The Hand of Fear

The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Sarah in a rock quarry just as a demoltion team blows it up. Both travellers are buried under the rockslide and when Sarah is pulled out she is unconscious and clutching a giant stone hand. During her recovery in hospital the hand possesses her and one of the staff in a bid to regenerate itself, for it is the last surviving fragment of an alien named Eldrad. Under its influence Sarah takes it to a nuclear power station where it triggers panic and soaks up radiation to regenerate itself completely. The Doctor agrees to take Eldrad back to its home planet of Kastria to spare Earth any future nuclear meltdowns, for Eldrad claims to have been betrayed and wants only to return to kastria and liberate its people from alien agressors. The truth comes out though that Eldrad was executed for crimes against the Kastrians, and rather than suffer his rule should he return they all opted to die. After escaping from Eldrad, the Doctor and Sarah are forced to part ways, the Doctor having received a summons to return to his home planet of Gallifrey.

It's a bit slow, this one. My friend Dan and I often butt heads on what episodes are good, which ones are bad, but here we both agree that episode 2 just drags on and on. And to an extent so does episode 3. Episode 1 ends with Sarah and the hand of Eldrad in an antechamber to a reactor just as the hand starts to twitch in its tupperware carry case. Episode 2 ends in the very same room with someone else walking into the reactor furnace with the hand and triggering an explosion across the complex. And then there's elements of the script that don't exactly ring true, like the director of the nuclear plant accepting the Doctor's notion of the hand regenerating itself when we all know that in the universe of Doctor Who humans are not known to accept such things so easily. He could have needed persuading. It's not like they didn't have any time in the episode to do it.

The real moment in this adventure comes at the end of episode 4, when the Doctor has to put Sarah off the TARDIS. People refer to this as "Sarah deciding to leave" and maybe it seems so as she goes on a bit of a spat and threatens to do just that when she thinks the Doctor is ignoring her (which is not really out of character given how she has reacted to his indifference and his lack of attention in past), and it almost seems like something of a lover's spat. But it's all for nought; the Doctor can't take her to Gallifrey (although in future he drags almost everyone there with him eventually) so she has to leave. And she's good about it, but the distress is evident. The Doctor is not overly moved by the fact that she has to go; in fact he is very matter of fact about it, which brings a bit of a reminder about how alien he actually is despite their closeness. Witness the contrast here to this Doctor's reaction to having to dump Sarah and his previous self's wistfulness when Jo decided to leave him and marry Cliff; has he learned not to get attached to them any more? Is this him putting on a front? Sarah keeps it together, but that last hopeful glance she gives the shy as she walks away says that she's not ready to leave. Who knows how long she would have stayed if he hadn't had to let her go? Okay the real reason is that Elisabeth Sladen wanted off the show after 3 years, and it's happened before, but Sarah... she was into it. This was her travelling with her best friend. Who would ever want that to end?

Well, it doesn't end for her. You can't travel with the Doctor and live a normal life ever again. Sarah will be back in spinoffs and such and even in the 2006 season episode School Reunion, but for the meantime, it's the Doctor on his own...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DEADLY ASSASSIN