Day 221 — August 9th 2021
The Hand of Fear Parts Three and Four
The Hand of Fear — Part Three
I was thinking overnight about the lack of scale in those first two episodes, and I came to the conclusion that it’s not fair to place the blame for that solely on the choice of shots. It’s also a problem with the number of people in this story — which is to say there’s barely any of them.
The power complex has been fully evacuated twice now, which is a handy tool for having all the areas we see devoid of people, but they don’t even try to make it look like there’s any more people on site than the handful of non-speaking extras who were in the Control Room. We know they did some filming outside at the power complex, so I want to see people fleeing in panic as the alarm blares out in the background. I want to see technicians and engineers running from the place, with the guards on the front gate abandoning their posts the second they hear that a nuclear strike has been ordered.
Instead, the closest that we get are Doctor Who, Sarah and Professor Watson hopping in the back of a jeep while a guard wrestles for a little bit too long to lock the gate on the way out. The entire threat of nuclear attack is demonstrated by three people hiding behind a jeep half a mile away from the expected detonation point. I know Bob Baker and Dave Martin aren’t always known for their scientific accuracy, but there’s times when the credibility is stretched that bit too thin.
And yet, I think you could get away with it if you had more people doing the same thing. If the entire staff of the power complex were all out there, hiding behind whatever shelter they could find, I think I’d be able to suspend my disbelief a little more and actually go along with it, even if it is ridiculous. As it is, though, I’m left feeling like I’m watching a Doctor Who fan film, where there’s only a small cast because no one else wanted to be involved.
Even as the episode goes on, this is pretty much a four hander throughout. Doctor Who, Sarah and Professor Watson are key players throughout. Eldrad shows up ten minutes in and is important through the rest of the episode. Miss Jackson turns up for a couple of lines to bookend Watson’s part in the narrative and there’s a couple of extras on hand to lock the gates, but none of those three really feel like they count. I’ve been bracing myself for Season Fifteen because that’s the year when 1970s inflation really bites and the series — which has been fairly lush and expensive looking over the last few years — takes a bit of a downward turn into being tatty and cheep. Watching this, I’m wondering if I’ve misremembered and that the cheapness starts creeping in earlier than expected…
I think you could probably get away with doing something incredibly small-scale with just three people and an alien locked inside a power station, but the issue is that’s not the kind of story they’re trying to tell here. In order to make that work it needs to be a story about that isolation — where Doctor Who and Sarah arrive in the complex via the TARDIS after almost everyone else has already been evacuated. The phone lines have been cut, the gates have been locked, and the alien is growing in strength and picking off those who remain one-by-one.
Anyway, it’s not all bad! I seemed to spend a lot of time in the Pertwee years complaining that they often fumbled the reveal of the monster or baddie having spent ages building up to it. It’s nice, then, to see that they manage it successfully here, with a great first appearance from Eldrad, emerging from the smoke of the reactor and out into the open for the first time.
It’s a great design for a monster, too. We don’t get an awful lot of female monsters in the show so that’s unique in itself, but to clad the creature in such an unusual outfit, which manages to be both interesting and beautiful in equal measure, makes it all the better.
The entire thing is helped by an incredible performance from Judith Paris, who manages to be genuinely scary and powerful. There are times, when she’s shouting at and scanning Doctor Who’s mind, when you really understand the level of the threat our heroes are facing. It’s another one of those moments where — despite not enjoying the story overall — I can totally understand why this left such a lasting impression on the minds of the kids who watched in 1976. Eldrad is one of the best Doctor Who villains we’ve had in ages.
Overall, though, I’m sticking with a 3/10 for this one. As much as I’ve loved watching the confrontations as the episode has gone on, I just can’t get over my disappointment in other areas of the production. I’ll tell you what, though; we finally got the ‘shot from far away to show off the size of the place’ shot of the quarry I was so desperate for in Part One — and it looks incredible!
The Hand of Fear — Part Four
Hoo, boy.
The Hand of Fear is a really strangely structured Doctor Who story, isn’t it? Every so often it seems to do away with bits of the narrative and switch over to being something else. So Part One features the people at the quarry and the hospital… but then they vanish after that and aren’t mentioned again (we make a return to the quarry to see the TARDIS leave in Part Three, but it’s blink and you’ll miss it). Part Two kills off Dr. Carter, severing our last link to the hospital side of the story, and Professor Watson and the power complex are left behind in Part Three and never seen again. At least when she’s saying her farewells, Sarah notes that she can go and tell Watson what happened — I like to think she did. And then I like to think she took a holiday to San Martino and spent the whole trip correcting the guidebook.
This fourth episode is set almost entirely on Kastria, and it’s rubbish, frankly.
If I thought Part Three felt a bit like a Doctor Who fan film in places it’s got nothing on this, which is carried entirely by three characters, with a fourth showing up via ‘pre-recorded’ video inserts. On top of that it’s Robert Holmes remaking his favourite episode again — this is basically the same plot that we saw in Part Four of Pyramids of Mars and Death to the Daleks, where Doctor Who and Sarah Jane are pitted against a series of ‘fiendish’ boobytraps and puzzles in an ancient city/structure. In the case of this episode it even goes as far as to replicate the ‘person watching our heroes on the screen turns out to have been dead for centuries’ twist. I didn’t enjoy this episode much the first two times I watched it, and I can’t say it’s fared any better on this occasion.
On top of that, after all my praise for Judith Paris in Part Three, she gets given barely anything to do in this one, spending most of her time in the story being paralysed before being ‘killed’ and replaced with someone else, who’s sadly not as interesting to watch.
This is Stephen Thorne’s final appearance in Doctor Who, and it’s fairly in keeping with his earlier turns as Azal and Omega in that it’s certainly not a… shy performance. The problem is that while I really enjoyed him doing this over-the-top acting for Omega, here it pales in comparison to Paris’ work in the last episode. Where she was frightening and powerful without having to try, Thorne is overdoing it to the point that Eldrad now appears ridiculous rather than scary.
It’s not helped by the alteration in appearance, either. Eldrad’s female form was beautiful and interesting, but this new version looks just like a fairly naff Doctor Who monster. Once you spot the fact that the crystal on his head resembles a hat and that he appears to have a moustache of sapphires connecting the two halves of his face make up, it’s almost impossible to take him seriously. And after everything we’ve heard about how incredibly powerful he is — able to survive being dead for millions of years and return to life by absorbing the force of a nuclear attack — Eldrad is defeated when he trips over Doctor Who’s scarf. I like it when the scarf plays a part in the story because it’s fun, but to be the entire resolution…?
I also raised an eyebrow at Doctor Who working out that Eldrad’s ring has everything needed to bring the creature back from the dead, and then decides to chuck it down the pit with Eldrad, having also acknowledged that he probably survived the fall. I mean, that just seems oddly careless.
It’s starting to sound like nothing in this story will please me, so I’ll get in one last whine before I move on to the genuinely good part. I spent ages yesterday complaining that the direction in this story was a bit rubbish and could do with livening up. Well, this episode gives us something really different, when we get an overhead shot looking down into a deep cavern. It’s totally unique — I don’t think we’ve ever had a shot like this in Doctor Who before. I certainly couldn’t accuse it of being boring. But because it’s so unusual and all on its own, it also stands out as completely bizarre and took me right out of the narrative. There’s few things that made me realise I’m watching something made in Television Centre than stopping to work out how they did the camerawork. Bah!
Anyway, this episode ends on a wonderful note, because the final moments between Doctor Who and Sarah Jane are absolutely perfect. I think the story is that the script left their actual goodbye out to allow Baker and Salden to develop it together, and I can’t think of anything more beautiful;
Sarah: ‘Don’t forget me.’
Doctor Who: ‘Oh, Sarah. Don’t you forget me.’
Sarah: ‘Bye, Doctor. You know, travel does broaden the mind.’
Doctor Who: ‘Yes. Till we meet again, Sarah.’
It’s the perfect goodbye, and I think it’s probably the saddest of them all. Of course the blow is slightly softened now that we know she’ll meet Doctor Who again properly 30 years later, and it’s heartening to know that this isn’t the end for Sarah Jane. I’ll be checking in on her in K9 and Company in a few months’ time. It’s tempting to mark the episode up massively to reflect how much I love that final scene, but I don’t think I can given that the rest was so unappealing to me. I’ll give this one a 2/10, but with the caveat that the final moments — right through to Sarah realising that her friend has blown it and left her in the wrong place — are a solid ten.
I’ve really loved watching Elisabeth Sladen in the series this time around, and I can totally appreciate why so many people think that she’s the definitive Doctor Who companion. I also can’t believe that it’s a decade since she passed away — I can still feel the blow from hearing the news as though it were yesterday. As a way of saying ‘thank you’ for all the enjoyment she’s given me over the years, and in these last few weeks especially, I’m going to undertaking a charity challenge this week in Lis’ memory — raising money for the Meadow House Hospice who looked after her in her final weeks. I’ll be aiming to visit 60 Doctor Who locations from the New Testament on Thursday August 12th, and I’m hoping to raise £500. You’ll find more details and the place to donate HERE. Fingers crossed I’ve got some surprise places lined up which will be fun to see (and even more fun to visit. I’m going to spend the day pretending to be Doctor Who…)
