Doctor Who: Terminus

Doctor Who Target Books (Numerical Order) #79

by John Lydecker (Book), Stephen Gallagher (Screenplay)

When the TARDIS console is wilfully sabotaged, the Doctor's time machine becomes dimensionally unstable and begins to dissolve. The area immediately affected is the room where Nyssa is working by herself.

As the creeping instability closes in on her, the TARDIS locks onto the nearest passing spacecraft, and the process of collapse is halted-but there is no sign of Nyssa.

Hoping that she has escaped onto the strangely deserted host liner, the Doctor goes looking for her. Whether or not he finds her, getting back to the TARDIS will be no easy business...

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Audiobook, Adventure, Time Travel

159 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 1983

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novelization of the fourth adventure of the twentieth season of Doctor Who, which was broadcast in February of 1983. The fifth regeneration of the character is the focus, along with his trio of companions Nyssa, Tegan, and Turlough. The teleplay was written by Stephen Gallagher, who also wrote this novelization under his pseudonym of John Lydecker. The book is written as a continuous narrative with no chapter breaks. The descriptions are quite a bit more satisfying than the televised version, which was plagued with production problems and a low budget for effects. The story is set on a spaceship which is essentially a leper colony, and there's a rather silly side-plot that involves the possible destruction of the whole universe. The Black Guardian is also back, again trying to convince Turlough to sabotage the TARDIS and kill The Doctor, who seems a little weak and oblivious to some of the plot problems. Nyssa becomes infected after Turlough causes mayhem, and eventually elects to stay behind at the conclusion after running about through most of the book only partially clothed. Tegan doesn't have much to do. It's not one of the better stories, but there are some interesting nods to Norse mythology.

[Ivana Richards · Rating 2 out of 5]

At nearly 160 pages, this adaptation is 25% longer than the average Target novel. However, this is a double-edged sword. The book has been written in the Terry Pratchett style of novels, without chapters. It is also very well written. However, the tv series is only so enjoyable because of the performances from Sarah Sutton and Peter Davison ( Strickson and Fielding got so little to do they hardly made an impact). The book, unfortunately, is just so drearily dull - virtually nothing happens for at least the first half of the book, and the sequences with Tegan and Turlough drag terribly. Much as I love watching this story, I can't honestly recommend the novelisation of it. And, yet again,the cover of the book is a rather strange mixture of photos which give little ( if any) incentive to pick the book up off a shop's shelves.

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts with a lot of atmosphere and mood and ends very well, just a problem with the middle which is quite a chore to get through. The characters are well-drawn but there’s a lot of what wannabe writers of about twenty years ago called “headhopping” which can be handled extremely well but just feels like the author was fed up with his characters and tried to spend as little time as possible with them while writing, which is a shame because this has a wonderful idea for a story that is spoiled by the delivery.

[Derelict Space Sheep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gallagher’s second Doctor Who script gave rise to a gloomy, layered production rich in scenario and comparatively nuanced in its characterisations. The subsequent novelisation, far from the undemanding walk-through that young readers had come to expect from Target Books, proves equally accomplished.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know why this one is not rated more highly. My suspicion is that people are judging the TV version, not the novelization. The TV production was one of the weaker Davison stories, foiled principally by the inability of the production to match Steve Gallagher's script. The novel, by contrast, suffers from no such problems. John Lydecker is a pseudonym for Steve Gallagher, the scriptwriter. Gallagher, who had published several novels before writing for Doctor Who, puts his novelist's skills to good use. The book is not merely a reproduction of the script with a couple of short descriptions. Gallagher takes the time to enhance the descriptions, explain the motivations, and fill in missing details that help make the whole story more sensible. Gallagher has borrowed heavily from Norse legend and myth, but not in the heavy-handed fashion that "Underworld" relied on Greek legend. The result is a much richer and more satisfying experience than "Terminus" was on TV. There are still a couple of flaws. There is no particular need to heighten the sense of urgency by making the whole universe at stake; merely emphasizing the loss of several thousand Lazars and Vanirs would have done well enough. The segments involving Tegan and Turlough seem irrelevant, since the two get exactly nowhere for the whole story. Similarly, the appearance of Kari and Olvir seems mainly to cover the roles emptied by the wayward Tegan and Turlough, and most of the functions of these two characters could have been modified to fit Tegan and Turlough. For instance, Turlough's technological knowledge could have led him to stumble upon the fact that the ship contained victims of a deadly, contagious disease. It is well within Turlough's nature to have panicked at such knowledge in much the same way Olvir did. These complaints aside, I have to say that "Terminus" is one of the better-written Target novelizations.

[Pete · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terminus (1983) by John Lydecker is the novelisation of the Terminus Serial of the 20th season of Doctor Who. Turlough tries to kill the Doctor by sabotaging the TARDIS and the TARDIS winds up on a strange, seemingly empty starship.

There is one nice idea in this one, a spaceship from a previous universe that is tied up with the creation of our own. The Garm is also cool in the book. However, overall this one is a bit of a let down.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good story this one, and a good farewell for Nyssa.
Another one with no clear cut / evil characters, outside of the ongoing side plot with the Black Guardian and Turlough, but an interesting and bleak setting for the story, where no one is really in a position of strength.
It also has quite an interesting explanation for the what started the Big Bang here, hinted at to begin with, and then well portrayed along with fear of starting it all over again.
The Doctor and Nyssa are in good form here I think, quite a different story for Nyssa but can see her independence quite well, and builds well to her electing to stay to help find a better cure for the Lazar disease.
Tegan and Turlough have an interesting side adventure here, trying to find the others and escape various dangers, and can see it leading to them bonding better, complicated by Turlough still being influenced by the Black Guardian, but can see potential for him to improve, helping build the complexity of the character.
The various side characters add well to the plot, quite varying motivations and tendencies amongst them all.
Overall, builds to a very good story.

[Michael Mills · Rating 2 out of 5]

There a lot good ideas in here – a vast timeship at the centre of the universe, a satire on privatised healthcare, the Doctor's enemies exploiting his tendency to walk into danger – but there's so much padding they don't connect. The television story on which this is based was the last one in Doctor Who to feature three companions for 35 years, and it's easy to see why: Tegan and Turlough barely interact with the plot. If ever someone were minded to remake classic Doctor Who stories in the tighter mould of today, this would be an interesting place to start. But the story we have is slow and empty.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been a long while since I have seen this episode, so it was like reading it for the first time. As I read, I remembered bits and pieces of the story and I think I remember liking this one when I saw it on television. It is a good story, and I think it is a well-written ending episode for Nyssa. I like the thought of her staying and helping those in need.

[Steven Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Missed opportunity

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in my days of collecting and reading the Target novels, there were times when my allowance was running low that I'd purchase a novel based almost entirely on the page count. So was the case with "Terminus," which I recall as being vaguely thicker than most Target novels of its era.

I also recall that the novel didn't include chapters, thus requiring a bit more effort to find the cliffhangers on the printed page. I know I read it at least once back in the day and then listened to the audiobook of it a few years ago. But as two of my favorite podcasts devoted to the Target line of books closed in on episodes featuring "Terminus," I was doggoned if I could recall much about the novel -- well, beyond the fact that the original cover was fairly uninspiring.

It's probably been a good decade since I rewatched "Terminus." And at the rate, my current rewatch of the entire run of Doctor Who is going, it may be a good bit until I do reach it. In many ways, listening to the Target audiobook this time around reminded me of reading and re-reading the Target books before I stumbled across the idea of recording all the serials on VHS so I could watch and rewatch them at my leisure . So I could see the adventure again and see how the visuals from my minds' eye differed from the visual achieved on-screen.

This is another one of the fifth Doctor stories that KTEH identified as one of Peter Davison's favorite stories when I first started watching. Looking back, I find this assertion a bit at odds with how Davison seems to view the story in various DVD extras related to this story. It does make me wonder if the concept of a space station that somehow is responsible for the big bang thanks to some time travel antics was what Davison was referring to when he picked this story back in the 80s or if maybe Nyssa's departure made it more memorable to him in the short and long term. Either way, I find myself intrigued to see if Davison's thoughts on the story will have changed when the serial comes out on the BluRay box set later this year.

"Terminus" holds an interesting place in my Doctor Who consciousness. It was one of the first stories I saw back in the summer I found the series. At the time, I'd barely scratched the surface of the classic run and given that I was watching in relative isolation, I didn't know the fan collective take on the stories. So, back in the day, I liked it. I still kind of like it to this day, even if it's not necessarily the strongest story of season 20.

There are a lot of various people wandering around the corridors in it. But listening to the audiobook this time around, I found myself finding a deeper story working here than I'd given "Terminus" credit for. I can see what John Lydecker and script editor Eric Saward were trying to say forty yearsagoo about the medical system and the treatment of people facing certain ailments, however, I'm still not sure the execution of them is necessarily that strong. The idea that there is a disease that if you get it, no one wants to talk about and your family will bundle you off to a space station at the center of the universe to possibly be cured is a compelling one. However, I feel like the script stops a bit short of really saying much more about it than this isn't always the best course of action. Then, we've got the question of is the cure worse than the disease and how much should we trust large corporations to come up with a one-size-fits-all type of cure.

It feels like this is a page of social commentary (you know, the kind that drives certain fans nuts these days on various message boards), right out of the Terrance Dicks or Barry Letts era of the show. And yet, "Terminus" never quite feels like it's as substantially commenting on the issues it wants to raise as the stories from the third Doctor's era could or did.

And then we have the novelization of the story. If I'd expected that the larger novelizations might mean greater background and depth to the supporting cast back on the original purchas, I think I was disappointed. Lydecker does a good job of adapting what we saw on screen and creating some solid world-building and descriptive passages. But the actual filling in greater details left a bit to be desired. Heck, part of me wanted to see an expansion of Turlough's struggle at the deal he's made to kill the Doctor and how the Black Guardian's telling Turlough that the Doctor is "evil" is creating conflict within him as he gets to know the Doctor.

Then, we come to the audiobook which strangely is narrated by Steven Pacey, an actor who has little connection to the serial or Doctor Who. He does a nice job bringing the story to life, but I can't help but wonder why none of the original serial's cast aren't here reading the story.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1060883.html#cutid5[return][return]As with Doctor Who - Warrior's Gate, we have here a decent enough space opera sf novel which happens to have the Doctor and companions dropped into it. A number of things work better here than they did on screen - most notably, the Garm, which was all too obviously a man in a silly suit on screen; but also the raiders Kari and Olvir, and the sense of corporate greed and despair. One of the better Fifth Doctor novelisations.[return][return]It struck me as noteworthy that both Gallagher's stories put the Doctor and friends at a significant point - Warrior's Gate at the zero coordinates, and Terminus at the centre of the universe.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has a solid claim to being the Doctor Who novelization that most surpasses its original script...in this case, but SEVERAL country miles! "Terminus" was full of problems on-screen, but under a pseudonym, author Steve Gallagher takes his story and turns it into quite the dark & emotional epic. It's a great read, with all the characters (the regulars AND the guests) getting equal chances to shine, and all the dangers and complications are given extra weight and depth. Easily the best Target novel of the early 1980s.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bit blah story that feels more like a bunch of ideas jammed together rather than one strong whole.

Something goes wrong with the Tardis and the crew is scattered all over what turns out to be basically a leper colony in space.
There's also some sub-plot from the ongoing 'Black Guardian' story arc and this is the story that Nyssa leaves.

Some decent character moments and the Garn is a cool alien, but the story just seems to meander around for awhile than stop.

[bluetyson]

isbn,original

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Average Doctor Who story, from the 5th Doctor.

[Russio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peaking in tension every 40 pages, I really enjoyed this Who old-style an would happily revisit this portion of my youth again. A workmanlike adaptation of a fairly good set of episodes.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that John Lydecker should stop writing. An otherwise fine story ruined by a lack of chapters