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

Episode:

433

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Serial:

87

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Writer:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

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Director:

Lennie Mayne

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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?

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Previously, on Doctor Who:

An explosion in a regular Earth quarry left Sarah Jane buried under rock, clutching an ancient stone hand. The Doctor went with her to the local hospital, where he met pathologist Dr Carter and began trying to figure out where the hand came from. But while he was off investigating the quarry, Sarah Jane got out of bed and used a ring she was holding to knock Dr Carter out and take the hand back. Because Eldrad must live.

The Doctor and Carter chased Sarah Jane to the nearby power plant (actually a nuclear research and development complex), but they were stopped by lots of guards with assault rifles, while she was able to get inside the reactor. Now the scary space hand has the radiation it needs to regenerate and it's coming alive!

And now, the continuation:

The episode begins with an alarm going off and it's so annoying that a guy comes in and starts yelling at them to turn it off. He hates that alarm just as much as I do.

I like this control centre though. It's extremely dated, but it's from 1976 so that's exactly how it should look. It's very normal that there are tape spools spinning and a dude's typing on a typewriter.

In fact that's a real computer, the LEO Computers LEO II from 1958. (Also seen in The Man with the Golden Gun a couple of years earlier). It was the world's first commercial business computer, apparently. 

Everyone's running to their safe areas, presumably out of the building, while the guards are trying to bring the Doctor and Dr. Carter in. This makes it very simple for them to just let the crowd push the guards away and then get the doors closed and hide. So that's one half of the cliffhanger resolved at least.

Dr. Carter wants to just leave the building as he'd rather not get shot, but it'd be a short episode if they did.

The two intruders just walk right into the control centre and tell Professor Watson that they came from the hospital chasing Sarah Jane. Which is entirely true.

I like how the production team went to the trouble of getting all the actors here photographic ID badges, that had to take a bit of forward thinking... or a Polaroid camera. I'm less keen on how Watson has a fly on his forehead in one scene and they decided that's the take they were going to go with. I don't know, maybe that's the only take that they had.

Watson assumes that Sarah Jane is some lunatic trying to sabotage the reactor core and he refuses to let the Doctor talk to her over the speakers. He's really being set up as an obstacle of the Doctor to deal with. So the Doctor... backs off and doesn't try to pressure him. The guy's clearly under enough pressure already. Instead the Doctor waits for his chance and then sits down at the microphone the moment the chair is empty. When Watson realises that Sarah Jane's actually listening to him, he goes along with it.

Sarah Jane seems a bit possessed but instead of going full villain, she kind of delivers her lines like she's drunk. I think it's a good choice, it works for me.

She explains that there's nothing more to say because Eldrad must live. Dr. Carter hears a male voice repeating the words in his head, so that seems like something they need to worry about. Seems like hearing Sarah Jane talking about Eldrad may have flipped his switch to evil.

They're just climbing over railings in a nuclear power plant huh? I suppose nothing much could go wrong.

The Doctor decides he needs to get into the reactor through the cooling ducts. The temperature in there is apparently 200 degrees C, but he's not too worried. Man, if it's that hot in the ducts, how hot is it where Sarah Jane is right now?

Dr. Carter pretends he's heroically decided to help him, even though the ducts will be even more lethal for him. But he grabs a wrench along the way as a weapon, as Eldrad must live. 

Fortunately the Doctor's too quick for him, and when he swings his wrench he goes flying off the stairs to his death!

Damn, I honestly didn't see this coming and I've watched this episode before! Man, poor Dr. Carter, I really liked him too. I suppose it's fine though, as now that Professor Watson has been won over, he can take Carter's role as 'reasonable scientist who accepts the evidence and wants help to solve the problem'.

In fact Watson's fully transformed from shouty boss to sympathetic boss, as he decides to stay behind to look after the control centre when everyone else goes to a safe area. In fact he orders his second in command to leave him as he basically goes down with his ship.

Then he phones his family, assuring them that nothing's wrong. He was just calling them up for... reasons. (They certainly don't have to worry about a crazy escaped patient setting the place off like a nuke.)

Man, this guy really has an arc this episode, and it's only been 10 minutes! This serial has a small cast, but its characters definitely have character.

The Doctor comes flying out of the cooling duct, still very much alive despite being roasted. Sarah Jane immediately turns to zap him with the ring, but he's an intelligent guy and does intelligent things sometimes, like telling her "Eldrad must live". 

This makes her pause, as for all she knows the Doctor has been possessed like Dr. Carter and he came down here to help her. But nope he was just faking it, and knocks her out lightning fast.

So now the cliffhanger has been properly resolved! Well, mostly. He only carries Sarah Jane out, leaving the stone hand where it is. And he doesn't notice that she's dropped the ring on the floor.

The good news is that Sarah Jane isn't dead from radiation, thanks to the hand sucking it all up. I don't know how that works exactly, surely it would've gone through her to get to the hand, but whatever. The important thing is that there will be no consequences to going into the reactor core, for either of them.

Also the Doctor actually tells Watson the story so far and gets him to believe it. The guy just keeps running into scientists who are willing to accept anything he says as long as he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

Incidentally I'm glad that they're taking the radiation seriously in this. The magic radiation-absorbing hand means everyone's fine and they can carry on having a Doctor Who adventure, but they're still getting the Geiger counters out and reminding us of the danger.

Speaking of the hand, they send a guy called Driscoll in to pick it up and he also grabs the ring from the floor.

The brainwashing effect must take a while to kick in, because Driscoll actually takes the hand back to the others and puts it in the contamination safe. I don't see how that helps the hand's agenda, when he could've just locked the door and stayed in the reactor room. Though when he's sent back in to collect the ring he pretends he couldn't find it.

The important thing is everything's fine, and they've got the hand safely locked away in the safe with all the radioactive material. 

The Doctor's not taking any chances with Sarah Jane though and decides to break out some of those Time Lord mind powers he uses on special occasions. She's unhappy when she realises he's about to hypnotise her again (like in Terror of the Zygons) but doesn't put up much of a fight, and he soon learns that those who've seen the light of Kastria must obey, like Dr. Carter did. That may include all the other people she shot with the ring to get into the nuclear complex, but we never find out.

We don't really get any new information here, but at least he's able to break Eldrad's hold over her.

Though as they're walking back to the control centre, she says "Eldrad must live!" Elizabeth Sladen says this was an ad-lib and Tom Baker's reaction was so entirely in character that they decided to keep it. She's fine though, just testing.

Incidentally that's the 20th 'Eldrad must live' in the episode so far, and the 21st in the serial overall.

A guard down in the decontamination area lets them know that there's some banging coming from the contamination safe. They realise they've put the hand that feeds on radiation into the safe where they keep radiated materials!

Though what this guy should've been reporting is how loose this intercom is. He practically has to hold the box onto the wall. If this is the condition of the equipment in this nuclear complex, then I'm concerned!

But oh no, Driscoll is fully under control of the ring now, or maybe the hand, one of the two. What's important is that he's seen the light of Kastria and we get the final 'Eldrad must live' as he beats up the guard to take the hand from the safe.

The Doctor arrives and is about to give chase, but first he goes to the intercom to tell Watson that there's an unconscious guard and then closes the hatch on the radioactive contamination safe. I love that the episode made a point of showing that he made sure everything else was okay before moving on. His concern helps sell that this actually is a radioactive safe and that the guy on the floor has been attacked.

Wow, that's an unusual shot. Director Lennie Mayne found fewer opportunities to show off with the camera in this episode than he did in part one, but he has his moments. 

It's hard to see in a still screencap, but these are guards chasing Driscoll.

It doesn't do them any good though, as Driscoll just zaps them all and knocks them unconscious. He zaps the Doctor too, but he gets behind something and avoids the effect. A good thing too, as it looks like he'd set the ring from 'stun' to 'kill' by the scorch marks it leaves.

Watson and Sarah Jane arrive but the Doctor tells them to go back to the control room as Driscoll could set off a chain reaction! They seem to both agree, but Sarah Jane sneakily follows the Doctor to the reactor.

So now they're back to the situation they were in at the start of the episode, with someone possessed by the hand and a voice over the speakers telling everyone to evacuate. Except Driscoll knows how to get the door to the reactor core open. And man that is a chunky door. Also it's giving me a sudden craving for chocolate.

The Doctor realises that he's too late and turns back, running into Sarah Jane and instinctively shielding her from the blast.

And then the control room blows up! The explosion's so bright that it really messed up the camera sensor. Either that or they added some extra green as an effect for some reason, it's hard to tell.

Anyway Driscoll got the sinister space hand into the core, big explosions, to be continued!


CONCLUSION

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We got 22 'Eldrad must lives' in the end, and 21 came from this episode alone. Several of them were voice overs that characters heard in their head and one was an ad-lib by the actor. But I think we're done with that now, that's all we're getting.

Anyway, I'm glad that Watson is a professor instead of a doctor, otherwise these first two parts would've been about the Doctor chatting to the doctor who was treating Sarah Jane, then teaming up with Doctor Carter and driving over to speak to the doctor in charge of the nuclear R&D complex.

We're led to believe that Watson is going to be an obstacle at first, with his yelling and ignoring people. I was a little surprised seeing Tom Baker's mad Fourth Doctor trying to bring the energy in the room down a bit instead of yelling back at him. But then Dr. Carter dies and the professor suddenly becomes the replacement reasonable scientist ally. He even gets that whole scene where he phones his family, just to make him extra sympathetic as quickly as possible. I suppose the story had to be efficient with the few available characters it has.

The episode's got a small cast, especially now that everyone from part one is either absent or dead, but that's not really its problem. The real problem is that it ends the same way that episode 1 did, with someone getting possessed and blasting everyone on the way to the reactor core. It makes it feel like the story's going around in circles. Especially with Watson telling everyone to evacuate, again.

To be fair, things have definitely happened. Sarah Jane was rescued and released from Eldrad's control, they met Professor Watson and lost Dr. Carter. But there's not really enough story here to fill 25 minutes, especially as it's stuck in one location. Episode one went from the space outpost, to the quarry, to the hospital, to the nuclear plant, and it still felt padded. This goes nowhere and that's done nothing to add momentum.


RATING

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Overall I liked this a little less than the good part of episode one, plus I have to subtract a point for the fly. On the other hand, I liked it a little more than the bad part of episode one. So if my calculations are correct, that leaves episode two with... exactly the same score:

  6/10

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NEXT EPISODE

Next time on Doctor Who, nothing happens at all because everyone exploded.

But if you want to talk about what happened in this episode, you can use the comment box below.