August 6: The Hand of Fear Parts Three & Four

So Driscoll walks inside the reactor with the hand -- he's presumably killed (we never hear from him again), but, impossibly, all the radiation appears to have been absorbed and there's something alive inside the reactor, as we can hear it thumping on the door that the Doctor closed.  And not even a nuclear strike by the RAF can stop it -- although one has to wonder about firing nuclear missiles at something that's already proved it can absorb all the radiation from a nuclear reactor.  And sure enough, the missiles do nothing -- there's not even a flash.  What there is is a fully-formed silicon-based female inside the reactor, as all the radiation gave her enough energy to reconstitute herself.

Eldrad sees Kastria on the TARDIS viewscreen while Sarah and the
Doctor look on. (The Hand of Fear Part Three) ©BBC

The result is that Eldrad, as played by Judith Paris, is a nuanced character, telling the Doctor that she's the victim of a planetary war with invaders that attempted to execute her (which doesn't quite match up with what we saw at the beginning of part one) and pleading with him to take her back home to Kastria.  The Doctor seems willing to do this, but before they can get going there's a bizarre moment where Professor Watson opens fire on Eldrad for no obvious reason other than "she's an alien". It's really not clear what he was thinking, but he doesn't do her any damage and she's able to proceed to the TARDIS.  Oh, and this is the episode that introduces the concept of the TARDIS interior being in a state of temporal grace, meaning that weapons don't work inside.  It's an interesting idea that nevertheless is contradicted numerous times in subsequent stories -- but it definitely seems to work here.

We also get a very odd cliffhanger, as Eldrad is shot in the chest with a giant spear-like needle -- it's not often we get a cliffhanger about a guest character, let alone one whose morals are set up as ambiguously as Eldrad's...

Part four is a bit of a letdown, honestly.  Judith Paris is so good as Eldrad that her "death" during the episode is a bit saddening -- but then she's resurrected in her true form, as Stephen Thorne tries to chew up every piece of scenery he can.  It's such a dramatically different performance, with little of the nuance that Judith Paris brought to the role, that it's hard not to be disappointed.  And we learn that the Kastrians were so worried about Eldrad's return (only one in three million chance of survival, remember) that they set up a bunch of booby traps just for him and left him a message just to taunt him from beyond the grave.  And then the Doctor and Sarah cause him to trip and fall into an abyss.  The end.

Well, not quite.  Sarah gets mad at the Doctor and makes a show of getting ready to leave, only for the Doctor to receive "the call from Gallifrey", which means that he has to leave Sarah behind; she can't come to Gallifrey with him.  It's a bit sudden and sad, but it's a nice leaving scene: "Don't forget me," Sarah says.  "Oh, Sarah.  Don't you forget me," the Doctor says with feeling.  And that's the end of Sarah's travels in the TARDIS, being dropped off at what turns out isn't her home like the Doctor thought.⁹⁵  It's sad to see Sarah go; she's been such an integral part of the show recently, as Elisabeth Sladen brought a cheeky sense of fun to the Doctor's travels.  She made Sarah charming, sweet, and lively, and she made it seem effortless.  What more could you want in a travelling companion?

But that's just the very end of The Hand of Fear.  The rest of the story is entertaining enough, but like the previous story there's a sense of unmemorability, that the events we see aren't given the weight we might like.  It doesn't help that Eldrad doesn't appear fully-formed until part three.  There are definitely some good moments, and we see Baker & Martin's first fully-fledged use of "catchphrases" in the series ("Eldrad must live!"), but it ultimately has a slightly inconsequential feel. 







⁹⁵ Actually, it's a little odd that the Doctor never comes back for Sarah.  He's clearly fond of her, and their relation prior to this point has been atypical for a companion at this point in the series: Sarah clearly has her own life and does things in between TARDIS trips.  Given that Sarah doesn't really willingly leave (unlike Jo Grant, the only real analogue in terms of this style of companionhood), you'd think that the Doctor would conclude his business on Gallifrey and then come pick Sarah up again.  Maybe he was going to, and then Leela stowed away on the TARDIS and caused him to change his plans.