Doctor Who: The Hand of Fear (1976)
There’s a lot to enjoy about The Hand of Fear and quite a lot of it flows from the performances. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen, of course, never gave a poor performance when on screen together, but this is a story where all of the guest characters (including the unique dual portrayal of the villain) are memorable. Even the mostly voice acted opening scene of the Kastrians pondering when it would be safe to execute Eldrad is an intriguing one (although Tom Baker amusingly points out on the DVD commentary track that they all seem to need to shout at each other to be heard and that there should have been a line where one of the aliens bellows, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”)
Professor Watson is an extremely memorable and great character. From his first scene, it’s clear that he believes he’s the main character in this story, which is exactly what you want from a person in that position. He certainly is given more humanity than most guest stars and the scene where he calls his wife to say goodbye but finds himself unable to actually say the words is a rarity in Doctor Who and very welcome here (in the novelisation, Watson bites his tongue when speaking to his daughter who answers the phone, thinking it would be awful if her last memory of him was yelling at her to shut up and give the phone to her mother). There’s a nice moment which I only picked up on during my most recent viewing as it’s almost blocked by the staging. When he orders Miss Jackson to evacuate the center, he briefly but gently touches her arm.
Rex Robinson’s Dr. Carter seems like such an obvious pseudo companion (virtually identical to his Dr. Tyler in The Three Doctors) that it’s almost a shock when he dies before the Doctor could even attempt to deprogram him. Roy Boyd’s Driscoll is just slightly off enough that you can understand the other characters not immediately picking up on the fact that he’s become possessed.
But speaking of possession, the standout performance in this serial belongs to Elisabeth Sladen, fittingly for her swansong. Poor Sarah was hypnotized or possessed possibly more than any other companion, but finally here Sladen is able to actually perform instead of just blankly repeating dialog or providing exposition.
Compare her performance as Eldred to her normal performance as Sarah. Eldrad-Sarah carries herself with much more precise movements. Watch the way she carefully places the tupperware lunchbox down before stepping onto the ladder, or the quick and deliberate way she packages the disembodied hand in Carter’s lab. Then compare it to the more carefree, slightly uncoordinated way that Sarah moves, best shown in the beginning of episode four when Eldred has been shot with a boobytrapped hypodermic and Sarah is wheeling around, with no idea where to put her hands.
As an aside, it’s a pity that there was never really the equivalent to Star Trek The Next Generation’s Family in classic Doctor Who. That’s the Star Trek episode immediately after Best of Both Worlds where Picard confronts the PTSD he suffered as a result of his conversion into a Borg and that his knowledge and experience was used to cause the death of hundreds of Starfleet personnel. Eldrad is certainly acting as more than a puppetmaster of an empty body; he seems to be able to tie into the minds of his victims. Note that Eldrad-Sarah is confounded by the circular, multi-colored lock on the reactor door while Edlrad-Driscoll has the knowledge to open it. Also note the coy way that Eldrad-Sarah puts her finger along her mouth at the gate in order to emotionally disarm the guard. This gesture surely must have come from Sarah’s mind, as it’s simply not feasible to imagine Stephen Thorne’s Eldrad doing the same.
Turning from how the actors move to how the camera moves, the direction and cinematography are really well above average for productions of this era, particularly the location (film) sequences. Sarah approaching the power plant first seen in the traffic mirror, the low angle shots of the Doctor and Carter driving. All great and imaginative stuff you can imagine fitting right at home in a mid-budget 1970s horror film.. The cliffhanger for episode one with Sarah walking the hand through the power station is so effective that they do it again for episode two with Driscoll and it’s equally good.
Dudley Simpson’s musical cues are also due for praise. Like the sequences of the aliens slowly attacking in The Ambassadors of Death, the various sounds and musical effects are indelibly linked in my brain to action as are the images of Sarah walking closer and closer to the reactor room (while occasionally blasting a bystander) impossible to separate from the sound design. By the by, given that the next story is The Deadly Assassin, were there ever two consecutive Doctor Who stories that had such incredible and immediately identifiable musical scores as these two?
According to interviews with Elisabeth Sladen, she didn’t want the story to focus on Sarah leaving; she wanted the character to leave at the end of a very typical serial. And she got her wish. Much of the focus is on her character but not on the fact that she’s leaving. Until she does, and does it with the perfect, appropriate ending, leaving the audience wanting more.
