Doctor Who: The Hand of Fear [1976]

'Yes … like Andy Pandy.' Even the script has to take note of Elisabeth Sladen's unflattering Play School presenter outfit - oversized pink dungarees tucked into red lace-up plimsolls, with three stars on the bib that might be an echo of the radiation symbol. Of course, it may have been a deliberate, long-term decision to make the Doctor's young female assistants seem like children to downplay any possible fanfic sexual element and boost the Time Lord's status as parent figure: all these women are, after all, substitutes for his granddaughter - this was made explicit with Victoria, who lost her real father in her introduction before being 'adopted' into the TARDIS crew, and reached its oddest, most-nearly-sexual expression in Romana's fetish schoolgirl outfits. Leela, despite the leather bikini, was configured as an asexual character, even when she was married off. The only 1963-89 companion who seems genuinely like a romantic partner is Peri - who dresses like an '80s pornstar and was partnered with the youngest incarnations of the Doctor. By then, however, the show's camp streak had become so gay in a near-literal sense it'd have been easier to believe the Doctor was fucking Adric.

This is a break-up story, putting Sarah Jane Smith [Elisabeth Sladen], one of the series' longest-lasting sidekicks, through so much hell [possessed by an alien megalomaniac] that she ultimately calls it quits. The last departure, of Jo Grant in The Green Death, was played for emotion with a fade on the Pertwee Doctor's near-desolation at being left; Baker's Doctor likes humans but doesn't really have human feelings, so we go out on Sarah Jane dropped off in an anonymous London suburb which turns out not to be South Croydon [where she wanted to go] and still conflicted about leaving the life of adventure [and suffering]. There's a bit of foreshadowing of her return in the as-yet-inconceivable K9 and Company as she has a moment with a dog and whistles Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow - which turns out to be astonishingly apt since, in the end, the Daddy/Doctor did send her a Bow Wow [only for the pilot to bust and get dropped].

The other change is that this is a mostly earthbound story without even a token mention of UNIT, though official credentials might actually have been of use to the Doctor in taking charge of a situation at a nuclear power station. It winds up with a telepathic summons to Gallifrey that sets up The Deadly Assassin, a serial full of continuity filling-in that redefines a crucial element of the format [to my mind, not for the long-term good] by getting inside the world of the Time Lords. Fitted in somewhere is an actual story, which has self-aware touches [the TARDIS materialises in a quarry that actually is a quarry] and replays a familiar scenario as an alien criminal comes to Earth in ancient times and reassembles himself with the unwilling aid of the Doctor to take up his old feud - the use of Stephen Thorne's voice as the full Eldrad makes the connection with Azal of The Daemons and Omega of The Three Doctors.

After a millions-of-years-ago prologue, with the Kastrian criminal Eldrad blown to bits in space, his petrified hand shows up in the quarry and Sarah Jane falls under its influence - taking it to absorbable power sources so it can grow into humanoid/silicone form, which means a shift of locale from hospital to a nuclear power station run by Glyn Houston, where she is mistaken for a terrorist as she breaches the core [Sladen had been in a similarly-themed Doomwatch episode Say Knife, Fat Man]. The hand, which has done some minor and effective Beast With Five Fingers crawling, turns into a blue stone humanoid [Judith Paris] later rationalised as being modeled on Sarah Jane. This creature, perhaps an influence on the development of Fred in the last season of Angel, is among the series' most interesting monsters: for a while it seems as if she really is a saviour on Kastria rather than the villain we've been led to believe and the Doctor is willing to set aside her causing the deaths of a batch of humans in order to help her return to her bleak planet and re-establish her rule. The playing and make-up are stylised, weirdly sexy [suggesting a side of Sarah Jane she was repressing?] and this alien serves to make the Doctor more alien by showing he can relate to non-humans on another level, no matter how exasperating it might be to his human friends.

As with Omega, Eldrad finds out that it's too late - when turned into his male, tyrannical form, it turns out that Kastria is a dead, forgotten world with only automated defences and that he is king of nothing - he hits on the obvious notion [rarely used] of having the Doctor take him back to a time when he might have something to conquer only [in a weak bit] gets tripped by that long scarf and falls into a bottomless abyss. When Sarah Jane comments of Eldrad that she 'liked her more than him', she also gets close - following a bit in The Brain of Morbius, where she speaks up for the Pertwee version as Baker is dismissing him - to saying that she preferred the kinder, gentler Jon Pertwee Doctor to Baker's more puckish, distracted, inhuman version. This rare instance of the show dealing on a more than superficial level with its own changes in format also spotlights the devious, ruthless, unapproachable side of Baker [probably what made his approach work, rather than his more obvious humour] phased out in favour of clowning as he lost his grip on the role.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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