there's barely a light moment in this whole episode. Everything and everyone is very serious, from the writing to the design, from the music to the performances.

Into this forlorn setting steps two of the campest space pirates ever to grace the series. Liza Goddard - ex-wife of future Doctor Colin Baker, but at this time married to glam rocker Alvin Stardust - and Dominic Guard - brother of Christopher, of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy fame - look like rejects from a New Romantic fancy dress ball. It's as if costume designer Dee Robson had a good, long think about how the least convincing space raiders in the history of science-fiction might look, then added a disco cape. Kari and Olvir look ridiculous in their ill-fitting, not-at-all-air-tight fish bowl helmets, lily white space clothes, big 80s hair and pony tails, and Quentin Crisp make-up. It's hard to believe they're characters from the same story. This is Terminus, one of the grimmest, grittiest, most serious stories in classic Who. The last thing you expect is a couple of space pirates dressed like Pan's People.

These hard-faced pirates are an advance party boarding the ship to open the airlocks to allow presumably more camp pirates aboard, for they want to steal whatever cargo there is. But not long after Kari and Olvir have boarded, their friends run out on them, blasting away into the distance without explanation. Kari and Olvir are abandoned, so their first thought is to commandeer the Doctor's TARDIS. When he politely says no, they ask him nicely if he'll take them off the ship instead! They really are the least piratey space pirates!

Another ship has arrived, and begins to dock with the space liner. A computer voice announces that Terminus Inc is here, and that all passengers with mobility should prepare to disembark. "Anyone failing to disembark will be removed. Sterilisation procedures will then follow." Oh-oh, that doesn't sound good.

And then all the skull doors slide open and crowds of shabby, bandaged, listless people shamble into the corridors, presumably to disembark prior to sterilisation. It's bright spark Olvir who makes the connection, running back to the empty bridge and announcing to nobody, like a melodramatic town crier: "This is Terminus, where all the Lazars come to die! We're on a leper ship! We're all going to diiiiiiiiiiie!"

The horrified look on the Doctor's face as the episode ends reflects how I feel too, having seen poor Tegan mauled by grubby bandaged lepers, and the ship flooded with what I presume to be more victims of this infectious disease. After a pretty grim opening episode, this is just the icing on the cake: Doctor Who does leprosy. Happy birthday, Doctor!

First broadcast: February 15th, 1983

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Roger Limb's doom-laden score sets the mood perfectly.
The Bad: Dee Robson's idea of what a space raider should look like.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Terminus is available as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy BBC DVD box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Guardian-Terminus-Enlightenment/dp/B002ATVDBY