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| Episode: | 435 | | | Serial: | 87 | | | Writer: | Bob Baker and Dave Martin | | | Director: | Lennie Mayne | | | Air Date: | 23-Oct-1976 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the final part of the Fourth Doctor serial The Hand of Fear!
The serial is notable for a couple of reasons and sadly one of them is that it was director Lennie Mayne's last story, as he was killed the following year in a boating accident in the English Channel. Lennie had directed four serials for the series, The Curse of Peladon, The Three Doctors, The Monster of Peladon and this, so it seems like he had been the show's go-to for Peladon stories.
Writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin continued to write for the series, coming up with three more serials, all for the Fourth Doctor. In fact their biggest contribution to Doctor Who was still a year away, as they introduced a new companion to the TARDIS. I shouldn't really be talking about the future though.
There'll be SPOILERS here for this episode and anything leading up to it, but I'll be careful not to jump ahead in the timeline. This review should (hopefully) be safe for anyone watching through Classic Who for the first time, assuming that you're doing it in order.
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Previously, on Doctor Who:
An alien scientist called Eldrad was supposed to be executed in an interstellar obliteration module, but her hand survived. The hand ended up trapped under rock on Earth for millions of years, until it was found in a quarry by Sarah Jane, who ended up mind-controlled by the ring it was wearing.
Eldrad's ring made Sarah Jane take the hand to a nuclear R&D complex to get the radiation she needed to regenerate her body, and the facility's director inadvertently helped by calling in a nuclear strike! Fortunately the Doctor was able to make a deal with the regenerated Eldrad and used the TARDIS to get her off Earth and back to her own ruined world of Kastria. Eldrad brought them into a dome with big plans to fix her planet and bring the survivors up from the thermal caves, but as she opened a door she was hit by a booby trap!
And now, the conclusion:
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So hang on, these people were stuck on an increasingly uninhabitable planet and they had a working spaceship with an FTL drive, but they hated Eldrad so much that they sacrificed it to blow her up. This obliteration plan didn't have a 100% chance of killing her however, so just in case she beat the 3 million to 1 odds and came back they set up a trap which does have a 100% chance of killing her.
See, this is why the Doctor acts like everyone he meets is an idiot.
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You don't find many Doctor Who episodes where the heroes are almost entirely safe and it's the villain that's in danger. It's an interesting change.
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Poor Eldrad is getting too stiff to move at this point, so the two of them have to carry her.
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Sarah Jane's been doing a bit of thinking about all the traps they've been coming across. Eldrad claimed that they were set up to stop evil alien invaders, but they're designed to kill silicon-based life forms like the Kastrians, so were the invaders silicon-based as well? The Doctor admits that this would be bit of a coincidence.
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That bridge is so weird looking that it's almost like it was supposed to be sparkly crystal all the way around and the flat wooden top was never meant to be caught on camera. It's convenient though.
They need to get Eldrad to the other side so the Doctor just picks the heavy stone alien up and carries her across on his shoulders!
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Also Judith Paris is doing a fantastic job here of remaining completely rigid. I thought they might have used a mannequin for this, but nope it was apparently the actress.
The Doctor opens up the next doorway with Eldrad's ring and Sarah Jane goes to walk through it. It's like she's determined to trigger every trap that they come across!
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But when the smoke clears and the flash as faded from the camera sensor the Doctor is nowhere to be seen! It turns out he had the sense to duck around the corner, but it was done so smoothly and timed so perfectly that I didn't see him move.
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Suddenly the bit at the top of the device starts coming down to crush her! The final trap.
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But surprise, Eldrad actually did live, for some reason, and now they have regenerated into their true form: Stephen Thorne, the guy who played Omega in The Three Doctors! Which was also written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin!
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It turns out that he regenerated into a female form on Earth because he used Sarah as a template for what people looked like on her world. Seems like a reasonable enough explanation. Though there's no explanation given for why he keeps laughing maniacally now.
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Rokon's appearance triggers Eldrad into going on a bit of a rant, basically revealing that he's the bad guy who destroyed the barriers and left Kastria as a barren frozen wasteland. Turns out that Eldrad is just the megalomaniac scientist trope again, like Omega, and the Master, and Davros, and so on, and he's got plans to take over every world in range of his starships
He walks off to get revenge, while the Doctor sneakily pockets his ring.
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But when he pulls the sheet off Rokon's head he topples off his stool and shatters on the floor. Turns out that he's been dead for millions of years!
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Rokon ends with "I salute you from the dead. Hail, Eldrad, King of nothing". Which is exactly how I hoped that sentence would end. Eldrad is immune to nukes, but even he can't withstand a burn of that intensity.
Though the best part is that Rokon could've had this message play when Eldrad first entered the dome, or after the acid trap hit. Instead he put four or five deadly traps before it, so Eldrad had to run a whole gauntlet and survive impossible odds in order to earn his tragic revelation. Rokon made him believe that they were protecting something here before dropping that final bombshell.
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Eldrad decides that he will be king of Earth instead, as the people there have the necessary aggression. Man, one nuclear R&D complex director goes Rambo on him with a pistol and now he's judging the whole species?
The Doctor says that his trip to Kastria was one way, he's not taking him back to Earth. Though he does throw him his ring back, or at least appears to. Eldrad stops to pick it up, giving the others a chance to leg it out the door and set an ambush at the abyss. The Doctor has Sarah Jane hold the other end of his scarf and tells her "When I say pull, pull!" A bit of a Second Doctor reference there.
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It's just a bit of a shame that the scene looks so embarrassingly terrible. He just sort of untangles his leg and then the next shot is him falling into the darkness.
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Though the funny thing is, Eldrad still lives.
The Doctor never wanted to kill him and he didn't. He just left him to suffer a miserable subterranean existence on his own. Trapped under rock, just like they found him.
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Sarah Jane starts complaining about how cold it was out there, but the Doctor's doing some adjustments on the thermo-couplings so he doesn't really hear her.
He also misses her whining about being hypnotised again, and never having any idea where she's going, and being attacked by monsters everywhere. She's sick of everything and just wants to go home, have a bath and wash her hair! Wait, she hasn't been able to wash her hair in three seasons?
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I don't know what people thought of this effect back in 1976, I don't even know how they were able to pull this off back in 1976, but I do know that it doesn't look very good now. It's not a particularly realistic depiction of a psychic signal arriving from across time and space.
Anyway, the Doctor is getting a message from the Time Lords, and they want him to return to Gallifrey! It had been a long time since the Doctor last visited his home planet, 8 seasons, so this would've been a pretty big deal.
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Now all those South Croydon references in part one make sense! There was a Gallifrey mention as well now that I think about it.
Also episode one started with Sarah Jane carrying his coat to show how close they were, and even though she's allegedly packed to go she's wearing it right now. That's a bit of a clue that she didn't really plan on leaving. This isn't actually what she wanted!
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Back when I first watched the episode, I didn't fully get why the Doctor was so reluctant to take Sarah Jane to Gallifrey. I just assumed it was some Time Lord rule, in fact I think there's a line in a later story about humans not being allowed.
But there was something else that happened the last time he went to Gallifrey, besides his forced regeneration.
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| 6-44: The War Games, Part 10 |
Sure she would also forget all the times she was cold and hypnotised and shot at, but the last line Sarah Jane says to the Doctor is "You know, travel does broaden the mind", and that's basically the moral of Doctor Who. Even the Doctor himself became a better person from travelling with his new friends Ian and Barbara. It would be a tragedy if that was taken away from her, just like it was for Jamie and Zoe.
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So that's a proper bookend for the serial. It started with the Doctor failing to get her home and it ended the same way. Still, at least she's probably in the right time. Probably.
Then she walks off, whistling a tune. I've read that it's Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow, but I wouldn't have a clue myself. It's funny because a couple of later companions actually did get dogs in the episodes they left, but not Sarah Jane. All she has is an owl. And a plant.
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CONCLUSION
I've been reading trivia for The Hand of Fear and they apparently planned to kill Sarah Jane Smith off in this episode! Fortunately the guy they had in mind to write that version of the script wasn't available. They were going to kill the Brig off too, but the actor wasn't available. It's like fate itself kept intervening to protect us from choices that everyone would've regretted. Shame that didn't happen for the last few years of the modern series!
After three episodes set filmed in the same power station I'm glad they finally went somewhere else here, even if the production values took a bit of a hit because of it. Doctor Who sets never quite look as good as Doctor Who locations, as they had to make them in a few days with whatever cash was left after creating the monster suits and paying for the actors' lunch. Plus when they shoot on video instead of film it makes it look more like Top of the Pops than Alien. But I can appreciate that the shift in their situation meant that the characters had to go on a journey and get through obstacles. Plus the fact that they were mostly safe and it was the villain who was in danger was a nice twist.
The fact that Eldrad was the villain wasn't much of a twist however, and I'm not sure it was supposed to be. The first line in the story calls them a traitor, their regeneration cost a couple of people their lives, there's the clue about the traps being left for silicon-based creatures, and Sarah Jane pretty much hates them the whole time... though she does say she liked the female Eldrad more than the male Eldrad at the end.
Personally I liked both Eldrads and I reckon both actors did a great job in the roles they were given. The trouble is that Judith Paris got a play a menacing but ambiguous character in an iconic costume, while Stephen Thorne had to play a raving megalomaniac supervillain with an evil laugh who couldn't turn his head. In fact he does so much evil ranting in this episode that the two leads have to basically stand in the background and leave him to it. Though it was worth it for the 'King of Nothing' payoff.
It's just a shame that Eldrad's ultimate defeat is so rubbish. I mean I have no problem with the Doctor using simple tricks to beat him, they've firmly established that guns and nuclear missiles aren't going to win this fight, it's just filmed really really badly.
It's also a bit of a shame that Sarah Jane's departure is so disconnected from the rest of the episode. I knew going in that it was her final serial, but for people who had no idea it must have been a bit of a shock. She was one of the longest running and most beloved companions in the classic series and there was basically no warning in the story that this was coming. She doesn't fall in love with anyone or express any interest in leaving. In fact she repeatedly refuses to let the Doctor go into danger alone. But at least she got to be the focus of the story, even if she wasn't herself for half of it. Plus they wrapped things up early to give her a proper goodbye, and a freeze frame!
Though with all the drama going on they forgot to mention why the Doctor can't just pick her up again after he's done on Gallifrey.
RATING
Part four was a bit weaker than the other episodes for me, but the scene with Sarah Jane at the end elevates it a bit, so overall I'm going to give it...
6/10
I remember the next story, The Deadly Assassin, being pretty decent too but I'm going to have to leave season 14 here. Maybe someday I'll get back to it.
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NEXT EPISODE
Anyway if you've got anything you want to say about The Hand of Fear's epic conclusion, your moment is now.
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