Inspirations - Terminus

A terrible plague for which most people think there is no cure. Odd writing about this story in the middle of a pandemic, as it revolves around a disease. There is supposed to be a cure, at a place called Terminus, but as no-one ever comes back from there it is generally assumed that victims go there to die. The ailment is known as Lazars Disease, and it is presented as an affliction similar to leprosy. At the time, the similarity was picked up on by a leading charity who complained that it was presenting leprosy as an incurable disease, and damaging the educational work they were doing. Lazar derives from the biblical character of Lazarus. His name was actually Eleazar, and he was the brother of Martha and Mary. He had died four days before Jesus arrived in their home town of Bethany. Jesus performed a miracle and raised him from the dead. It was believed that the illness which had killed him was leprosy. During the Crusades, the Order of Saint Lazarus was set up by some knights who had all suffered from leprosy (established at a leper hospital in Jerusalem in 1119).
Medieval maps had Jerusalem at the centre of the known world, just as Terminus lies at the centre of the known universe. Notable sufferers of leprosy, it's believed, included King Henry IV of England and King Robert the Bruce of Scotland.

Terminus was written by Stephen Gallagher, and one of its functions was to write out the companion Nyssa, as played by Sarah Sutton. It also forms part of the Black Guardian Trilogy, which introduces and establishes the new companion, Turlough. Having failed to destroy the Doctor's ability to regenerate last time, the Black Guardian now instructs Turlough on sabotaging the TARDIS. He is only partially successful in this, causing the ship's defences to break down, destroying its structural integrity. A hitherto unheard of defence mechanism causes the ship to lock onto a nearby craft - which just happens to be a spaceship carrying Lazars to Terminus.
One of Gallaghers' main inspirations for this story was Norse Mythology. The people who run Terminus, which appears to be a huge space station, are the Vanir, who have Scandinavian sounding names like Bor and Sigurd. The Vanir were one of two sets of Norse deities. They represented nature, fertility etc, whilst their opposite number - the Aesir - included those Norse Gods we are more familiar with - Odin, Thor, Loki, and were based in Asgard. The two groups of deities waged war against each other.

Bor comes from Borr - the father of Odin. Sigurd is an alternative version of Siegfried, the Germanic hero who slew a dragon. A number of Norse kings were named Sigurd. Valgard is a relatively new Norwegian christian name (dating from the late 19th Century). Eirak is presumably just another version of Erik - another popular Viking name. There's an Olvir mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga.
In Terminus' forbidden zone - a heavily irradiated part of the station, the result of ancient engine damage - resides a huge canine creature called the Garm. Garmr was a dog or wolf associated with Ragnarok and Hel (who presided over the Norse Hell). Garmr may well be another name for Fenrir, another wolf associated with Hel and Ragnarok (and familiar as the inspiration for The Curse of Fenric, which is also loaded with Norse mythology). Fenrir might be a species, of which Garmr was an example.
Gallagher was not at all impressed with the Garm as realised on screen - intending that it should just be a dark shape in the shadows, with glowing eyes.
Ragnarok was a series of events which presaged the end of the world - including natural disasters and a great battle. Many of the gods would perish in this, ascending to Valhalla, and the world would be drowned, only to be reborn anew. One of these events was an invasion by giants (Jotnar), and we see that the long-dead pilot of Terminus is a giant of a man.

Some fans who witnessed recording of this story mistook the Vanir armour for Ice Warrior costumes. The skeletal body of the armour was based on memento mori depictions on medieval tombs, which depicted the deceased in a skeletal state - a reminder of what comes to us all. Another popular medieval memento mori image is King Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Vanir helmets, however, are clearly inspired by the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, now in the British Museum. Sutton Hoo lies near Woodbridge in Suffolk, and comprises a number of burial mounds (nearly 20) dating from the Bronze Age onward. Over the centuries, a number of these mounds had been raided by treasure hunters and antiquarians, but on the eve of the Second World War the landowner, Mrs Edith Pretty, gave permission for her groundsman, Basil Brown, to excavate one of the larger mounds - Mound 1. Brown discovered an intact ship burial, dating to the 7th Century AD. It is generally believed to have been the grave of the Anglo-Saxon King Raedwald, who died c. 624, a member of the Wuffingas dynasty of East Anglian kings. The British Museum states only that the grave is of an East Anglian King. Most of the helmet is gone, but it has been reconstructed. The ship had deteriorated, leaving only a ghostly outline and the iron rivets to indicate the size and shape.
The war interrupted the excavations, and the area even had tanks driving over it, but after hostilities ended, the excavations continued. Even though she was entitled to the finds as treasure trove, being the landowner, Mrs Pretty insisted that they be gifted to the nation.
The substance which the Vanir take to combat radiation sickness is called Hydromel. This derives from the Greek for water (hydro) and the Latin for honey (mel).

It was Gallagher's intention to show that the Terminus space station, which is at the exact centre of the known universe, was the cause of the Big Bang, when it fell back through time and jettisoned fuel from its damaged engines into a void. Its destruction here would somehow destroy the universe, but Gallagher wanted to suggest that there was a never-ending sequence of universes - one's destruction leading to the creation of another - a linear model rather than having parallel ones. This cycle of death and rebirth tied in with the Ragnarok theme.
Strike action, and a failure to complete the studio recording on time, meant that a remount was necessary. This would lead to the anniversary season ending prematurely with the lacklustre two part The King's Demons.
One thing the story really fails to do is move the Black Guardian / Turlough story on very far. Turlough and Tegan spend most of the story trapped in a ventilation shaft. This at least allows more time for Nyssa to take centre stage in her final story. She leaves the TARDIS after being cured of the disease, to help the Vanir refine the cure. Her decision to strip off some of her clothes for no real reason was apparently inspired purely as a favour to the dads watching.
Next time: Space ships - as in ships in space. Someone develops an eternal crush on Tegan whilst it all gets too much for Turlough, causing him to go overboard, in a story partly inspired by bored relatives...