User Reviews

The Garm is interesting. Despite his weirdly lame mouth, he's nicely expressive in his movements. His big red eyes do some neat tricks to my sympathy+fear.

The premise of the Big Bang happening all over again because of the fuel release is wild and wonderful, but very oddly reached. I have no idea how Bor figured it out. Why was Terminus capable of time travel. Why is the fuel so incredibly unstable? What in the world gave the Doctor his epiphany? Why does this second explosion undoubtedly destroy the universe? That more than anything else, the primary jeopardy factor and biggest idea of the story, just doesn't make any sense. And it bothers me.

As a boy, I didn't really care that that sequence of epiphanies didn't make any sense. It now just seems pretty darn nonsensical and unsubstantiated by anything other than that the Doctor said it. That must be some super duper unstable fuel.

Alongside the silliness of Turlough's continued checking in with the Black Guardian while he can barely do anything, we also get more skulking about in shafts with Tegan. They do get freed this episode, but it's to then hang out in the very stressful center of the universe shuttle control room.

Tone and style very much star in this story. It's still nightmarish. Nyssa's fate looks grimmer than ever, poor thing. The poorly explained nonsense has started to beat out the style, though, by this episode.

Doctor Who: Terminus: Part Three starts as the Doctor (Peter Davison) & Kari (Liza Goddard) manage to escape from the Vanir named Valgard (Andrew Burt) & into the forbidden zone, a source of constant radiation that the Vanir guards need to take a drug called Hyrdomel to survive. Meanwhile Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) is thought to be an infected leper & is stuck in a holding cell where she learns from other's that they are there on Terminus to be cured, Tegan (Janet Fielding) & Turlough (Mark Strickson) continue to try & find a way back to the TARDIS. Inside the forbidden zone the Doctor & Kari meet a Vanir named Bor (Peter Benson) who tells them a story about Terminus & how it came to be the center of the known Universe...

Episode 15 from season 20 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during February 1983 & is the third part of the second story from the Guardian Trilogy which began with Mawdryn Undead (1983) & one has to say that I am finding Terminus incredibly difficult to stick with & to be frank I think it's terrible. Quite simply Terminus has to be one of the least enjoyable Doctor Who serials ever, I pretty much hate it & so far everything about it. The story is terrible with yet again some big business or large corporation the real villain of the piece, a large Dog headed alien that has little do with anything else, annoying guest character's that are so stupid (one of the Vanir tries to stop a radiation leak by covering the source with some metal trays!) it defies logic while most of the regulars spend the whole time wandering around 'lost' & a really poor plot that also makes little sense. Here writer Steve Gallagher puts forward the notion that jettisoned fuel tanks from the Terminus exploded in space & created the known Universe in an event that we commonly refer to as the big bang. Right, well if the Universe didn't exist when the fuel tanks were jettisoned where did the Terminus come from? How could have it existed somewhere that didn't exist itself? I mean if the Universe at that point didn't exist how could the Terminus be there? There's no 'there' to be as it were, right? It's a huge paradox that doesn't make any sense no matter how you approach it or look at it, it's just totally stupid plotting that isn't even much of a dramatic revelation anyway as it doesn't really have anything to do with the story at hand. The cliffhanger ending is poor again & even at only twenty five minutes in length I found myself really bored by it & I can't say I am looking forward to Part Four either.

The production values haven't been too bad on Terminus I suppose, although the sets look cheap with the usual wobbling computer consoles whenever someone pushes a button they are alright & the model work is adequate. What I don't like though are the Vanir costumes which make this really annoying noise whenever one of the actor's do anything other than just stand there. The acting is below average, no one seems to be putting any real effort in although like the professional he is Peter Davison does the best he can with some really poor material. Minor British telly celebrity Liza Goddard is terrible while no-one else of any note features.

Terminus: Part Three was a real chore to sit through, both the previous parts were bad enough but I have lost more or less all interest in the story & am not really that bothered about seeing Part Four even though I will but more out of a sense of duty than anticipation of enjoyment.