Doctor Who (1963) 14-07: The Hand of Fear, Part Three

Episode:

434

|

Serial:

87

|

Writer:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

16-Oct-1976

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It's the first of April today, which means that this is 🎉 Sci-Fi Adventures' 10th Anniversary! 🥳 The site is up to season eleven, so it has now outlasted Stargate SG-1 and is close to overtaking the DC Comics Arrowverse. I'm still a little bit short of matching classic Doctor Who's 26 season run though.

Speaking of Doctor Who and anniversaries, this serial I'm watching turns 50 years old this year and I didn't even realise that until I'd already started writing about it. So that's a lucky coincidence.

I've reached The Hand of Fear, Part Three, which is the 434th episode of Doctor Who. To put that into perspective, the 434th episode of Star Trek was the season 3 Voyager episode The Q and the Grey. Trek needed three spin-offs and a cartoon to get this far. Unfortunately, with how TV production is slowing down, there won't be many more 434th episodes in our near future. If a new series of Doctor Who comes back with 8 episode seasons and a Christmas special each year, then by my calculations I should be reviewing its 434th episode in about... 50 years time.

Alright, I'm bored of numbers now so I'm going to get into the episode. This means that there will be SPOILERS beyond this point, but I won't ruin anything that comes after this story.

Doctor Who (1963) 14-06: The Hand of Fear, Part Two

Episode:

433

|

Serial:

87

|

Writer:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

09-Oct-1976

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the second episode of The Hand of Fear, the second serial of the Fourth Doctor's third season.

It was written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who had already written four other Doctor Who serials together, including the 10th anniversary special The Three Doctors. Director Lennie Mayne was also a Doctor Who veteran, with three other serials under his belt... including The Three Doctors. So it's kind of like a reunion, except for the fact that they don't share any actors (except for Rex Robinson, who's back playing another scientist).

Okay I'm just going to go ahead and write SPOILERS for the whole episode. Though if you've seen this far you'll be fine, even if you're haven't seen any modern Doctor Who yet. As far as I'm concerned, right now it's Saturday 9th October 1976, 6:14 PM, and no one even knows what a David Tennant is. No one knows what a Darth Vader is either, how crazy is that?

Doctor Who (1963) 14-05: The Hand of Fear, Part One

Episode:

432

|

Serial:

87

|

Writer:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

02-Oct-1976

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm back to Doctor Who season 14. Not the Ncuti Gatwa season with the Space Babies. I'm going way further back to when Peter Hinchcliff was producer, Robert Holmes was script editor and Tom Baker was the Doctor, as this week I'm writing about... The Hand of Fear!

Season 14 started in 1976 and consisted of six serials. This one was the second and I've actually already covered the fourth one, The Face of Evil. Well I've covered them all really, as I gave them each a bit of a review after watching a classic Doctor Who marathon. But this time I'm going through each episode and each scene individually to give the story some proper attention. 

Hang on, The Hand of Fear, The Face of Evil... I'm spotting a bit of a pattern there. There was The Brain of Morbius and The Talons of Weng-Chiang as well, so the Fourth Doctor had a lot of evil body parts to deal with in the Hinchcliff era. This is also the second thing to be 'of Fear', as there was a Second Doctor story called The Web of Fear. That was the first appearance of the Brig if I remember right...

Anyway, I'm going to be going through each episode writing words under pictures, so if you haven't seen the story yet then there will be SPOILERS. But if you're that one person on Earth who's watching through the classic series before moving on to modern Doctor Who you don't have to worry, as this is first time viewer safe.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1-10: Rubincon (Quick Review)

Episode:

10

|

Writer:

Alex Kurtzman & Kirsten Beyer

|

Director:

Olatunde Osunsanmi

|

Air Date:

12-Mar-2026

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Starfleet Academy's season one finale, Rubincon!

When I heard that this had the same title as Discovery season 4 episode Rubicon I was a little surprised, but only a little. We got Prodigy's Kobayashi less than two months after Disco's Kobayashi Maru (also from season 4). Plus Disco season 4 stole the title Anomaly from Enterprise, which is the only time two Trek episodes have ever 100% shared a title.

It turns out however that it's actually called Rubincon, with a second 'n'. Maybe it's the name of a planet, I don't know.

But I do know that the director this time is Discovery's Olatunde Osunsanmi! He's the guy who brought flame throwers to Discovery's bridge and to that planet in Section 31, so if I had to make a guess at what I'll be seeing in this episode it'd probably be flame throwers.

The episode was written by Kirsten Beyer again, along with Star Trek overlord Alex Kurtzman. This was his first time writing for the series, but he's had a big influence on it from the start. He even directed the first episode himself and established the show's style. All of his episodes have had co-writers so I'm not sure what I think of him as a writer, but I've typically enjoyed stories with his name on them so I'm cautiously optimistic.

There will be SPOILERS below.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1-09: 300th Night (Quick Review)

Episode:

9

|

Writer:

Kirsten Beyer

|

Director:

Jonathan Frakes

|

Air Date:

05-Mar-2026

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the penultimate episode of Starfleet Academy's first season. It's called 300th Night, it's written by Kirsten Beyer (writer of all my least favourite stories) and it's directed by Jonathan Frakes (who's done some good stuff in the past).

There's only one episode left after this and I've been thinking about things I could write about in my season one review. One complaint I've had is that the series hasn't done a great job of showing the passage of time, but they've been doing better at that recently and now this episode's literally called 300th Night. We've never had a Star Trek episode pin down when it takes place so specifically in the title before. To my recollection.

The Original Series had The Naked Time and Amok Time, but you won't find those events on your calendar and The Deadly Years actually only lasted a few days. Tomorrow is Yesterday presumably takes place the day before tomorrow, which is today, so that doesn't help narrow it down. And the Day of the Dove presumably didn't become a Klingon holiday.

The Next Generation was even less specific. Parallels took place on Worf's birthday, which comes right before Captain Picard day in The Pegasus, but neither were in the title. Voyager did better with 11:59, but it doesn't say if that's AM or PM. Though we also got Day of Honor, which is a Klingon holiday! So I think Voyager actually wins this time.

Warning: there will be SPOILERS below. For this, Discovery and Picard.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1-08: The Life of the Stars (Quick Review)

Episode:

8

|

Writer:

Gaia Violo & Jane Maggs

|

Director:

Andi Armaganian

|

Air Date:

26-Feb-2026

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching The Life of the Stars, the 8th episode of Starfleet Academy. A TV series that I'm not really enjoying much.

There are some familiar names in the credits for this one. It's got the same director as the previous episode, Ko'Zeine, and the two writers have both worked on episodes already. That's all the trivia I've got, sorry.

This is going to have SPOILERS for the episode, so if you haven't watched it yet maybe consider doing that first. Or not, if you're not really enjoying the series much either.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1-07: Ko'Zeine (Quick Review)

Episode:

7

|

Writer:

Alex Taub & Eric Anthony Glover

|

Director:

Andi Armaganian

|

Air Date:

19-Feb-2026

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Ko'Zeine. Isn't that a type of drug?

Both the writers have written for Starfleet Academy already, as Alex Taub co-wrote prank war story Vitus Reflux and Eric Anthony Glover co-wrote Klingon debate contest story Vox in Excelso. At the very least they'll have a good grasp of who the characters are.

I'm a bit surprised that this wasn't directed by main Discovery (and Section 31) director Olatunde Osunsanmi, as I know he's working on this series, but it doesn't seem like there are enough episodes left. Each director has been given a pair of episodes so far, so that means there are five directors. I've heard that Jonathan Frakes is the fifth and it turns out that Andi Armaganian is the fourth, so I guess Osunsanmi won't be directing this season after all?

Andi Armaganian is also a Trek veteran, having directed Rubicon and Jinaal for Discovery and Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach and Through the Lens of Time for Strange New Worlds. Damn, there's no chance of mixing up which series those episode titles belong to. I don't recall her episodes standing out due to the visuals or performances, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Alright, I'm going to try to give this episode a bit of a review and there will be SPOILERS below.