Doctor Who (1963) 14-08: The Hand of Fear, Part Four

Episode:

435

|

Serial:

87

|

Writer:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

23-Oct-1976

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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.

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.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-04: The Three Doctors, Episode Four

Episode:

333

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

20-Jan-1973

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's episode 333 of Doctor Who. That means the series was averaging 37 episodes a year up to this point, which isn't actually that ridiculous I guess, seeing as they were all 25 minutes long. Star Trek: The Original Series produced an average of 26 stories a year, each 50 minutes long, so when it came to minutes per week it was actually ahead.

Anyway, just have to write a few more words under screencaps and I'm finally done with The Three Doctors! This is part four of four, the conclusion to this anniversary event, and I'm hoping they didn't already blow through their pyrotechnics budget already with the first three parts, as my expectations have been raised. Also, I'm hoping the story's good etc. Click one of these links to jump back to an earlier episode: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE.

You won't be shocked to hear that the heavily promoted season premiere which brought back Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell got the highest viewing figures for the Third Doctor's whole run, averaging 10.3 million on BBC. It had almost twice as many eyes on it as the least watched serial, Inferno. Wait, why didn't anyone watch Inferno? That one was great!

I'll be going through this whole episode scene by scene, so there will be SPOILERS below. I may find reason to mention things that happened in earlier episodes as well, but I won't spoil anything that happens later.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-03: The Three Doctors, Episode Three

Episode:

332

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

13-Jan-1973

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the third part of the The Three Doctors, the only serial in the entire series to feature 100% of the Doctors that had been introduced up to that point, all played by their original actors. Well, except for the entirety of the First Doctor's run, I suppose.

If you want to jump to PART ONE or PART TWO, click the appropriate link.

It looks weird if I don't pad this intro out with some trivia, so I'm going to talk about books for a moment. Each Doctor Who serial got its own novelisation, with the naming format often being "Doctor Who and [the name of the serial]". So you've got titles like Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen etc. It's very Indiana Jones.

That title scheme didn't quite work with this story though, as you can't have 'Doctor Who and The Three Doctors', because then there'd be four Doctors and the story would be all messed up. So they just called it The Three Doctors.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm not going to spoil absolutely everything about this episode, but I feel like I could probably manage to give away at least 90% of it and I may mention one or two things that happened in previous stories as well.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-02: The Three Doctors, Episode Two

Episode:

331

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

06-Jan-1973

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second episode of The Three Doctors - Doctor Who's epic 10th anniversary saga (that actually aired around its 9th anniversary). It's a four part serial so I'll have made it halfway through after this. Though you can click this link: EPISODE ONE if you'd rather go back and read about the first quarter of the story.

You know, I'm sure that title looks slightly different than it did on part one. They must have had to add it to each episode separately instead of just reusing the footage. That's the kind of quality trivia you can expect to find in my reviews.

Here's another Doctor Who fact for you: the episode was written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, the folks who get a credit whenever K-9 appears in an episode.

Bob is maybe not the most famous Baker to work on Doctor Who, but he did get there before Tom and Colin at least. Plus he co-wrote the Wallace and Gromit stories!

SPOILER WARNING: There will be spoilers here for the events leading up to, and occurring within, this particular part of this particular serial. I won't spoil anything that happens afterwards though and I definitely won't give away how the story ends as I can't remember.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-01: The Three Doctors, Episode One

Episode:

330

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

30-Dec-1972

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Doctor Who is finally returning to television this month with its 60th anniversary special. But I can't write about something that hasn't aired yet, so today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm covering the first part of the four-part 10th anniversary serial The Three Doctors!

Anniversary specials traditionally happen near an anniversary, but they decided to get an early start with this one. In fact, episode one aired at the end of 1972, almost a whole year early! This was the first episode of Jon Pertwee's fourth year in the role, which means he'd beaten Patrick Troughton's run (almost 3 seasons) and was getting close to matching William Hartnell's (a bit over 3 seasons). Pertwee still had a while to go before he matched their ridiculous episode counts though, as he was averaging 26 episodes a year compared to their 42 episode seasons. It'd take Ncuti Gatwa 15 years to match Hartnell's run and that's including Christmas specials.

I already wrote about this serial a few years back when Twitch did its marathon, but I don't actually remember what I said about it. Or what happens in it. I'm pretty sure I liked it though... unless I didn't. Anyway, this time around I'll be going through the whole story scene-by-scene and writing about it properly. This means there'll be SPOILERS for the episode and maybe a few earlier ones as well, if I can remember anything from them.