...The job of the companion is to scream and ask, "what's that, Doctor?" Lis Sladen was never one for screaming, and after three-plus years, had finally run out of ways to ask that question...
...It's a bit disconcerting to see Lis Sladen walk into a nuclear reactor in her final story...
...For a supposedly feminist character, Sarah Jane says farewell in a story with absurdly nonfeminist themes...
...Gender-bending a good 20 years before any other major SF show tried it...
Okay, I give up. I can't peg down the right way to introduce this one.
Facts:
It's the last story with Sarah Jane Smith as the companion.
It's the one with the creepy-crawly hand.
It's the one where you'd be forgiven for thinking David Bowie was the villain.
It's the one where Sarah gets possessed. Other than Planet of the Spiders. And another brush with mind-control in The Masque of Mandragora. And another brush with mind-control in The Time Warrior. I'm still probably leaving something out, but I'm done now.
So the plot in a nutshell: the Doctor does something very stupid and nearly gets himself and Sarah killed in an explosion. Sarah is buried under two feet of polystyrene - I mean, rocks - and when they dig her out, she's clutching a hand. Spouting stuff about how Eldrad must live, Sarah walks into a nuclear reactor, and the hand starts crawling. For the Episode 1 cliffhanger, it looks terrifyingly real. Unfortunately, in Episode 2, it's blatantly CSO'd in.
Let me just get this out of the way - Lis Sladen did brainwashed and evil like no other. In The Time Warrior, she's kind of bland and vacant when Lynx zaps her (and she doesn't even get to do full-on evil then), but her performance only improved with time. In Masque she passes as normal so well that her "tell" is something that we all completely missed - hell, she asks a question that's been on our minds for 14 years, and that's what somehow gave her away. Here in The Hand of Fear, she clutches that box, gives shifty, almost nervous looks, and calmly zaps guards with the most ridiculous fashion accessory the show had between Jo Grant and the Sixth Doctor. It's not some alien entity using Sarah's body like a puppet against her will; you really believe that her will has been fundamentally bent. And it's worth pointing out that the cure for this is time - Eldrad stops controlling her once he/she no longer needs her. It's not clear that the Doctor could have saved her.
Moving right along, Eldrad reincarnates in female form. This is the mid 70s, so naturally "the female form" means a skintight diamond-studded bodysuit. (The fact that I just made the outfit seem only mildly cooler than it actually is should tell you something.) Eldrad tells the Doctor what turns out to be an enormous fib, but he takes her back to her home planet anyway. There, she is able to regenerate (no, that's not the term, but what actually happens is considerably less impressive - she gets shot with a booby-trapped poison dart and has to be restored) into a hulking masculine form, which is promptly dispatched by a stunt Tom Baker tried to pull all the way back in Robot.
What exactly are the writers trying to say? That women are sly, seductive liars while men are just outright evil and brainless? There's not a single person who can watch this episode and honestly think that Eldrad is more effective as a man than as a woman, yet Eldrad itself is obviously overjoyed to be done with that lithe figure.
It only becomes really obvious in the last episode, but it's worth stating: there is nothing for the Doctor to do in all four episodes. Okay, here is a complete run-down of what he accomplishes.
He gets himself and his companion nearly blown up.
He gets a laughably bad fight scene.
He gets to stand around saying "I told you so" during an airstrike.
He gets duped by the villain and then gets to stand around and watch as a long-dead force derails the villain's plan. (This might be why Harrison Ford didn't like Blade Runner very much, and also why Asimov's Foundation series is pretty much unfilmable.)
And that is it. There is not a single spark of cleverness, no quintessential "Doctor" moment here... and nor is there much of Tom Baker gooning about. Between Eldrad's shenanigans and Sarah's departure, there's not a lot of stuff for him to do.
Sarah's departure is odd. She's maybe fed up with being brainwashed and possessed, but she might just be bluffing to try to get some reaction out of the Doctor. (This is also the start of Tom Baker being completely insufferable and not giving a damn what happens to anyone else, be they fictional companions or real-life co-stars. It's worth noting that it's at this point that the show starts to unravel; by the time he was on speaking terms with Louise Jameson, Phillip Hinchcliffe had been sacked as producer and the show was in decline.) Meanwhile, the Doctor gets a distress call from Gallifrey and has to leave her behind - but come on, Sarah's the most blatant precursor to Rose that the show ever had! The woman had a day job, for crying out loud! There is absolutely no reason that the Doctor couldn't have come back and picked her up again after sorting out that business with the Master. (In the original draft, Sarah was due to be killed off... make of that what you will.)
Okay, that's the griping over and done with. Lis Sladen may have been ready to leave, but you'd never know it from her performace. There's one last great Sarah-Doctor moment when, after she recovers from her possession, she zones out for a second and goes "Eldrad must live." She's just riling the Doctor up, and he loves it. Episode Three belongs to Judith Paris, who plays Female Eldrad and generally makes the second half of the story watchable; no wonder Episode Four is terrible. There are nice touches with the nuclear plant's director phoning his family and trying to pick up the pieces, and it's genuinely surprising that he lives through it all.
Episodes One and Two are fantastic at building the tension. Episode Three is truly wonderful; Episode Four is just such a terrible letdown.
7 out of 10, which is quickly becoming my go-to score for "great setup, terrible resolution."
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