| Production Code: 4N
First Transmitted
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia Millennia ago on the planet Kastria, a traitor and criminal named Eldrad is sentenced to death for his crimes, including the destruction of the barriers that have kept the solar winds at bay. The pod containing the criminal is obliterated – but his 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. Carter 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, the race banks containing the Kastrian's genetic prints destroyed, and no possibility of a new Kastrian future. Eldrad finds a recording of Rokon that explains that the species decided to all die rather live a miserable existence underground and they destroyed the race banks to prevent any descendants from being part of Eldrad's army of conquest. To prevent Eldrad now returning to Earth and conquering it instead, the Doctor destroys the tyrant by engineering a fall into an abyss – without the ring needed to regenerate ever again. 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.
Analysis by Cuisle The one where Sarah left. That is the thing that everyone remembers about this story. But before then, there was a very interesting story that was both Earth-bound and on an inhospitable planet, AND allowed a quarry to BE just a quarry for once. There was a downright silly start to it, when neither The Doctor nor Sarah appeared to understand WHY a man was waving frantically to them while a siren was going off and they were standing in a quarry. The man later, quite rightly, points out that he is not liable for their injuries in the explosion. Quite how Sarah actually survives being buried alive by a high explosive rock fall in a quarry is a big question. But it being Doctor Who she does, and grabs hold of a millennia old remnant of a long dead alien – it's severed hand, which she keeps hold of as she is whisked off to hospital. Of course we are going to suspend disbelief and not ask what the odds were of her and the hand being in the same place at the same time just as the explosion went off. Of course we are. Anything else would be nitpicking. The scenes in the hospital and the nuclear power station are very well done. Sarah, hypnotised into being Eldrad’s minion is surprisingly menacing, despite being dressed as Andy Pandy, goodness knows why! I couldn’t help wondering, watching the power station scenes, exactly where the staff thought their “safe place” they were ordered to evacuate to was. The sort of devastation they were expecting, the next county would just about be safe. The dangers of nuclear power seemed played down very much. Should we assume a political agenda in that, when the likes of Windscale, later renamed Sellafield, were getting so much bad press? Possibly not. Doctor Who is just a family drama for Saturday evening. Nobody would seek to use it to promote a political agenda, would they? Hmmm. And then there is Eldrad. First played rather stunningly as a silicone-based female who seemed to have seduced The Doctor into believing her story that she is a victim of an evil alien invader of her race. He does seem very quick to believe such a story and is prepared to take Eldrad back to Kastria to find his people and free them from bondage. The Doctor does seem too easily duped at that point. Was it because Elrad appeared as a woman? If so, don’t be so gullible, Doctor. You’re not Captain Kirt, falling for every pretty face and sultry voice. We expect better from you, old man. There was DEFINITELY a touch of the ‘Kirk’ in that bit of the plot. By the time Eldrad is regenerated into a much less alluring male form, he does, finally, get a handle on the moment and realises that Eldrad isn’t the victim, but the cause of the disaster on Kastria. He deliberately destroyed the barriers that turned the planet into a wasteland. But what happened to the people is rather incredible. Rather than face a miserable existence in the underground cave systems of Kastria, the entire race chose to die, and, what’s more, to destroy the genetic race banks that Eldrad could have used to restore them. Even The Doctor is shocked. And rightly. The Kastrians seem to have just given up and died. Are they the most pathetic, defeatist race in the history of the universe? Is it likely that an entire race chose suicide? Were there no dissenters? Were they put to death against their will? Some odd questions come to mind with regard to the Kastrians. But having been led to believe that Eldrad was on a rescue mission all along it made for quite a twist. But what a dreadful fate for that planet!
And then, the final scene. It seemed abrupt and unexpected, even though we DID expect it. Sarah’s bluff that she WANTED to leave was a twist cooked up by Elizabeth Sladen and Tom Baker between them as a way of lightening the scene with The Doctor receiving his orders from Gallifrey. Her farewell to him has long been regarded as the most touching of them all. It has been ousted from that by the 2006 finale, of course, that even reduced The Doctor to tears. And in 2006 we finally learnt, after all these years, that it was ABERDEEN, not SOUTH CROYDON where The Doctor left her. Personally, I worried for a long time that she might have been left on an alien planet that just looked like Earth, so Aberdeen was a bit of a relief. But Sarah Jane’s departure WAS a monumental moment in the programme’s history. Although later companions WERE successful, I for one never identified with any of them as strongly, at least not until Rose, who I had to identify with as we have the same name. It wasn’t the end of Doctor Who’s popularity, but it
WAS the end of an era.
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