Doctor Who: The Hand of Fear

The Doctor Who episode The Hand of Fear is probably best known as the episode in which the show says farewell to Sarah Jane Smith, one of the more popular companions of all time – revisiting in several later episodes, and becoming the subject of a TV movie, K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend, and a spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

But it also has some very interesting elements in its own right. We get a glimpse of an attempted execution through total destruction at the very beginning, but early detonation leaves a one-in-three million chance of survival. The hand of the person being executed, Eldrad, shows up on Earth, in a mine where the TARDIS just happened to land. The hand takes over Sarah and she takes the hand to a nuclear reactor, where the radiation causes the hand to regenerate. What makes things interesting is that, while the human instinct is to destroy the being, the Doctor wishes to give Eldrad the benefit of the doubt, since intercultural contacts of this sort can often lead to misunderstanding. While in the end, we see that Eldrad, far from being the savior of his people on Kastria, was the one who removed the shielding that protected them from solar winds. When he discovers that there are no longer any people on Kastria for him to rule, he wishes to return to Earth to become their god. The Doctor manages to trip him and he falls down a precipice.

At the end, the Doctor gets a call from Gallifrey and can’t take Sarah, and so he returns her to Earth (although he misses South Croydon). On leaving, she comments on the fact that “travel does broaden the mind.” Among everything else it is, Doctor Who remains a show that encourages the exploration of new places, new people, and new cultures, and seeking to approach them sympathetically whenever possible.