The Hand of Fear Part Four

The one where the Doctor asks Sarah to leave...

After three very middling episodes, this fourth and final part takes a real nosedive, which is a shame considering its greater significance in the canon. Right from the outset there's some very dodgy effects on display, including the thankfully brief CSO lift down to the thermal caves, and the really cheap-looking Kastrian sets by Christine Ruscoe. Nothing looks real or solid, the finish on certain sections is ham-fisted and careless, and it all looks very unconvincing. And to top it all, Elisabeth Sladen puts in an eye-wateringly OTT performance, screaming and moaning her way through some pretty ropey writing.

The Doctor and Sarah manage to avoid a series of cheap-looking booby traps to get Eldrad to the regeneration chamber. But once activated, it appears as though Eldrad has been pulverised, yet there's one more trick up writer Bob Baker and Dave Martin's sleeves: Eldrad lives again, and is regenerated into the form of a big hulking male Kastrian. And this version has none of the elegance, beauty or eloquence of the female one. No, the male Eldrad is played by Stephen Thorne, so naturally all hope of subtlety and nuance goes out the window.

Thorne had previously played Azal in The Daemons, portraying him as a giant shouty megalomaniac almost impossible to reason with. Then he'd played Omega in The Three Doctors, portraying him as a giant shouty megalomaniac almost impossible to reason with. Here, he plays Eldrad as - you guessed it - a giant shouty megalomaniac almost impossible to reason with. Thorne was undoubtedly typecast because of his physical and vocal presence, but he didn't have the acting chops to make these maniacs anything more than just that. There was no subtlety or finesse to his style of acting. He just shouted and ranted and raved and charged about, because he was a Doctor Who monster and that's what he thought Doctor Who monsters did.

It's a crying shame after the delicacy of Judith Paris's performance. Paris and Thorne's Eldrads are the same character, so why Eldrad suddenly becomes a raving madman once he takes male form is very disappointing and inconsistent. Maybe there's an attempt to say something about gender here, but as this is Baker and Martin writing, I very much doubt it. Eldrad spouts rent-a-cliche after rent-a-cliche, and the costume design is nothing like as effective or convincing as the female version. Thorne can barely see out of the highly restrictive outfit he's given, and because the studio is lit from above, and Thorne's headpiece so top-heavy, lighting designer Derek Slee struggles to get the camera a clear shot of Eldrad's face. He's just a murky grey lump on legs. As for King Rokon, well... he just looks like a big poo!

After the info-dump in episode 3 where we start to feel sorry for Eldrad, another info-dump in episode 4 reverses all that as we discover Eldrad was lying all along, and it was he who destroyed the spatial barriers and let the solar winds back in, not alien invaders. He did it in a power-crazed strop because Kastrian King Rokon wouldn't abdicate and let him rule. Eldrad wanted to conquer the galaxy with his Kastrian army, but it seems his people weren't so keen on his bloodthirsty ambitions, and so imprisoned him. And rather than continue living in a subterranean prison to shield themselves from the solar winds, the Kastrians decided to commit mass self-genocide, destroying themselves and the Kastrian race banks. All very noble of the Kastrians, but also unconvincing that an entire species would rather die out than try to engineer a way to fix the spatial barriers and live on the surface again.

And then there's the way Eldrad is dispatched, tripping over the Doctor's outstretched scarf and tumbling into the seemingly bottomless abyss to his doom. It's oh so convenient that the abyss was there at all. And the execution of Eldrad's demise is bungled too, with Thorne stepping politely over the scarf then pretending to fall into the pit. It's just so poor.

The last five minutes are dedicated to the departure of Sarah Jane Smith, and it all comes very suddenly. Sarah expresses her frustration at constantly being cold and wet, hypnotised and savaged by bug-eyed monsters. She craves a bath, wants to wash her hair, all very human reactions to the sort of life she currently leads. She threatens to leave - "I'm going to pack my goodies and I'm going home" - and pretends to gather her stuff together in order to provoke some kind of sympathetic reaction from the Doctor (who really isn't listening). Her goodies include a tennis racket, a stuffed owl and a pot plant!

But in her brief absence, the Doctor receives a blocky computer effect call from Gallifrey, and he knows he must drop everything and go right away. And dropping everything includes his best friend Sarah. "Oh come on, I can't miss Gallifrey!" protests Sarah, but it's too late. Rules are rules, and the Doctor must leave her behind before returning home ("Gallifrey... after all this time").

It's a very sad scene as Sarah realises the Doctor isn't joking, and has to very quickly come to terms with this life-changing moment. No more travels in the TARDIS, no more monsters and aliens, no more planets and stars, no more time travel. No more Doctor. Her life is about to return to the crushing normality of everyday life, living each day in order, minute after minute, in the right order and with no bug-eyed monsters around the corner. The Doctor claims to drop her in Hillview Road in South Croydon, where she lives, but as Sarah soon discovers, it's not Hillview Road at all, and as we discover much later in School Reunion, it's not even South Croydon, it's Aberdeen!

Their last words are bittersweet: "Don't forget me," she says. "Oh Sarah... don't you forget me." The tension is palpable. This is no fond farewell, because neither of them want to part company. It's what's left unsaid which hurts the most, between these two amazing characters who have been the bestest of best friends. "Til we meet again..." says the Doctor, and with that, she's gone. I'm not altogether clear why the Doctor couldn't promise to return for her after he'd finished on Gallifrey. Why does their parting have to be so permanent? Maybe the Doctor assumes he'll be staying on Gallifrey, which is an odd assumption to make for saying he ran away in the first place.

Sarah Jane Smith would never meet this Doctor again, which is tragic. She would meet the Third Doctor again, as well as the First, Second and Fifth in The Five Doctors. And, of course, she'd meet the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors on TV too, and the Seventh and Eighth Doctors in various comics and books. But the fact this particular pairing of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen would never be together again really does smart, because they were so damn good together, surely one of the finest examples of thespian chemistry in British TV history (I don't think I'm exaggerating there). Of course, there are might-have-beens: Sladen was asked to return to the series for Tom's departure in Season 18, but declined, and Tom was asked to take part in The Five Doctors, but declined. And the two never crossed paths in Dimensions in Time either. All so frustrating.

The last we see of Sarah Jane Smith is walking down a suburban street, and there's oodles of irony in that she's whistling Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow. It's oddly prescient that the TARDIS drops her in a suburban street where a dog awaits her arrival, and that she whistles about not being given a dog. Some years later, the Doctor sends her a gift of K-9 Mk III, and her future in the Doctor Who universe is secured. Whoever chose that music hall song for her to whistle, and whoever opted to have that Labrador sitting on the pavement, couldn't possibly have known what was to happen in the future, with K-9 and Company, The Five Doctors and The Sarah Jane Adventures. It's beautiful serendipity, a magical aspect of the rich tapestry that is Doctor Who.

Farewell Sarah Jane. We'll miss you. He'll miss you. And we love you, forever and ever. See you again sometime, soon I hope.

As for The Hand of Fear, it's not the swansong I'd have hoped for Sladen. It's written badly, designed badly and pales in comparison to the weekly classics the series was churning out around this time. In short, it's just not good enough.

First broadcast: October 23rd, 1976

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The very last freeze frame of Sarah looking back, up into the sky... I think I'm welling up...
The Bad: Stephen Thorne as Eldrad.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 4.8 out of  10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: The Deadly Assassin...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-hand-of-fear.html

The Hand of Fear is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Hand-Fear-DVD/dp/B000FPV8KG