Four episodes
Aired between 2nd October 1976 and 23rd October 1976
Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Lennie Mayne
Synopsis
Space....150 million years ago....inhabitants of a planet called Kastria carry out the punishment sentenced to a being known as Eldrad. The original sentence was for Eldrad to be imprisoned and obliterated with no chance of a single particle of him remaining, but Kastria is unstable, thanks to Eldrad's destruction of the planetary shields.
The court responsible for Eldrad's punishment order that his capsule is shot into space and destroyed as soon as possible, even though there is an apparent risk of Eldrad somehow regenerating. The executioner responsible for the capsule obeys and Eldrad's prison is destroyed, and him along with it.
Present day...
The TARDIS lands in a quarry. Sarah Jane is unsure whether it's an alien planet or not, especially as lots of klaxons seem to be going off around them.
As she debates the fact with the Doctor, they see a humanoid man on top of a ridge, waving at them. They wave back and smile, but soon discover that he's actually warning them. They are on Earth and they're stood in the blast area as the quarry cliff is about to get detonated. The explosion goes off and they are buried.
The man finds the Doctor easily enough and discovers he's alright except for a couple of bruises, but Sarah Jane is unconscious under a pile of rubble.
When they bring her out, they see she's holding some kind of strange stone hand.
The Doctor gets the workmen in the quarry to call for an ambulance and they rush Sarah to hospital.
After the Doctor confirms that Sarah will be alright, he goes to see the Pathologist, Dr Carter, and asks him to perform an analysis of the fossilised hand.
Judging by the rocks it was sealed in, the Doctor reckons it must be 150 million years old. Dr Carter cannot believe the theory, but when he examines a sample under an electron microscope, they see something similar to a DNA double helix. In addition to this, the radiation of the microscope makes the sample grow ever so slightly.
Putting these things together, the Doctor theorises that the hand may still be alive. The Doctor decides to go back to the quarry to check out if there's anything else left there.
Sarah meanwhile awakens whilst her room is empty. She opens her hand and reveals that she was holding a strange ring that was originally on the fossilised hand. She is acting very strange, hearing a voice in her head calling "Eldrad must live". She repeats the command and rises from her bed.
She sneaks into Dr Carter's room and grabs the hand, stunning Carter with a bright glow from the ring.
With the hand in her possession, Sarah goes to the nearest nuclear power station, Nunton and waltzes in, stunning everyone who gets in her way.
Finding nothing new, the Doctor returns to the hospital to discover that Sarah is gone with the hand. He quickly deduces that the hand is looking for radiation and he and Dr Carter head off to the Nunton Complex to stop Sarah.
Sarah finally gets to the reactor room and places the hand near the doors. Slowly, it begins to move...
The Doctor and Dr Carter get to the complex and make their way to the control room as the klaxons are going off. They meet Professor Watson, the man in charge, who is going ballistic at the fact that Sarah just waltzed in, and doesn't have much time for the Doctor's enigmatic ways. He's about to throw the Doctor out of the complex until he explains that Sarah is with him and he might be able to talk her out of the room.
The Doctor talks to Sarah over the intercom to ask her what she's doing, but she only says that "Eldrad must live". Her insistence on this sparks similar thoughts in Dr Carter who has been affected by the strange ring.
The Doctor comes up with a plan to go to Sarah via a cooling duct. He rushes off but Dr Carter goes after him, getting in his way as they climb the steps of the complex. Carter yells "Eldrad must live!" and attacks the Doctor with a wrench that he finds in the area. The Doctor ducks and Carter goes over the railings, unfortunately falling to his death.
Wasting no time, the Doctor goes through the vents and gets to the reactor area where he finds Sarah. He manages to convince her to give him the hand, which he puts back in a box and breaks through her hypnosis.
Professor Watson is worried about the amount of radiation they've both taken, but the Doctor assures him that the area is as clean as a whistle. The hand has been absorbing every bit of it.
The Doctor takes Sarah and the hand out of the reactor room, failing to realise that the ring Sarah had has been dropped on the floor.
Now the area's safe, cleanup teams are sent in, and a technician called Driscoll finds the ring and the subliminal voices begin to control him.
Back on the upper levels, the hand is placed in a lead lined cupboard and the Doctor examines Sarah. She isn't very useful however as she can't remember much past the quarry. The Doctor, Sarah and Professor Watson go back to the control room to try and figure things out and of course, switch off the emergency alarms.
Driscoll, now under mental control, takes the hand from the cupboard and takes it back down to the reactor core. The alarm is raised again, but Driscoll uses the ring against any of the armed guards who go to stop him.
The Doctor works out that the ring is missing and as the alarm sounds, he and Sarah go aftet Driscoll. They're too late however, the man manages to actually open up the reactor core and walk inside. The Doctor dives on Sarah and they take cover to guard against the oncoming explosion.
They wait and a moment passes with nothing bad occurring. it turns out that the hand has absorbed all the energy. The Doctor closes the reactor door, suggesting that whomever the hand once was, they have the power to regenerate themselves. He reckons that "Eldrad" must be rebuilding inside the core.
Taking no chances, Professor Watson evacuates the whole complex and calls in a RAF nuclear air strike. They all drive just a short distance away and watch as the missiles streak towards the complex. Again, no explosions occur.
Seeing as violence hasn't solved the problem, the Doctor insists on going back in and trying to talk to this Eldrad once they emerge form the chamber. Sarah Jane is told to wait behind, but has no intention of doing so and stubbornly convinces the Doctor to let her come along.
They get to the reactor core and open the door. Out comes Eldrad, a diamond encrusted female. She says that she has taken this form based on Sarah's appearance so that she is more appropriate to negotiate.
The Doctor asks how she came here. She tells them that she was a great scientist that invented spatial barriers for her home planet, Kastria. The barriers helped keep out powerful solar winds and helped her race survive, but an interstellar war broke out and in spite, the barriers were destroyed, forcing her people to retreat back under the surface of Kastria. She was disgraced, condemned and obliterated.
Eldrad negotiates with the Doctor for him to take her back to Kastria so she can help her people, in return for not destroying Earth. Eldrad agrees but knowing that the Doctor is a Time Lord, she demands he takes her back to the point when she was destroyed. The Doctor refuses, saying that he's happy to return her to Kastria, but it must be in the present day, not 150 million years ago.
Together, they leave for the quarry. As a gesture of faith, Eldrad only stuns Professor Watson who attacks her with a pistol on the way out. They get to the TARDIS and leave.
Once on board, Sarah Jane questions the sanity of this mission, but the Doctor gives Eldrad his word to help.
The TARDIS lands on Kastria, and they discover it a very barren world, full of old ruins.
Eldrad uses her ring and some of the instruments come to life. She directs the Doctor and Sarah to come with her into the thermal caves below and opens the door. Unfortunately, it was booby trapped and a large poison tipped spear pierces her chest.
As Eldrad lays dying, she explains that it was one of her own traps that she'd devised. She reckons the remnants of the Kastrian's had set these traps up to use against her. She explains that there's a regeneration chamber deep below ground and she could lead them to it if they would help carry her there. The Doctor and Sarah cautiously agree.
Along the way, they come across more booby traps, but because they're designed to affect silicon based lifeforms (like the Kastrians), they have no effect on Sarah as she triggers them. They cross a bottomless chasm over a rickety diamond bridge and continue on.
The group eventually get to the regeneration chamber, where they see a big stone slab. They lay Eldrad on it.
As they are looking for the right switches to press, another slab falls down and crushes Eldrad to dust, leaving behind her ring. Both Sarah and the Doctor believe that the chamber was rigged to kill Eldrad too, but they are proven wrong when the true form of Eldrad, a hulking diamond encrusted male emerges from the regeneration chamber.
As the Doctor and Sarah discuss Eldrad's new form, the arrogant alien eventually lets slip that he was the one who destroyed the solar barriers as part of an argument with King Rokon. In punishment, he was destroyed, but now he's returned to wreak revenge and take the throne of Kastria.
Looking around them, the Doctor points out that everyone's dead, so he's nobody to rule over, but Eldrad boasts that their memories are stored in a bank and each member of society can be revived as he had been.
As Eldrad enters said memory bank however, he finds it completely empty.
A pre-recorded message comes on a nearby computer screen from King Rokon,
Rokon says that due to the destruction of the solar barriers, the Kastrians had to retreat underground again, and couldn't live with the prospect of that existence, nor of the possibility of Eldrad ruling over them, seeing as he was the one who condemned them. As a race, the Kastrians decided to wipe the memory banks and let their people die. Rokon set the traps and waited until he ultimately died. The video image of Rokon mocks Eldrad that he is now King. King of nothing.
Eldrad is furious, and in desperation, declares that he will rule over the humans instead. He orders the Doctor to return him to Earth. The Doctor refuses, saying that their bargain is complete.
They are forced to race back to the bottomless chasm as Eldrad runs at them in a rage. They manage to trip Eldrad up with the Doctor's scarf, sending the failed King down into the chasm with a scream.
The Doctor throws Eldrad's ring in with him and together, he and Sarah go back to the TARDIS.
The TARDIS dematerialises, and the Doctor soon thereafter realises that there's a bit of work needed on the console. He opens it up and gets to work, periodically calling to Sarah Jane to hand him some space age tools.
Sarah sits down fed up. She says after this encounter with Eldrad, she's fed up of being chased by bug-eyed monsters all the time, and that she misses home. The Doctor's inability to listen to her moaning infuriates her, so she bluffs that she's going to pack her things and go home.
She storms off when he doesn't respond.
Once she's gone, the Doctor gets a telepathic message from the Time Lords, summoning him back to Gallifrey. He ponders to himself that he'll not be allowed to bring Sarah Jane with him, so he must take her home.
Sarah comes back into the console room with some of her things but is clearly shocked and upset when the Doctor calls her bluff and indeed takes her back to Croydon. She doesn't want to miss seeing Gallifrey, but she submits to leaving.
With a tear in her eye, Sarah Jane tells the Doctor not to forget her, but the Doctor shakes his head and says "oh Sarah, don't you forget me."
With that, the Doctor promises that they will meet again and he watches her leave the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane stands back from the TARDIS, near a neighbourhood dog that's basking in the sun. She watches the ship dematerialise and looks around, realising that this isn't her home.
She laughs and tells the dog that she bets it isn't even South Croydon.
Whistling the happy tune of "Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow", Sarah Jane Smith turns around and walks off into her new life.
Trivia
- This story's concept is based on a B Movie called "The Beast with Five Fingers" about a severed hand that can still move
- Elisabeth Sladen couldn't whistle, so the tune at the end was whistled by Director Lennie Mayne and dubbed over her pretending.
- Lennie Mayne tragically died around a year after Directing this story. He was knocked overboard on his yacht by the boom of a sail and never resurfaced.
- The quarry explosion was a real one, rigged up for the show.
- Elisabeth Sladen was orginially meant to be killed off in a script submitted by long time Director, Douglas Camfield, but it ended up not coming off. Elisabeth was happy. She requested a good ending, not to be married off or killed off and not to be the focus of the story (that was the Doctor's job, she felt).
- Robert Holmes took responsibility for writing the final scene, but Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen didn't like the dialogue so they wrote it themselves.
What worked
- The quarry explosion looked pretty great
- The concept of the creeping hand is pretty scary and made for an interesting beginning
- The ending was probably one of the most memorable companion departures to date
- Professor Watson was a good character
What didn't work
- The Andy Pandy suit (which coincidentally was a high street bought item! They only sewed the three stars on it.)
- The physical effects of the Kastrian's, especially their planet
- The over the top acting by just about every character in the show (except the main ones)
- The stupid decision to drop nuclear missiles on a nuclear power plant
- The even stupider decision to hide a few hundred feet away and expect to live
Overall Feelings
After Katy Manning's departure in The Green Death, this one had a lot to live up to. I guess, just like the Green Death, the ending was much better than the story we had to sit through to get to it.
As it happens, I love the first episode. As it's based heavily on a horror movie, the setup pretty much follows that formula, with Sarah Jane finding the hand, and mind control. Her acting is superb as is Tom's, and we get a real sense of uneasiness because this is clearly not the Sarah Jane Smith we're used to. All of that goes away fairly quickly however when we run the gamut of UNIT Story, then cheesy alien planet. If I'm honest, it felt like Bob Baker and Dave Martin had a half-formed idea, and rushed through the rest of it from episode 2 onwards. To compound that problem, they're also still writing in the mindset of the John Pertwee era, and so, knick a lot of the set dressing from their earlier story, Claws of Axos. If this was 1973, it wouldn't be a problem, but this is 1976, and a brand new era of Doctor Who that makes it all their tropes stand out like a sore thumb.
Overall, I think this is a great opportunity missed, and was a bit of a snore fest for me once the Sarah Jane mind control was done with. Better to find the scenes on You Tube and give this one a miss in my humble opinion.
Rating
4 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
4 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
Consulting the Matrix
What was your favourite companion exit?
