The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Hand Of Fear
The Hand Of Fear: Part One (02/10/16)
Massively better this week. The episode started off with some aliens in quilted habits exiling a criminal and blowing him up. Then the TARDIS landed in a quarry on Earth and, ignoring the sirens alerting them to imminent detonation, the Doctor and Sarah discussed cricket before getting buried under a massive cliff face which was spectacularly blown apart!
The Doctor was okay and, helped by the quarry workers, found and dug out Sarah who had grabbed hold of a disembodied hand (as it turns out, it looks to belong to the criminal, Eldrad) and gone into a coma.
Rushed to hospital, the Doctor discussed Sarah's condition with a nice Indian doctor, which felt very realistic (all my GPs have been Indian), then went to Radiology to speak to Doctor Carter who was looking at the 'fossilised' hand Sarah had been clinging to. Working out the hand belonged to a silicone lifeform and leaving Doctor Carter to keep doing his tests, the Doctor went back to the quarry to look for a spaceship. While he was gone, though, Sarah woke up and put on the ring she was holding which had been on Eldrad's finger. Looks like she's possessed as she stole the hand, blasted Doctor Carter with a flash of her ring which knocked him out for an hour, and buggered off to the nearby Nunton Nuclear Complex.
Getting back from the quarry, the Doctor found Doctor Carter and they worked out where Sarah had gone after noticing a sample Carter had been looking at in the electron microscope had been feeding off the radiation! They sped there in Carter's Allegro, but Sarah has already broken into the main reactor and the hand is regenerating and moving!
Really good start, Elisabeth Sladen is brilliant as a possessed Sarah, going round blasting people and saying "Eldrad must live!". It all looks very nice and is paced really well, and is surprisingly sparse with the dialogue. This actually makes it very tense and atmospheric, but not in the cliche, overused 'Gothic' way the last series seemed to do so much, and which was attempted and failed in the last story. Sarah's outfit is awful, but at least the script references how naff it is, and it's up there with 'The Seeds Of Doom' and 'Terror Of The Zygons' for making her at least half likable! Very much looking forward to next week.
The Hand Of Fear: Part Two (09/10/16)
Another good episode. Sarah had locked herself in the chamber outside the core and put the Nuclear Power Plant on Red Alert. The Doctor and Doctor Carter arrived and went to get her out, but Doctor Carter had been possessed by Eldrad (who must live) and attacked the Doctor on some gantry stairs, lost his footing and plunged to his death!
The Doctor got into the chamber and KO'd Sarah and got her out, dropping the ring inside the door. The Head of the Plant, Professor Watson, sent an engineer, Driscoll, to get the hand whilst the Doctor explained that the hand was feeding off the radiation and regenerating itself. However, Driscoll found the ring which takes over the will of anyone who comes into contact with it (hence Doctor Carter, Sarah, "Eldrad must live", etc.).
Professor Watson got Driscoll to lock the hand away and the Doctor cured Sarah by hypnotising her ("Not again!"), but Driscoll had locked the hand in with a load of radioactive stuff and, when everyone was elsewhere, he went and got the hand and took it into the Nuclear reactor. The Doctor and Sarah went after him and the cliffhanger came as Watson tried to evacuate the plant as the computers in the control room blew up.
All very exciting and pissing all over 'The Masque Of Mandragora'. Doctor Carter's death was quite shocking and the special effects of the disembodied hand were mostly really good - especially when Driscoll reached in to take it out the Hazardous Materials safe and it grabbed hold of him!
This story has a refreshingly different tone to most of Tom Baker's stories so far which have often been a bit Gothic, which is great but all a bit samey.This harks back to the UNIT stories of the Pertwee era and is benefiting from the contrast as well as being a fast paced and exciting story. Roll on next week!
The Hand Of Fear: Part Three (16/10/16)
Eldrad is a woman, played marvelously by the stunning Judith Paris in an absolutely gorgeous costume. She's regenerated herself using the radiation from the Nuclear core and some missiles that Professor Watson got the RAF to fire at the plant. Turns out she was a scientist on her home planet of Kastria who built barriers to keep out the ravaging Solar Winds. However, the planet was caught up in an alien war, the barriers destroyed, and Eldrad discredited and banished. She's demanded the Doctor take her back, which he's agreed to do but only in the present, thousands of years later.
Sarah doesn't believe nor like Eldrad, but she's just being a miserable cow, as usual. However, she's probably right and Eldrad will probably end up being the bad guy after all. But that still doesn't excuse her being rude and obnoxious.
They've gone back to Kastria (leaving Professor Watson to explain the mes Eldrad has left behind) and entered the Kastrian dome where, upon opening a door, Eldrad has been skewered by a huge spear! If only it'd been Sarah!
A really good episode this week where the Doctor had clearly worked out what was going on within the first few minutes. Watson was well portrayed and written, and some very critical but accurate things were said about Mankind's inability to deal with the unknown without resorting to violence.
I can't complement Judith Paris or her costume designers enough! She looks amazing and her performance is wonderfully alien and incredibly nuanced. This has to be on a par with the stories that opened and closed the last series, and unlike the samey, repetitive design of the last series, this looks very individual and new. Can't wait to find out what happens next week!
The Hand Of Fear: Part Four (23/10/16)
Well! Lots of everything and nothing this week!
Sarah's gone! Can't say I'm sorry to see her go. The Doctor's been called back to Gallifrey! Wow! All a bit odd, really, because this was pretty much a landmark episode but was pretty weak aside from the above. Where to start?
Eldrad, poisoned by the spear that was shot into her last week, got the Doctor and Sarah to help her through the levels of the Kastrian city to a regenerator. Sarah was pretty annoying, pathetic, heartless and self-centred throughout, but they eventually got Eldrad there at which point she was obliterated and remade in his (rather less impressive) Kastrian form.
While Judith Paris was engaging and utterly stunning as Female Eldrad, Stephen Thorne (previously Azal and Omega) was blustery, boring and grossly OTT, like Brian Blessed without the nuances and charisma. He was eventually defeated when the Doctor tripped him over his scarf and he fell into a crevasse.
Yes, it was really that dumb.
This is all because it turned out he really was a villain who'd destroyed the barriers protecting Kastria in order to defeat his political opponent and become ruler. And rather than use their space technology to fuck off to another planet in case Eldrad came back, the Kastrian race chose to destroy their race banks to prevent being reconstituted and enslaved. A bit stupid if you ask me, but what do I know?
Anyhow, having defeated Eldrad, the Doctor and Sarah returned to the TARDIS where Sarah decided to have a strop and threaten to leave. While she was packing, the Doctor (who hadn't heard her as he had his head inside the console) received a message (telepathically) calling him back to Gallifrey, so Sarah was hastily dropped off somewhere that wasn't her home of South Croydon.
Her leaving scene was almost quite emotional, but given that she'd spent most of the episode being pretty obnoxious I was quite pleased to see her go. She's been around way too long anyway, as I've complained several times, and it didn't look like the Doctor was too bothered about leaving her behind.
And now it seems we're off to Gallifrey for the first time since Patrick Troughton's last episode! Not counting brief snips in 'Colony In Space' and 'The Three Doctors', of course. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued!
Massively better this week. The episode started off with some aliens in quilted habits exiling a criminal and blowing him up. Then the TARDIS landed in a quarry on Earth and, ignoring the sirens alerting them to imminent detonation, the Doctor and Sarah discussed cricket before getting buried under a massive cliff face which was spectacularly blown apart!
The Doctor was okay and, helped by the quarry workers, found and dug out Sarah who had grabbed hold of a disembodied hand (as it turns out, it looks to belong to the criminal, Eldrad) and gone into a coma.
Rushed to hospital, the Doctor discussed Sarah's condition with a nice Indian doctor, which felt very realistic (all my GPs have been Indian), then went to Radiology to speak to Doctor Carter who was looking at the 'fossilised' hand Sarah had been clinging to. Working out the hand belonged to a silicone lifeform and leaving Doctor Carter to keep doing his tests, the Doctor went back to the quarry to look for a spaceship. While he was gone, though, Sarah woke up and put on the ring she was holding which had been on Eldrad's finger. Looks like she's possessed as she stole the hand, blasted Doctor Carter with a flash of her ring which knocked him out for an hour, and buggered off to the nearby Nunton Nuclear Complex.
Getting back from the quarry, the Doctor found Doctor Carter and they worked out where Sarah had gone after noticing a sample Carter had been looking at in the electron microscope had been feeding off the radiation! They sped there in Carter's Allegro, but Sarah has already broken into the main reactor and the hand is regenerating and moving!
Really good start, Elisabeth Sladen is brilliant as a possessed Sarah, going round blasting people and saying "Eldrad must live!". It all looks very nice and is paced really well, and is surprisingly sparse with the dialogue. This actually makes it very tense and atmospheric, but not in the cliche, overused 'Gothic' way the last series seemed to do so much, and which was attempted and failed in the last story. Sarah's outfit is awful, but at least the script references how naff it is, and it's up there with 'The Seeds Of Doom' and 'Terror Of The Zygons' for making her at least half likable! Very much looking forward to next week.
The Hand Of Fear: Part Two (09/10/16)
Another good episode. Sarah had locked herself in the chamber outside the core and put the Nuclear Power Plant on Red Alert. The Doctor and Doctor Carter arrived and went to get her out, but Doctor Carter had been possessed by Eldrad (who must live) and attacked the Doctor on some gantry stairs, lost his footing and plunged to his death!
The Doctor got into the chamber and KO'd Sarah and got her out, dropping the ring inside the door. The Head of the Plant, Professor Watson, sent an engineer, Driscoll, to get the hand whilst the Doctor explained that the hand was feeding off the radiation and regenerating itself. However, Driscoll found the ring which takes over the will of anyone who comes into contact with it (hence Doctor Carter, Sarah, "Eldrad must live", etc.).
Professor Watson got Driscoll to lock the hand away and the Doctor cured Sarah by hypnotising her ("Not again!"), but Driscoll had locked the hand in with a load of radioactive stuff and, when everyone was elsewhere, he went and got the hand and took it into the Nuclear reactor. The Doctor and Sarah went after him and the cliffhanger came as Watson tried to evacuate the plant as the computers in the control room blew up.
All very exciting and pissing all over 'The Masque Of Mandragora'. Doctor Carter's death was quite shocking and the special effects of the disembodied hand were mostly really good - especially when Driscoll reached in to take it out the Hazardous Materials safe and it grabbed hold of him!
This story has a refreshingly different tone to most of Tom Baker's stories so far which have often been a bit Gothic, which is great but all a bit samey.This harks back to the UNIT stories of the Pertwee era and is benefiting from the contrast as well as being a fast paced and exciting story. Roll on next week!
The Hand Of Fear: Part Three (16/10/16)
Eldrad is a woman, played marvelously by the stunning Judith Paris in an absolutely gorgeous costume. She's regenerated herself using the radiation from the Nuclear core and some missiles that Professor Watson got the RAF to fire at the plant. Turns out she was a scientist on her home planet of Kastria who built barriers to keep out the ravaging Solar Winds. However, the planet was caught up in an alien war, the barriers destroyed, and Eldrad discredited and banished. She's demanded the Doctor take her back, which he's agreed to do but only in the present, thousands of years later.
Sarah doesn't believe nor like Eldrad, but she's just being a miserable cow, as usual. However, she's probably right and Eldrad will probably end up being the bad guy after all. But that still doesn't excuse her being rude and obnoxious.
They've gone back to Kastria (leaving Professor Watson to explain the mes Eldrad has left behind) and entered the Kastrian dome where, upon opening a door, Eldrad has been skewered by a huge spear! If only it'd been Sarah!
A really good episode this week where the Doctor had clearly worked out what was going on within the first few minutes. Watson was well portrayed and written, and some very critical but accurate things were said about Mankind's inability to deal with the unknown without resorting to violence.
I can't complement Judith Paris or her costume designers enough! She looks amazing and her performance is wonderfully alien and incredibly nuanced. This has to be on a par with the stories that opened and closed the last series, and unlike the samey, repetitive design of the last series, this looks very individual and new. Can't wait to find out what happens next week!
The Hand Of Fear: Part Four (23/10/16)
Well! Lots of everything and nothing this week!
Sarah's gone! Can't say I'm sorry to see her go. The Doctor's been called back to Gallifrey! Wow! All a bit odd, really, because this was pretty much a landmark episode but was pretty weak aside from the above. Where to start?
Eldrad, poisoned by the spear that was shot into her last week, got the Doctor and Sarah to help her through the levels of the Kastrian city to a regenerator. Sarah was pretty annoying, pathetic, heartless and self-centred throughout, but they eventually got Eldrad there at which point she was obliterated and remade in his (rather less impressive) Kastrian form.
While Judith Paris was engaging and utterly stunning as Female Eldrad, Stephen Thorne (previously Azal and Omega) was blustery, boring and grossly OTT, like Brian Blessed without the nuances and charisma. He was eventually defeated when the Doctor tripped him over his scarf and he fell into a crevasse.
Yes, it was really that dumb.
This is all because it turned out he really was a villain who'd destroyed the barriers protecting Kastria in order to defeat his political opponent and become ruler. And rather than use their space technology to fuck off to another planet in case Eldrad came back, the Kastrian race chose to destroy their race banks to prevent being reconstituted and enslaved. A bit stupid if you ask me, but what do I know?
Anyhow, having defeated Eldrad, the Doctor and Sarah returned to the TARDIS where Sarah decided to have a strop and threaten to leave. While she was packing, the Doctor (who hadn't heard her as he had his head inside the console) received a message (telepathically) calling him back to Gallifrey, so Sarah was hastily dropped off somewhere that wasn't her home of South Croydon.
Her leaving scene was almost quite emotional, but given that she'd spent most of the episode being pretty obnoxious I was quite pleased to see her go. She's been around way too long anyway, as I've complained several times, and it didn't look like the Doctor was too bothered about leaving her behind.
And now it seems we're off to Gallifrey for the first time since Patrick Troughton's last episode! Not counting brief snips in 'Colony In Space' and 'The Three Doctors', of course. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued!
I've always thought of this as my soft-spot story of the Tom Baker era, so perhaps it's not surprising that it's by the same writers as my soft-spot story of the Jon Pertwee era, The Claws of Axos: Bob Baker and Dave Martin had a way of cobbling together good stories with strong sci-fi elements that nevertheless felt cosy. Of course, they don't sustain it throughout here, with the final episode being a big let-down, and indeed a massive one from the moment Judith Paris is replaced by Stephen Thorne, right up to the scarf-tripping scene - truly one of the most poorly conceived and realised in the series' history.
ReplyDeleteThe closing scenes are a wonderful, bittersweet coda that's worth sitting through most of the rest of the episode for. Unlike you, I've never had an issue with Sarah, so the way Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker play this farewell really does tug at the old heartstrings and resonate for me. That said, I think you're looking for reason to dislike Sarah a bit - I mean, come on, she has everyone reason to distrust and think badly of Eldrad here :P In any case, Leela is just around the corner, and I suspect she'll be rather more up your alley ;)
It will probably come as a surprise to you, but until I reached her era on my Marathon I quite liked Sarah Jane. I didn't have any hugely negative feelings towards her and, whilst she wasn't ever my favourite companion, I enjoyed watching the stories she was in.
DeleteIt may be a reaction to my discovered affection for Jo Grant or just an intolerance of people who are generally quite negative for the sake of it as I get older, but I found that Sarah was quite often rude, complaining, argumentative for the sake of it, and not particularly interesting nor likable as I watched the episodes as they were transmitted. Her relationship with the Doctor only really seemed to work when Harry was around and that's largely because he diffused her more negative character traits. Few writers really seemed able to make her interesting and I suspect that she more than her predecessors holds responsibility for the general conception that all the companion ever did in Doctor Who was scream and get into trouble, which is a huge shame for a character who was originally conceived as a feminist.
She's the only companion at this point who went down in my estimation, and probably because I was personally sick of the character her leaving scene feels quite unemotional and bland (which is how I generally have grown to view the character in the last five years). It's a shame, I suppose, but better were to come, as indeed there had been. Even so, this was one of Sarah's better stories and Lis does a brilliant job of portraying possessed Sarah. You're of course correct that Sarah has every reason to distrust the being who took over her body, but I still can't shake the feeling that had Eldrad actually been a wronged alien who was merely trying to reconstitute and get home (as would no doubt have been the case if this story had been written post-2005) her reactions would have been more interesting and led to a more satisfying assessment of how we deal with the unknown - indeed, it would have tied in quite well with the bits in Part Three which underline how Humans struggle to cope with the unknown. Had Sarah been proven wrong in her suspicions, it could have given her character a final piece of development which seemed largely absent in her previous two seasons on the show.
But I'm forcing modern ideas and concepts onto a 70s format. Incidentally, speaking of 70s formats, after 'The Deadly Assassin' I'm going to give my posts a break until the New Year to tie in with the gap between that story and Leela's debut, mostly because it fits nicely in regards to the timing of my posts, and because if I don't I'll reach Season 17 far too quickly and I'm currently only halfway(ish) through. I'm planning to add side steps to my blog (suggestions gratefully received) in order to fill out my posts in the lead up to what is likely to be a monthly real-time look at Season 18 and beyond. We'll have to see what develops!
While I don't necessarily agree with you, I think you take on Sarah is an interesting one, particular as it's so much at odds with the perception of the character in fandom and yet well-argued and potentially entirely justified, or at least justifiable. So one idea for a sidestep might be to turn that into a longer character 'review', setting out why you [think you] feel the way you do/did about Sarah after rewatching all the stories. Other ideas generally could follow this pattern I suppose - taking things you noted watching particular stories or about runs of stories or seasons generally and musing on them in slightly more depth or from a particular angle. Anything 'contentious' you feel you can argue well would be good, not for the sake of being contrary, but as an attempt to look at things from a different angle.
ReplyDelete