The Hand of Fear

087 – The Hand of Fear
Doctor Who serial
File:Eldrad.jpg The reconstituted Eldrad in female form.
Cast
Doctor Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor)
Companion Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith)
Others Judith Paris — Eldrad Stephen Thorne — Kastrian Eldrad Roy Pattison — Zazzka Roy Skelton — King Rokon Rex Robinson — Dr Carter Glyn Houston — Professor Watson Frances Pidgeon — Miss Jackson John Cannon — Elgin Roy Boyd — Driscoll David Purcell — Abbott Renu Setna — Intern Robin Hargrave — Guard
Production
Directed by	Lennie Mayne
Written by	Bob Baker Dave Martin
Script editor	Robert Holmes
Produced by	Philip Hinchcliffe
Executive producer(s)	None
Music by	Dudley Simpson
Production code	4N
Series	Season 14
Running time	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
First broadcast	2–23 October 1976
Chronology
← Preceded by The Masque of Mandragora Followed by → The Deadly Assassin

The Hand of Fear is the second serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 2 October to 23 October 1976. The serial was the last regular appearance of Elisabeth Sladen in the role of Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who.

Plot

Millennia ago on the planet Kastria, a traitor and criminal named Eldrad is sentenced to death for his crimes, including the destruction of the barriers that have kept the solar winds at bay. The pod containing the criminal is obliterated – but his hand survives. In the present day the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive in the TARDIS in a quarry and are caught up in a quarrying explosion. Sarah is rendered unconscious but in that state makes contact with the fossilised hand, its ring alive, and this has a hypnotic effect on her. The Doctor takes her to the local hospital, where the mesmeric power of the hand becomes more complete and both Sarah and a pathologist called Dr Carter are brought under its control. Carter later dies trying to prevent the Doctor getting to Sarah and the hand.

Sarah heads for the nearest nuclear generator, the Nunton Complex, where she causes a crisis by breaking into the reactor with the hand. It seems to thrive on radiation and begins to regenerate, growing back its missing finger and moving around unaided. The head of the complex, Professor Watson remains at his post when the reactor goes critical, and offers the Doctor aid and advice in trying to get to Sarah. Suddenly the radiation has been absorbed and the crisis is over. The Doctor retrieves her from the reactor, but Sarah has no memory or understanding of what she has done.

The hand now takes over a nuclear operative called Driscoll, who is manipulated into feeding the hand ever more radiation. An RAF bombing raid simply adds to the available radiation and allows Eldrad to regenerate into a fully humanoid form. It is crystalline, female and silicon-based. Eldrad uses her powers to persuade the Doctor to take her back to Kastria, saying she helped her race thrive by building the solar barriers, which were subsequently destroyed when Kastria was caught in the middle of an interstellar war.

The Doctor, Sarah and Eldrad travel to Kastria in the present time in the TARDIS – 150 million years after she left. They find a barren and frozen world, with the few signs of civilisation many floors below ground. Eldrad is caught in a series of traps left behind by King Rokon who appears in hologram form to denounce Eldrad as the destroyer of Kastria. She perishes in one trap but regenerates as a male, crazed psychopath who reveals that he created then destroyed the barriers himself after falling out with Rokon and the Kastrian leadership. When he tries to exact his revenge he finds Rokon and the other Kastrians all dead, the race banks containing the Kastrian's genetic prints destroyed, and no possibility of a new Kastrian future. Eldrad finds a recording of Rokon that explains that the species decided to all die rather live a miserable existence underground and they destroyed the race banks to prevent any descendants from being part of Eldrad's army of conquest. To prevent Eldrad now returning to Earth and conquering it instead, the Doctor destroys the tyrant by engineering a fall into an abyss – without the ring needed to regenerate ever again.

Not long after departure in the TARDIS, the Doctor is summoned back to Gallifrey and declares he cannot take Sarah with him. She has been talking about wanting to leave the TARDIS and had packed her things, but says she would like to see Gallifrey and had not really wanted to leave. The Doctor is unable to take her to his home planet and she leaves reluctantly, telling the Doctor "don't forget me". After the TARDIS departs, Sarah Jane realises that the Doctor's navigation "blew it" and left her not on Hillview Road as planned, and probably not even in South Croydon.

Continuity

When the Doctor prepares to hypnotize Sarah, she says "Oh, no! Not again!", a reference to her earlier hypnosis by the Doctor in Terror of the Zygons. Sarah Jane mentions giving the Doctor's love to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Harry Sullivan at the end. Sarah Jane and the Doctor tell each other not to forget them. When Sarah Jane returns five years later in the pilot for K-9 and Company and is told by K-9 Mark III that the latter is a gift from The Doctor, she remarks, "Oh, Doctor, you didn't forget." The Tenth Doctor reiterates the same admonition to Sarah Jane thirty-three years later when they part at the end of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.

Elisabeth Sladen would reprise the role of Sarah Jane Smith in K-9 and Company, and later appear in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors as a companion to the Third Doctor, and the 30th Anniversary charity special Dimensions in Time. While Sladen acted less after the birth of her daughter Sadie in 1985, she continued to appear as Sarah in various Doctor Who-related spin-off media, including a series of Sarah Jane Smith audio plays by Big Finish Productions. In the revived series, she appeared in the Tenth Doctor episode School Reunion – in which Sarah's departure point was revealed to be Aberdeen rather than Croydon – and her own spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. She also returned in The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. Finally, she made a cameo at the conclusion of the Tenth Doctor's last episode The End of Time.

Production

When Sladen announced her intention to leave the series, Sarah was originally supposed to be killed off in a pseudo-historical story involving aliens and the French Foreign Legion. However Douglas Camfield, who was supposed to write the scripts, was unable to do so, much to Sladen's relief, as she did not want Sarah to be killed or married off. Sladen also asked that Sarah's departure not be the main focus of the story, as she felt the programme was about the Doctor, not the companion. Baker and Martin intentionally did not write Sarah's departure scene. The script for that scene was rewritten by Sladen and Tom Baker from Robert Holmes' original version.

The original script for the story featured an ageing Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, who had been moved from UNIT to the Extraterrestrial Xenological Intelligence Taskforce to study UFO activities. He was to be killed when he steered his spaceship into an Omegan kamikaze ship to prevent that ship from crashing into Earth. This plan did not go through due to Nicholas Courtney being unavailable for filming. The original script also featured Harry Sullivan. In the original script, Miss Jackson was a nameless male. Director Lennie Mayne built up the part, changed the gender, and cast his wife, Frances Pidgeon. Eldrad's home was originally supposed to be the black hole of Omega 4.6. When Robert Holmes pointed out to Bob Baker and Dave Martin that the name Omega had already appeared in Doctor Who (in The Three Doctors; ironically this story was also written by Baker and Martin), they changed the name to Kastria.

A real-life quarry explosion was filmed for the episode. A rumour persisted for many years that a camera was totally destroyed in the blast. The DVD commentary makes clear that this was a fan myth. The nuclear power station was originally supposed to be the Nunton Power Complex of The Claws of Axos but was renamed the Nunton Experimental Complex instead. The real-life location was the Oldbury nuclear power station in Gloucestershire. Nearby Thornbury was used for the closing scene.

In the final scene, Sarah Jane whistles the tune "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow". Since Sladen was unable to whistle, director Lennie Mayne provided the whistling while Sladen mimed to it.

Broadcast and reception

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote in The Discontinuity Guide (1995) that the serial was "engaging and well-acted", particularly praising Sladen. However, they noted that "It all goes a bit pear shaped in the final episode, with Stephen Thorne doing his best Brian Blessed impersonation and Eldrad eventually tripping over the Doctor's scarf." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised Sladen and Judith Paris as the female Eldrad, but criticised Stephen Thorne as the male Eldrad, who seemed too similar to his previous character Omega from The Three Doctors (1972–3). In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times was positive towards the location filming and the female Eldrad, but criticised Kastria and felt that the last episode was "a protracted preamble" to Sarah Jane's departure. DVD Talk's Stuart Galbraith gave The Hand of Fear three out of five stars, saying that while the female Eldrad was effective, the story was "all over the map" and ran out of steam near the end, with the fourth episode being "largely a disaster".

The episodes were broadcast on BBC Four on 9 and 10 May 2011 as a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen who had died on 19 April.

Commercial releases

In print

Template:Doctor Who book A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in January 1979.

Home media

This serial was released on VHS in February 1996. The story was released as a Region 2 DVD on 24 July 2006. It was released in Region 1 on 7 November 2006. It was re-released with new outer packaging on 2 July 2007.

Bibliography

• Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "The Hand of Fear". The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 196–199. ISBN 0-426-20442-5. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |format= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Haining, Peter Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years W H Allen (1988) ISBN 1-85227-021-7

External links

• The Hand of Fear at BBC Online
• Template:Brief
• Template:Doctor Who RG

Reviews

• Template:OG review
• Template:DWRG
• Template:DWRG fan review of Target novelisation