The Hand of Fear (TV story)

When the TARDIS lands on Earth in a quarry, the Doctor and Sarah are caught in a  mining explosion. She is found clutching what appears to be a fossilised hand, buried in 150 million-year-old strata. Analysis shows the hand to be silicon-based and inert, but when Sarah begins to act as if possessed, the Doctor suspects that it may still be alive...

Summary
Millennia ago on the planet Kastria a traitor and criminal named Eldrad is sentenced to death for their crimes, including the destruction of the barriers that have kept the solar winds at bay. The pod containing the criminal is obliterated – but its hand survives. In the contemporary period the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive in the TARDIS in a quarry and are caught up in a quarrying explosion. Sarah is rendered unconscious but in that state makes contact with the fossilised hand, its ring alive, and this has a hypnotic effect on her. The Doctor takes her to the local hospital, where the mesmeric power of the hand becomes more complete and both Sarah and a pathologist called Dr Carter are brought under its control. He later dies trying to prevent the Doctor getting to Sarah and the hand.

Sarah heads for the nearest nuclear generator, the Nunton Complex, where she causes a crisis by breaking into the reactor with the hand. It seems to thrive on radiation and begins to regenerate, growing back its missing finger and moving around unaided. The head of the complex, Professor Watson, displays great bravery in remaining at his post when the reactor goes critical, and offers the Doctor aid and advice in trying to get to Sarah. All of a sudden the radiation has been absorbed and the crisis is over. The Doctor retrieves her from the reactor, but Sarah has no memory or understanding of what she has done.

The hand now takes over a nuclear operative called Driscoll, who is manipulated into feeding the hand ever more radiation. An RAF bombing raid simply adds to the available radiation and allows Eldrad to regenerate into a fully humanoid form. It is crystalline, female and silicon-based. Eldrad uses her powers to persuade the Doctor to take her back to Kastria, saying she helped her race thrive by building the solar barriers which were subsequently destroyed when Kastria was caught in the middle of an inter-stellar war.

The Doctor, Sarah and Eldrad travel to Kastria in the present time in the TARDIS – 150 million years after she left. They find a barren and frozen world, with the few signs of civilisation many floors below ground. Eldrad is caught in a series of traps left behind by King Rokon who appears in hologram form to denounce Eldrad as the destroyer of Kastria. She perishes in one trap but regenerates as a male, crazed psychopath who reveals that he created then destroyed the barriers himself after falling out with Rokon and the Kastrian leadership. When he tries to exact his revenge he finds Rokon and the other Kastrians all dead, their race banks destroyed, and no possibility of a new Kastrian future. To prevent Eldrad now returning to Earth and conquering it instead, the Doctor defeats the tyrant by engineering a fall into an abyss. The Doctor is uncertain if this is the end of Eldrad, noting that silicon-based lifeforms are very hard to kill.

Not long after departure in the TARDIS, the Doctor is summoned back to Gallifrey and declares he cannot take Sarah with him. She has been bluffing about wanting to leave the TARDIS and is totally taken aback, and quite unready, to be returned to Earth in her own time.

Cast & Characters

 * The Doctor - Tom Baker
 * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
 * Dr. Carter - Rex Robinson
 * Intern - Renu Setna
 * Abbott - David Purcell
 * Zazzka - Roy Pattison
 * King Rokon - Roy Skelton
 * Guard - Robin Hargrave
 * Professor Watson - Glyn Houston
 * Driscoll - Roy Boyd
 * Miss Jackson - Frances Pidgeon
 * Elgin - John Cannon
 * Eldrad - Judith Paris
 * Kastrian Eldrad - Stephen Thorne

More Info

 * Story Novelization


 * DVD Release


 * Video Release