Terminus Part Three

The one where the end of the universe is nigh...

I'm supposed to believe that space vixen Kari is a hard-nosed galactic pirate who raids cargo liners, laser gun in hand, and barely thinks twice about engaging in combat or murdering in cold blood. I've had enough trouble believing any of that thanks to the way Dee Robson and Joan Stribling have dressed Liza Goddard, and made her up to look like she's one of Toyah's backing dancers. But now she's being asked to show her mettle and rescue the Doctor, who's being assaulted by Valgard, her credentials as a hardened space raider crumble to dust. Ellen Ripley she is not.

After being half-strangled from behind by Valgard's staff, she quivers on her knees like a terrified schoolgirl, unable to get a clear shot of Valgard with her gun, despite the fact the two men aren't really moving around a lot. Kari honestly looks pathetic at this moment, and her solution to rescuing the Doctor is just silly: she aims her laser at a nearby wall panel, so that the laser bolt will bounce off and hit Valgard squarely on his helmet, causing a massive headache. I'm sorry, but no: that is stupid. If Kari can't get a clear shot at Valgard's entire body from 6ft away, I cannot believe that she's such a sure shot that she can hit him on the back of the head by shooting in the opposite direction. Annie Oakley she is not.

Anyway, it works. The Doctor, clocking the fact Valgard is wearing radiation armour, wanders into a very obviously segregated area, a Forbidden Zone if you will, which isn't the cleverest thing he's ever done. Remember, he's supposed to be looking for Nyssa, so why doesn't he hang around the bit where the violent bully boys live, because that's more likely to be where she is. Instead, he wantonly enters a radioactive zone, accompanied by his ersatz companion Kari. Tegan Jovanka she is not.

Most of this third episode concentrates on the Doctor's discoveries in the Forbidden Zone, where he encounters a very ill Bor, who we saw briefly wander into the Forbidden Zone in part 2. All this time later Bor has succumbed to severe radiation sickness from Terminus's leaking engine, which he is trying to plug up using random bits of metal. Bor also has some pretty gruesome burns on his face and arm after trying to pull down the power cables, and all in all, he's a bit of a gibbering wreck. Peter Benson does an admirable job of portraying Bor's addled state of mind, alongside his physical weakness. Bor seems scarred both in body and spirit, and can't even string a sentence together ("Short term memory's the first to go.") He makes for a sorry sight, and a sympathetic character, unlike everybody else in this story.

Meanwhile, there's a power struggle among the ranks of the Vanir. A good power struggle is always a safe bet to add a bit of colour and interest to a subplot, and the mutual distrust between spirited Valgard and leader Eirak gives Andrew Burt and Martin Potter something to get stuck into. Tim Munro also makes for a relatable Sigurd. We also learn in this episode that the Vanir are slaves of Terminus Inc, forced to "process" the Lazar victims sent to them. Their radiation armour is not enough to protect them wholly from the leaking engine, and so they are sent phials of hydromel to keep them alive, although shipments recently are proving to be less than reliable. The latest box of hydromel contains coloured liquid, which is useless to the Vanir. So we have reason to feel sorry for both the Lazars and the Vanir, even though the latter treats the former like cattle. And the villain of the piece is the faceless company, Terminus Incorporated.

Nyssa, imprisoned with all the other dying Lazars, befriends the cynical Inga, who tells her that the Vanir send the Lazars to meet the Garm in the Forbidden Zone, supposedly to be cured, but whoever heard of lepers being cured by exposure to radiation? Rightly, Inga is suspicious, and presumes they're all doomed. It's a grim realisation to see sweet little Nyssa among all this misery, dressed in shabby rags like a Victorian peasant. She's as pasty as a geisha, and understandably pretty terrified. She's been alone in this harsh world of disease and deprivation since Olvir dumped her in part 2, and now look at her. Diseased, and chained up like a Salem witch awaiting the arrival of a terrible creature known only as the Garm.

"No!" screams Nyssa as two red eyes emerge from the gloom. "What is that thing?" It's only a big doggy, Nyssa, nothing to stress about. Olvir, who's been floating around like a carrier bag on the breeze, tries his best to zap the giant hound with his laser, but it has no effect. Hurling Nyssa over his shoulder like a sack of spuds, the Garm totters his way back into the Forbidden Zone, and it'll be interesting to see what exactly he does with all these Lazars in there.

Having found the leaking engine, the Doctor encounters Valgard once again, and a fight ensues which looks terribly over-rehearsed, and not at all convincing. It's one of those fights where the two actors have listened very carefully to the stunt arranger, done everything they've been told and learned it to the letter. But this results in one of those "right, you do that and then I'll do this, so that you can do that and then I do this" sort of fights. These super-rehearsed fights were common in the 1960s, but it's been a while since I've seen one this weak. Look at the melodramatic way Andrew Burt hurls himself into the engine! It's like Play School.

There's a major breakthrough at the end of the episode when the Doctor pieces things together and comes to the conclusion that Terminus is more important to proceedings than first thought. Once, Terminus had the ability to travel in time, but to do so required an enormous amount of energy. When some of the ship's fuel became unstable, the pilot jettisoned it into a void, the fuel exploded, and boom: the Big Bang, Event One, the dawn of the universe, with Terminus at its centre. Then the pilot time-jumped Terminus forward, riding the wave of the chain reaction until it ended up billions of years in the future. Now a second engine is unstable, and about to explode.

And pause right there. The Doctor says that this second explosion will have the opposite effect, and will result in the destruction of the universe. Why? If the first explosion resulted in the creation of life, why would a second one do the exact opposite, halting the eternal expansion of the universe, and destroying all life within? Wouldn't it perhaps restart another universe, or just do a terrible amount of damage to the surrounding area? Am I being naive? Maybe, but I'm also asking questions which aren't getting answered.

Throughout the episode, Tegan and Turlough have done nothing. Well, they have: they've got out of the subterranean hell that kept us bored throughout part 2, and have spent their time achieving very little in part 3. There's even a scene where they stop to sit on a staircase and look as thoroughly bored as the viewer. And boy am I sick of Turlough pulling out his crystal for a chat with the Black Guardian, eyes raised to the heavens like he's having a fit. Tegan and Turlough are wasted in this story, and shamelessly so. They could quite easily have taken the place of Kari and Olvir - two pointless characters if ever there were some - and actually have some agency (though not a lot more). Maybe that was how Steve Gallagher originally wrote it - Valgard even refers to Kari as a "girl" at one point, which is a bit patronising for Liza Goddard, who was a womanly, child-bearing 32 years old at the time - but they shouldn't have altered it for the sake of a couple of guest star names.

Anyway, the Black Guardian advises Turlough to operate the emergency bypass switch, which he does, and BANG! Turlough pulling wires and operating blue switches is never a good thing. After all, meddling beneath the TARDIS console is what got them mixed up in this in the first place.

Time's ticking now that the Terminus computer has started an automatic sequence to jettison the unstable fuel from the second engine. "If we don't do something quickly, the whole universe will be destroyed!" says the Doctor. Hmmm, I'm still not up to speed on why that might be, Doc...

He'll probably explain later.

First broadcast: February 22nd, 1983

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Peter Benson's nice little turn as deranged Bor.
The Bad: Tegan and Turlough have nothing to do; Olvir and Kari are next to useless; Nyssa is starting to become less relevant in her own story (shades of Tegan in Kinda).
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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