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circular_time
Welcome! It's been a wild, crazy, lovely, painful year for me, beginning my Big Finish journey in December 2013, rediscovering why Nyssa was one of my favorite characters when I was a girl in 1980, binge-listening to every one of her audio stories in 2014, falling in love all over again with older!Nyssa, making an odyssey to England to put my Team Five novella into her actress' hands, and sharing my 40-year classic Who fandom with a new generation of fans.
So. Let's talk Nyssa. PLEASE. It's been driving me crazy, that I can't discuss Entropy Plague because I don't want to spoil people, yet for me, it's as big a deal as a Doctor regenerating or the Missy reveal.
Clear out now if you want to avoid spoilers. I HAVE THINGS TO SAY.
First, critique. And then, things which make me love Entropy Plague despite it breaking my heart into a thousand pieces.
Too Much of a Teaser
Big Finish took the unusual step of giving away Nyssa's tragic ending almost a full two years with Prisoners of Fate's grim epilogue warning that she was doomed never to return home. We almost didn't need the announcement of the audio's name (Entropy Plague— Traken was lost to Entropy, and Plagues are Nyssa's personal windmill to tilt against), let alone teasers about "sacrifice," to guess what was coming.
As I said back in September 2014:
Even before [Prisoners of Fate] I was worried, because I was well aware that once Big Finish runs past the end of a character’s established TV continuity, it can do anything it likes to her. I’m still broken up about a character that was written out of Nyssa’s continuity [Lasarti].
Basically, I’m terribly afraid they’re not bluffing.
The only thing that gives me any hope is that they’re being SO DAMNED OBVIOUS. “We are killing off Nyssa. No, really, she’s doomed. Utterly doomed. She’s never going to come home and her family will never see her again. WE ARE TOTES GOING TO KILL HER MWAHAHA.”
…at that point I can almost, almost imagine them going “hahaha no just kidding we’re just stranding her in e-space to try to repair the damage caused by the same entropy field that destroyed Traken.” Or else she pulls some Noble Sacrifice stunt to make sure her friends escape, and she doesn’t die, but they can’t bring her with them.
I was right on both counts, and I'm sure most of you guessed the same. Did it cheapen the story to have forewarning? Somewhat, yes.
Or was it a clever narrative device? "Look, this character is leaving. That's not the drama. The drama is how." After all, Big Finish is the master of setting up suspense and angst in classic Who stories where we know that canon characters have to survive. This was the inverse.
And at any rate, the forewarning gave me a year to brace for it. Not that it helped. I cried off and on for two days.
Should older!Nyssa's Arc Have Ended Sooner?
Fifthx eloquently pointed out that Prisoners of Fate was already a classic BF not-quite-happy-ending for Nyssa, who'd lost a great husband, 25 years of her children's lives, and failed to save billions because of a time loop. OUCH. And that's piling angst on top of her horrific history. Wasn't that angst enough? Were Mistfall, Equilibrium and Entropy Plague really good enough to milk the older!Nyssa story arc for another two years? (Mistfall, probably not, but the second two were good.) Why is it that studios so often achieve audience impact through emotional bludgeoning, instead of going for the really bold approach of writing a realistic "happily-ever-after" ending that's not clichéd or trite?
Adric and Neeka
I think Adric also came out of Entropy Plague the worse for wear. In Prisoners of Fate, he was a fascinatingly ambiguous character, Nyssa's emotionally immature son driven to save lives and continue her work, yet performing unethical experiments (never adequately dealt with, probably on the cutting room floor). By the end of Prisoners of Fate, he'd partly redeemed himself and become reconciled with his mother. In Entropy Plague, he's understandably upset, but his petulance undermines audience sympathy much like his namesake. I found that depressing. I wish we'd gotten to meet Neeka instead, that fiery young woman who reminded Nyssa of Tegan.
Tegan and Nyssa
Big Finish does so many things right with the Fifth Doctor teams, but they've consistently short-changed the Nyssa & Tegan friendship, despite playing lip service to it. Nyssa's relationship with Turlough was developed beautifully, and her bond with the Fifth Doctor is wonderful, but I hope next year's Tegan & Nyssa stories correct this oversight. Alas, there will now never be a chance to explore the age disparity between older!Nyssa and Tegan, which must have put some sort of strain on their friendship.
Big Finish At Its Most Brutal
I generally love WillBrooks' cover art, yet Entropy Plague's cover was horrific and hard to look at. This frustrates me, because I wanted Nyssa's last audio to be beautiful, like the Equilibrium cover. The cover reflected the brutality of the story. Entropy Plague is horrific in spots, with civilians mowed down by gunfire, rotting food, cold, starvation, people aging and turning into nightmarish dust creatures that dissolve you on contact— wow, but also, ouch. Even for Jonny Morris, that's scary. I'm not sure I'll be able to listen to it again.
On the other hand, it was a damned powerful story, and the imagery of the world teetering on the edge of collapse, with steampunk mechanisms serving for space travel because electricity didn't function— great stuff.
Nyssa: The ANTI Tasha Yar
Nyssa was stupendous in Entropy Plague, simply by being herself.
Many of you are probably too young to remember Star Trek: The Next Generation when it aired. Tasha Yar, one of the few female regulars, was knocked off out of the blue in a pointless and casual way. The writers were trying to subvert the trope that death in fiction is always meaningful. Tasha Yar was reduced to a fridged damsel, killed for shock value, invoked to give manpain to Data and Riker. It was an empty death.
Nyssa's exit was not empty (and of course, not a death). She plays a significant role in Entropy Plague. Right from the moment she volunteers to be the Doctor's "tribute" before he can talk himself into being shot, she's taking charge and doing. The casual way in which the Doctor introduces Nyssa to their cellmate as she's picking the lock is just awesome (although a bit suspect; her lockpicking skills haven't come up before). Nyssa saves Tegan from dying in the induction chamber. She's being effective offstage the way the Doctor so often is. It's one last chance for Nyssa to be Five's Romana, as I've called her many times.
Nyssa's Sacrifice
Her parting scene (here's a sound clip), when she deadbolts the escape ship's hatch so the Doctor can't stop her from sacrificing herself is utterly, totally, heartbreakingly true to Nyssa. Again and again, she has thrown herself into danger on behalf of others, explicitly following the Doctor's example on many occasions (as far back as Spare Parts).
He AlI'll Find You (Or not)
When the Doctor is pleading with Nyssa not to stay in e-space, saying, "I won't ever be able to find you!" it's an echo of that touching moment of Emerald Tiger when they each try to sacrifice themselves for one another (sound clip). In Emerald Tiger, he promises to find her, and he does. In Jupiter Conjunction, there's a parallel scene in which he's forced to leave her behind to save millions of lives, promises to rescue her… but he can't. In Butcher of Brisbane, he does catch up with her, barely in the nick of time (although there, too, she charges off after the antagonist against the Doctor's wishes, risking death yet again).
In Jupiter Conjunction, Nyssa pleads with her captor to let her escape, not because she wants to live, but because she's left work unfinished. As she said as far back as Cobwebs, her own life doesn't matter to her, only finding the cure to save thousands.
The Needs of the Many...
And that's another aspect of Nyssa that's both her strength and her fatal flaw. Think back to Terminus:
NYSSA: And with my skills, I can help them.
TEGAN: We need you, too.
NYSSA: I've enjoyed every moment of my time on the Tardis, and I'll miss you both, but here I have a chance to put into practice the skills I learnt on Traken.
[…]
DOCTOR: You do fully understand the commitment you'll be undertaking?
NYSSA: Yes.
DOCTOR: And that life here will be very hard.
NYSSA: I am fully aware of that, but I want to stay.
DOCTOR: Then you're a very brave person. I wish you every luck.
TEGAN: She'll die here.
NYSSA: Not easily, Tegan. Like you, I'm indestructible.
She's always like that. She loves the Doctor and Tegan, but she goes where she is needed.
In the final montage of Caves of Androzani, Nyssa tells the Doctor from afar (and from close at hand, as we learn in Circular Time): You musn't die, Doctor. You're needed. Those are the very last words he ever hears her say.
[JONNY MORRIS YOU BASTARD sound clip: the Caves of Androzani/Entropy Plague parallel between older!Nyssa's farewell to the Doctor and younger!Nyssa's last words to him as he regenerates.]
Even in a low-key story like The Game, Nyssa chooses to stay behind because she's found a place where she is needed, assisting Lord Carlisle as a peacemaker. She tells the Doctor, "He needs me more than you do. It's that simple." Events turn out differently, but that's really the key to Nyssa's character.
In Prisoners of Fate, Nyssa tells her son that he needs his assistant and friend Mahandra more than he needs his mother. She says the same thing in Entropy Plague, that her children don't need her anymore; they're grown up. Whereas, she says, the Doctor is needed in N-space, where he can make so much of a difference through all his regenerations, whereas she is most needed in E-space, where her skills helping the sick, the malnourished, the refugees will help the survivors, assuming she survives the induction chamber.
Nyssa loves her children. She loves her friends. But for her, as with the Doctor, the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," and personal attachments, no matter how precious, are secondary to service to the universe. Small wonder that she has a Spock/Wrath of Khan moment.
She does what's needed, and she goes where her skills can be most useful, no matter the cost to herself.
Sunset at the End of the Universe
And that cost… is most of her life. She might have lived 200 years. As it is, she's got white hair by the time she enters the Induction Chamber, and we don't know what else it did to her. (Tegan assures Nyssa's son that she and Turlough were in the Induction Chamber longer and survived, so Nyssa's chances are good, especially with her longer lifespan).
Nyssa does survive, and she is not so enfeebled as to be useless. She attends to the sick, helps rebuild and replant, teaches others her lifetime's store of experience and medical expertise, and finally retires to tend her "gardens," plural, beside the citadel which she calls a "castle." It reminds her of Traken. She feels like she's come home.
There, she says, she finally feels old age creeping up on her. She's about 85. So, in the end, she has a human lifespan.
The Importance of Being Old
Nyssa's old age makes Entropy Plague easier for me to bear, oddly enough.
At 20, Sarah Sutton was one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. But Sarah is still beautiful at 50, at 53. I loved the fact that Nyssa came back at age 70, no longer a pretty young thing, but a fearless middle-aged woman with a professional career spanning decades.There are precious few female characters in science fiction over the age at 30, and they are almost never the main characters, only guest characters, and it's even rarer for one to be out there exploring dangerous environments instead of acting as an ambassador or facility-bound scientist/doctor.
Much as I loved Emerald Tiger, I objected to Nyssa's rejuvenation, which seemed to say, "Look, Nyssa's just not Nyssa unless she's young and pretty and everyone calls her 'the girl.'" To hell with that. Nyssa is even better as an older woman who can handle just about anything with the confidence of a solo deep space explorer.
Let her end her life with dignity, and with wrinkles.
A Life Well-Lived
Nyssa's cured at least three plagues — Lazar's, Richter's, and the Entropy Plague — saved billions of lives, and kept E-space from collapsing. She raised two children to carry on her work, and probably taught and influenced even more people in N-space than she did in E-space during the last decade or so of her life. She may well have succeeded in doing more good than the evil the Master caused with her father's hands. Which was not her reason for doing it, but a satisfying form of revenge.
The break with her children was painful. For the Doctor and Tegan, it's devastating not knowing whether Nyssa survived, whether she died to save them.
Yet it's also something to celebrate. Nyssa could die proud of her many accomplishments (which I celebrated in #trakenfest). I'm grateful she was given a graceful retirement, instead of a Tasha Yar death.
Most of all, I'm clinging to that image little old white-haired lady enjoying her well-earned rest in "the sunlight in my gardens at the end of the universe."
YOUR TURN!
Phew. I've talked way, way too much. One of the things that drives me bonkers about Tumblr is how hard it is to DISCUSS anything. So please, go wild. What were your thoughts about Entropy Plague? Loves? Gripes? Thoughts about Nyssa (like I could EVER get tired of hearing what people think about Nyssa, older!Nyssa and this TARDIS team)? Let's DO THIS fandom thing!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-22 11:29 pm (UTC)At the moment, while I found both stories pretty heartbreaking, I am still not sure if Nyssa's arc should have ended there. The audio does end on that note of "we have to get to that planet to cure Neeka". While she did lose her husband and children, something still felt...off.
I do remember when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on; though I barely watched it its initial run (I remember actually watching it in school once). But it's an interesting comparison.
The "sunset at the end of the universe" scene as well as the "I'm needed" were enough to almost make me burst into tears. And that sound clip doesn't help. She always cared about everyone else and saved so many people...
Oh. I keep forgetting about the "rejuvenated" Nyssa (where she looks about 20). I just sort of thought she aged differently because of Trakenite biology or something. And the image of this little old lady tending her garden is sweet.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-23 01:55 am (UTC)But then Emerald Tiger reset her to 18-20. Which should've given her another100-150 years or so.
Either way, the writers of older!Nyssa were pretty bad about referring to her as "girl" even when she was in her 70s. Which probably explains the backwards-aging; they couldn't be troubled to remember. :P
Fifthx originally had me convinced that Prisoners of Fate should've been the end, but you raise another important point: Neeka. Probably it should've ended with Neeka waking up and telling off Mom! But introducing one character for an epilogue would be a tough sell.
Still sorry it wasn't Neeka hearing the story in Entropy Plague.
Something felt "off". It's funny you say that. I felt it too, and I can't quite put my finger on why. I still enjoy them. But sometimes there's a piece missing, and I'm not sure what.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-23 02:06 pm (UTC)If that's why the writers Aged her Down, then that's just lazy writing. :I It's been awhile since I've heard Emerald Tiger but that's one scene that stuck out to me.