Day 220 — August 8th 2021
The Hand of Fear Parts One and Two
The Hand of Fear — Part One
I’d like to open my thoughts about this episode by quoting Russell T Davies’ original pitch document used at the BBC when bringing the series back in 2005;
‘If the Zogs on Planet Zog are having trouble with the Zog-monster…
who gives a toss?’
I can only assume he’d just watched this episode when writing that, because that’s the perfect example of what happens in the opening few minutes of this episode. We watch as figures dressed in anoraks rush about, and they’ve got names like ‘Technic Obarl’ and ‘Commander Zazzka’. This is what I imagine all of Doctor Who looks like to my wife. The biggest problem is that it’s not in any way interesting, and it feels especially rubbish in comparison to the beautiful locations of The Masque of Mandragora and the richly-drawn characters from The Seeds of Doom.
Once we’re done with this sequence we do head off to Earth, but I’m afraid to say that my interest in the episode had already suffered a bit too much of a dent, so I don’t find an awful lot to enjoy. Yes, I’m afraid this is going to be one of those entries where I moan a lot. The quarry is a nice enough location, and I appreciate the gag about them being such a regular fixture in the programme;
Sarah: ‘I don’t want to make any snap decisions, but this isn’t South Croydon.’
Doctor Who: ‘Is it nice in South Croydon?’
Sarah: ‘It’s a paradise compared to this dump. I bet we’re not even on Earth!’
The problem is that real quarries have been more of a fixture of the Tom Baker era than ones posing as alien landscapes! The Zygon spaceship touched down in a quarry during Terror of the Zygons, a UNIT soldier flings himself into one in The Android Invasion (although I suppose technically that one is an alien world), and there’s a fight in one during The Seeds of Doom. Really at this point Sarah Jane should be more surprised if she does find herself on an alien planet!
I also take issue with the fact that the pair are so lackadaisical in the face of a blaring warning siren, because I just don’t buy it. They step out of the TARDIS, hear the siren, and just carry on taking a casual stroll, playing cricket with the rocks and having a chat. I get that Sarah’s trying to get Doctor Who’s attention, but I can’t help feeling that they sort of had it coming when they get caught up in the explosion.
My biggest issue with this episode is just how painfully slow it all is. Once we’re at the hospital there’s absolutely no pace or energy to any of the characters. They wander about up and down the corridors, chat about the kind of scientific equipment that might help them study the mysterious hand, and just generally fill time until the episode can end. There’s nothing exciting about it, and there’s even long stretches where there’s no dialogue. When Sarah sneaks into Carter’s lab to steal back the hand we get to watch for a full forty seconds as he excitingly studies some equipment. Gripping stuff.
Maybe I’m just grumpy because I’m not ready for Sarah to leave the show, but this episode has done very little for me, and I’m opening with a 2/10.
The Hand of Fear — Part Two
Okay, I’m going to try and be a bit more positive going into this episode, so I’ll open by saying that the cliffhanger to the last episode, in which the fossilised hand comes to life and starts to crawl around inside the Tupperware box, is fantastic. It’s well achieved to the point that I can’t entirely work out how it’s been done — which I think is the mark of a really well-achieved effect. I will say that in choosing the screenshots to accompany today’s post I’ve noticed that it’s actually really obvious how they did the hand in the box, but I didn’t spot that on screen, which is another mark of a well done effect — half the battle is distraction.
Even later on when you can see it’s been done with CSO (no doubt with some poor supporting artist having to crawl around on the floor in a full yellow body stocking) it still looks brilliant. It’s a properly creepy image, and it’s no wonder that it stuck in the minds of so many kids watching. This is a story which is often fondly remembered from the time, which made my lack of enjoyment in Part One all the more disappointing to me.
Lis Sladen is — of course — on top form here, too. She’s had to do more than her fair share of ‘possessed’ acting during her time in Doctor Who (heck, she had to do it in yesterday’s episodes!) but she somehow manages to make it seem fresh every time. Her performance when under the control of Eldrad is great, and I love the way she emphasises the middle word in the phrase ‘Eldrad must live’.
Outside of those nice elements, though, there’s not very much going on here to grab me, and I think my biggest issue lies in the direction. We’ve got some really impressive locations for this story — proper wide vistas. There’s the quarry in Part One, and now we’re at the power station. These are some of the biggest places the programme has ever been to film, but I’m not getting much of a sense of that scale because everything’s been shot quite blandly.
For the quarry that manifests as only having a single wide shot which shows how far away the TARDIS is, while the rest of the time the box is bizarrely frames to cut off the roof more by accident than design, and in Part Two it’s down to a bit of an oxymoron of the location; it’s huge and impressive in scale, but because it’s so packed with machinery the camera ends up being positioned extra close to the actors, giving the whole thing a really cramped feel. It’s most noticeable when Doctor Who and Carter make their way to the radioactive core and it’s all shot a bit too close for comfort but you don’t suspect it’s through choice.
I want to really see the size of these places. I’d happily go without many close ups if it meant that we got long sequences with the camera situated a mile away from the actors so we can see them dwarfed by the huge places around them. There’s the occasional moment of that here, but far less than I’d like, and it feels like a massive shame.
That’s not to say that the direction is all bad, because it certainly isn’t. There’s occasions in which having the camera positioned up close is very much a deliberate choice, and it’s used especially well to convey the idea that Sarah is under alien control. There’s an almost fish-eye effect to these shots which is really interesting, and it makes me long to see them contrasted with more open imagery elsewhere in the tale.
There’s a handful of other nicely shot moments — the moment when Carter falls from a gantry is brilliant, for example, and it probably the best version of the ‘falling from height’ thing that the series was so fond of in the Pertwee years. Every so often the episode does something interesting and different, but it only makes me long for a better story, or more consistent direction across the board. I’ll creep this one up to a 3/10, but it’s still not great.
< Day 219 | Day 221 >
