‘THE ETERNITY CONTRACT’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

Inside Carnon Manor with the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa

This story called ‘The Eternity Contract’ is by Steve Lyons. It features the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa. I found this ‘Doctor Who’ story a lot better than ‘The Parliament of Rats’, especially when more is delved into the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa’s characters and how they tackle being in a haunted house. 🙂

Steve Lyons would later go on to write more stories set during the Fifth Doctor era, including ‘Hearts of Stone’ and ‘Smoke and Mirrors’. In ‘The Eternity Contract’, the Doctor and Nyssa end up on a planet where they’re attacked by wolf-like creatures. They soon find themselves in a haunted house.

The house happens to be called Carnon Manor and the residents tell the Doctor and Nyssa that they must have died. Apparently, all who are inside Carnon Manor are claimed to be dead, including Patricia Hopkins, Richard and Jean Ferris, Melissa Hamilton, ‘Doug’ Williams and Dr. Donald Morton.

It’s fascinating how Nyssa’s character is handled, especially when she claims horror movies don’t exist on Traken. She’d been ‘repelled’ when Tegan explained the genre, as glorification of evil and violence is alien to her culture. Billy won’t take Nyssa to see many horror films at the cinema then. 😀

Nyssa also happens to cry for the first time since the Master and Traken in ‘Logopolis’. I don’t know if this contradicts what’s in ‘Empire of Death’, as Nyssa was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in that story. It can be interpreted differently when reading these stories again and again. 🙂

‘The Eternity Contract’ rating – 8/10