The Hand of Fear

Eldrad must live.

We now come to the last of the classic era stories for me to review. I still have some new series stuff to go through and as long as the show is on, we'll have new content, but this marks a type of end for me. My original thought when starting this was that I would be able to arrange for Survival to be the end, but that came and went a while ago. So I decided that The Hand of Fear, Sarah Jane's leaving story, would make an adequate substitute.

This story is generally divided. Everyone acknowledges that the last five minutes where Sarah leaves is damn near perfect. It's just the rest of the story that causes debate. I recall feeling that it wasn't quite as bad as it's reputation but still a rather mundane story for such an important companion to go out on. Of course you could say the same for Ian and Barbara going out in The Chase so it's not like there isn't a history of it. Perhaps it makes the goodbyes more memorable if the stories people leave in aren't that stellar overall. We shall see.

Plot Summary

On an alien planet, a group of hooded figures are overseeing the exile and destruction of a ship with a figure named Eldrad on it. However, the atmosphere is deteriorating and the hooded figures are forced to detonate the ship before it reaches it's maximum destructive potential. Once it is destroyed, the figures are dragged back inside their protective dome.

On Earth, the Doctor and Sarah land in a quarry, unaware that a segment is about to be exploded. They are caught in the blast, though they manage to avoid the worst of it. Sarah is partially pinned under some rock and as she reaches for the hole, she touches a petrified hand with a ring on it. She screams and that alerts the Doctor and the workers to her location. They find her unconscious, along with the petrified hand. She and the Doctor are then taken to a local hospital.

The Doctor is examined and cleared. Sarah is found to be ok but is still unconscious. They also find that her arm is very tense and her fist cannot be unclenched. Believing that it was the stress of nearly being buried alive, they leave her to rest. The Doctor instead heads down to the lab where one Dr. Carter is examining the petrified hand. The Doctor is quite interested in the initial reading of the hand and arranges for an electron microscope to be brought into the lab to examine it better. He leaves Carter to study a small sample of the hand while he heads back to the quarry to examine the layer of rock where it was found.

As the Doctor leaves, Sarah wakes up under the control of the mind embodied in the hand and the ring, which is hidden in her fist. She sneaks down to the lab and knocks Carter out with a blast of energy from the ring. She then takes the hand in a plastic box and slips out of the hospital. Carter comes to an hour later and reports her missing.

Shortly after the report is made, the Doctor returns to find Sarah gone. He becomes concerned and even more so when he sees the scan of the rock sample of the hand. The Doctor reveals that he found nothing in the rock pile which was from Jurassic strata. This means that the hand came down from space by itself 150 million years ago. The Doctor reasons that the sample is drawing regenerative energy from the radiation produced by the microscope. He then has Carter take him to the nearest nuclear reactor, a testing complex a few miles away.

Sarah arrives at the test complex and knocks the guard out with a blast from the ring. She then makes her way through the complex, stunning any worker who crosses her path. The Doctor and Carter arrive but are stopped by guards who have found the stunned guard. Sarah meanwhile makes her way into the reactor core where the hand begins to absorb the radiation and move on its own. As it gains more control, Sarah gets up and jams the door. She attempts to open the door but does not know the security code to open the inner door.

When Sarah opened the outer door to the core, the alarms initiated in the complex. In the chaos of workers running to their emergency positions, the Doctor and Carter slip away from their guards and make their way to the control room. They find the control room run by Professor Watson, giving orders to his people and trying to extricate Sarah from the room. Upon finding the door is jammed, Watson orders all staff out of the facility. The Doctor manages to make contact with Sarah over the security feed but is confused by her repeated statement of "Eldrad must live."

The Doctor runs to the roof to slip down the vent shaft. Unknown to him, Carter has also been taken over by the Eldrad consciousness and he follows the Doctor. He attacks him on the stairs but slips off when the Doctor dodges the blow, killing himself. The Doctor continues up the stairs and launches himself down the shaft. He bursts into the core and knocks Sarah out with a quick nerve pinch. As he carries her out of the core, the ring slips off her finger.

With Sarah out, the core returns to normal and Watson returns everyone to their stations. The Doctor examines Sarah and finds no radiation on her at all and her having no memory of anything after grabbing the hand in the quarry. The Doctor shows Watson the video feed of the hand and the radiation results, demonstrating it's alien nature. Watson orders a technician named Driscoll to collect the hand. He does so and seals it back in the box Sarah brought. He also grabs the ring, which takes over his mind.

Driscoll takes the hand and places it in the decontamination room. He denies finding the ring but the Doctor asks him to look a second time. The Doctor then puts Sarah under hypnosis to learn about Eldrad. Sarah is only able to tell the Doctor of Eldrad and his planet of Kastria. He then brings her back to herself, telling her to forget about Eldrad.

Driscoll again denies finding the ring and the Doctor suspects that he has found it and is now under it's control. This is further confirmed when another technician reports a knocking from the decontamination room, where the hand has absorbed more radiation. Driscoll knocks out this technician, grabs the hand and takes it back to the core. Watson again orders the evacuation of the facility and the Doctor chases after Driscoll, only to see him unlock the inner door of the core and walk inside. This triggers a core explosion, causing much of the computer equipment in the control room to explode.

The Doctor and Sarah head into the core room where the Doctor reseals the door. Watson comes down shocked to find that all the radiation from the core explosion had been absorbed. He calls the military who decide to airstrike the reactor with nuclear missiles. The three exit the facility as Eldrad begins to burn through the door.

From a distance away, they observe two fighters launching missiles at the facility but, much as the Doctor expected, they fall inert, their energy having been absorbed by Eldrad. The Doctor and Sarah head back in where they meet Eldrad, who has reconstituted in a feminine form. She probes the mind of the Doctor to find that he is telling the truth about what happened and that he is a Time Lord. She asks for his help to return to Kastria from which she was exiled after her people turned against her, she claims, following an alien invasion. The Doctor agrees but only that he will take her to Kastria in the present time and not shortly after she was exiled 150 million years ago. She accepts his terms.

As the three make their way out of the core, Watson attacks Eldrad with a pistol. His shots have no effect and she chases him as he retreats to the control room to get more ammunition. She catches him in an energy beam and threatens to kill him but the Doctor stops her by declaring their deal void if he dies. She releases him and once they are sure he is ok, they leave the facility for the TARDIS.

The Doctor, Sarah and Eldrad travel via the TARDIS to Katria, a windswept wasteland. They make their way into the main complex where Eldrad reactivates the power. With the defenses she built shut down, the solar winds destroyed the surface. Eldrad reasons that her people have retreated into a network of caves far below the surface. She opens a door to head down there when she is stabbed by a poisoned spear, a booby trap left behind.

Eldrad tells them that her only chance is to go to the regeneration chamber below. The Doctor and Sarah take her down, avoiding several other booby traps along the way and passing over a deep abyss, which Sarah almost falls into. Upon reaching the chamber, Eldrad is laid out on the slab and the Doctor initiates the process. Eldrad's body is crushed and vaporized but the essence is reconstituted in his original masculine form. Eldrad emerges from the chamber, vowing to become king and take his full revenge on Kastria.

The Doctor and Sarah learn from Eldrad that there was no alien invasion and that the barriers protecting the planet were destroyed by him when the people of Kastria rose against him. As Eldrad finishes, King Rokon appears on the monitor telling Eldrad to come take his kingdom from him. Eldrad goes into the throne room but when he confronts Rokon, he finds only a dead body that crumbles to dust. Undeterred, Eldrad enters a chamber that held the genetic information of his people, from which he can regenerate the Kastrian race. But he finds that chamber empty as well.

An image of Rokon appears on the screen informing Eldrad that rather than attempt to scratch out a miserable existence, the Kastrian people opted for obliteration. They also destroyed their genetic repository so that no one could revive their race to serve as slaves to their will. Eldrad briefly breaks down, robbed of his revenge and dreams of power. He collects himself and then decides that he will become the ruler of Earth and use them to conquer the galaxy. The Doctor however refuses to take him back or to give him back his ring, which the Doctor had taken earlier to avoid another booby trap.

The Doctor makes it appear that he tosses the ring aside, distracting Eldrad. Eldrad lunges for it but realizes it was not the ring. He then runs after the Doctor and Sarah. The two reach the narrow bridge that spans the chasm and hide behind two rocks, stretching the Doctor's scarf between them. As Eldrad runs to the bridge, they raise the scarf, tripping him and causing him to fall into the abyss. The Doctor then takes the ring and tosses it into a different part of the abyss.

The Doctor and Sarah head back to the TARDIS and take off. The TARDIS lurches oddly, affected by the cold and the Doctor begins to work on it. But out by the stress of the adventure and the fact that the Doctor isn't even listening to her concerns. Sarah leaves the control room to gather her things, making a show of leaving. While she is gone, the Doctor receives a psychic message from Gallifrey, ordering him to return. When Sarah reenters as part of her show, the Doctor informs her of his call and how he must leave her behind. She protests but Doctor insists. He lands the TARDIS and they share a quiet goodbye as she leaves. She stops to watch the TARDIS disappear before realizing that the Doctor had once again miscalculated and dropped her off nowhere near her home in South Croydon. Undeterred, she walks off whistling.

Analysis

Aside from the resolution to how to deal with Eldrad, I can't really understand why this story is regarded as middling at best. It has it's problems, but when looked at as a whole, it really does fairly well and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it a second time through.

Aside from a little bit of uncharacterized wimpy-ness from her in Episode Four, this is an excellent story for Sarah Jane and one that features her range nicely. You have her chummy relationship with the Doctor and her noble concern for those around her to say nothing of when she is possessed by Eldrad. Those scenes of her in that state in Episodes One and Two are a very strong performance punctuated with little personality quirks that take it from generic possession to Sarah Jane being controlled. It's a rich delivery from a strong character.

This doesn't even take into account her performance in the leaving scene. The bit of pique that sets up the scene is right within the normal teasing and jostling that goes in between the Doctor and Sarah but then it drops immediately into sincerity. There are no tears, no begging aside from that lone appeal at the beginning but there is that wistful moment of saying goodbye and trying to draw it out to preserve the moment. Once the TARDIS lands, you have the Doctor trying to lie as though it's a simple "I'll see you later" with Sarah going along with it. But she has this reserve in her eyes that lets you know that her travels with the Doctor are over. But once that moment's gone, its a reflection on the good times again. Playing with the dog and laughing that the Doctor dropped her in the wrong location then whistling as she walks down the road. I think I would have preferred a fade out as she walked off in the distance with her back to the camera rather than the freeze frame, but it still worked very well as a goodbye.

As far as the Doctor, he was very engaging. He had his aloof and funny moments but his deep concern for Sarah drives all the action in the first two episodes. It is after that, once Sarah is out of danger than the aloofness returns to the fore and his almost mocking of the situation disarms Eldrad of her power while on Earth, hiding the true danger of Eldrad while she is on Earth. I would even go so far as to suspect that he doesn't trust Eldrad's story but still goes along with it both to return Eldrad to Kastria as well as try to save her life on the hope that some good can still come of the situation. The change and yet consistency within character draws one in to the Doctor's performance and makes him enjoyable through the whole story.

Even the side characters are interesting and well performed. Though there is little action with him prior to Eldrad taking control Dr. Carter is interesting and you feel bad for him when he is killed trying to kill the Doctor. Similarly, Professor Watson is also engaging, with the little character moments of saying goodbye to his family when he thinks he might die and also not being the typical obstinate bureaucrat and actually believing the Doctor the first time around when the Doctor theorizes about the nature of Eldrad. Watson does go a little off script with his pistol attack on Eldrad, especially given that Eldrad had just absorbed the equivalent of three nuclear explosions worth of energy, just to add a little action and reinforce the fact to the audience that Eldrad is not who she claims to be. But it still works out and it's nice to have secondary characters that draw you in so well.

Eldrad her/himself is probably the weakest thing in the story. Eldrad is abstract in Episodes One and Two which is far scarier than being fully realized. The female Eldrad is not bad in her performance though she does go through the pantomime shtick of being the victim. I think it would have played better to make Eldrad appear more sincere in these situations, which would have made the trick of the Doctor and Sarah more believable, rather than the obvious wink to the camera that she was lying to the Doctor about her nature. I also didn't like the direct address to the camera after realizing her new form but that's more on the director.

The male Eldrad is where it really goes to pot though. Female Eldrad had some depth and could have played the deception better depending on the script or direction. The male Eldrad simply goes to eleven and stays there. It's all rage fueled revenge and even the moment of brokenness feels like it should have been more shattering than it was. Eldrad recoups rather quickly and decides to just move on to Earth without much more than a passing glance at Kastria. Had Eldrad not started at eleven but been a bit more reserved, perhaps even sly, his breakdown at being denied revenge and rule over Kastria would have felt deeper. He then could have gone to eleven when talking about taking over Earth. That would have felt like a man who has fallen into a desperate madness and clawing at anything that would give him purpose. Instead, it becomes just another monster and one who is dispatched in a very ignoble fashion.

The dispatching of Eldrad is a failure on multiple fronts. It is a failure of writing as such a crude trick should never have been employed in the first place. It is a failure of direction as it was neither set up nor shot in a way to make it even semi-believable. It is also a failure of performance as Eldrad does not even properly trip over the scarf. He actually more steps on it and then effectively jumps into the chasm rather than properly falling. I'm sure moving around in the suit was difficult but it was the most kiddy and stage-y moment in the whole story. As such, Eldrad went from the creepy, legitimately scary force, to a bumbling monster that would be at home in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

I thought the overall direction was pretty good along with the visual effects as well. The hand moving independently worked very well and everything else was all within normal. I also enjoyed the large use of different shooting angles when maneuvering around the plant on film. Not only did you get the nice look of film, but it better captured the scope of the facility Sarah and the Doctor were moving through. It was much nicer than just looking at corridors the whole time. I think the only point where things erred is when the missiles were fired at the plant. They weren't supposed to go off but it felt like just a static shot of the plant. An indicator that the missile had at least fallen to the ground near it would have looked good.

Overall, I think this story gets a bit shortchanged by fans. Is it a brilliant masterpiece for Sarah to go out on? No. But it is a good and entertaining story to enjoy in one sitting, which puts it at least one above The Chase. Sarah's leaving scene also has the advantage of clearing out the bad taste that the disappointing ending can leave and that does wonders for improving the overall feel of the story. Not one to start with, but I'm happy to have ended on this one.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5