Doctor Who-The Hand of Fear (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Making Of-Changing Time Interviews-Character-Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen on "Swap Shop" Gallery-Photo Audio Commentary Informational Subtitles DVD-ROM Extras-The Dr. Who Annual 1977 DVD-ROM Extras-Radio Times Billings Featurette-Continuity Featurette
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	99:11 (Case: 163)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Lennie Mayne
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Tom Baker Elisabeth Sladen Judith Paris Rex Robinson
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Dudley Simpson

    Hailing from the golden age of Dr. Who, and arguably the best season of the original series, The Hand of Fear is most memorable for being the swan song of Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) - at least until her appearance in the Russell T. Davies revamped series. Quite fittingly, the story is largely driven by Sarah Jane and her relationship with the Doctor. Hers was an exit lamented by male fans for years to come!

    The quality of the story is about average for the period, but it was a very good period for Dr. Who!

    Arriving in a quarry on at-the-time present day Earth (read: mid-1970s), the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane are caught in the middle of a blast. After the confusion of seeing a quarry used as an actual quarry, rather than a mysterious alien planet, dies down we discover that the Doctor has narrowly escaped the blast but Sarah Jane has been trapped by rubble. Barely conscious, Sarah Jane discovers a petrified hand wearing a mysterious ring. She is taken to the hospital holding on tightly to the ring.

    The ring helps heal Sarah Jane but also hypnotizes her, turning her into a zealot for an ancient being known as Eldrad. In a dazed stat, she takes the hand and flees to a nearby nuclear testing facility and heads straight into the core of the main reactor. The radiation doesn't kill Sarah Jane, but is absorbed by the hand and used to regenerate the being that once owned the hand - the powerful silicon-based being Eldrad.

    Eldrad uses his great power to force the doctor to take him back to his long-dead home planet, where he hopes to take revenge on the civilization that cast him out.

    There are a number of elements that make The Hand of Fear a considerable success. The flow of the story is excellent and the story itself quite engrossing. Even though several infamous corridor-chasing scenes are slipped in to connect scenes and pad out the episodes, the episodes never seem to drag. There are a lot of great ideas in the story and they are all presented and explained well.

    The direction of this story is some of the most striking of any Dr. Who story. In particular, the scenes featuring a hypnotized Sarah Jane and the regeneration of Eldrad do a great job of playing up the thriller aspect of the story. The style of these scenes borrows heavily from both Alfred Hitchcock and the Hammer horror films of the early 1970s. This makes for a story that will keep the kids jumping behind the sofa and keep the eyes of all viewers glued to the screen.

    Sarah Jane, always the victim of questionable fashion, spends the story dressed in the most ludicrous outfit worn by any human character in the show's 26 seasons - as one of the characters puts it "Just like Andy Pandy!". Perhaps the producers were wringing one last gag out of her colourful character.

    The story plays the exit of Sarah Jane Smith extremely well, drawing on the on-screen chemistry between Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen right to the very last shot. Unlike the "Oh, by the way, I'm off!" exits of many of the companions, Sarah Jane's exit is playfully built up throughout the story and dealt with in a satisfying manner at the close of the final episode.

    Though not the best episode of this timeless show, this is certainly one of the better Dr. Who stories. This story will appeal to casual fans as well as the die-hards. For the curious, it is not the best episode to become acquainted with the show with but far from the worst.

Video

    The video restoration for The Hand of Fear is good for a Dr. Who story of this vintage. The restoration team should be commended for this effort. In-depth details of the restoration can be found on the restoration team website.

    The video is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

    Each scene was either shot onto video (mainly indoor studio scenes) or 16mm (on-location shots, mostly outdoors) and the two look distinctly different. In general, the video is quite clear, but not particularly sharp. The 16mm footage is noticeably more blurred and grainier than the video scenes, but none are particularly bad. Black levels are generally clear, but not deep.

    The colours are quite even and consistent, although 16mm scenes have a noticeably different colour temperature than scenes shot on video. The 16mm scenes also lack the colour depth of the video scenes (e.g. at 6:12 of episode 3 the Doctor's coat lacks depth)

    The video looks quite good on a smaller display, but video issues jump out on larger, high definition displays. Many of the scenes shot on video display video artefacts common to video from the 1970s as well as artefacts introduced in the restoration process. Comet trails are occasionally visible (e.g. 1:12 of episode 3), but are not too much of a nuisance. Edge enhancement is the most noticeable artefact throughout and is occasionally irritating (e.g. around the 9:14 mark, where a distinct black line has been introduced around a physician's white coat and a ghostly line silhouettes his shirt collar).

    The scenes shot on 16mm are a little washed out and display the odd film artefact. There is occasionally a small degree of colour bleed from light to dark surfaces in these scenes (e.g. from the white sky to the Doctor's coat at 5:45 of episode 3), but this is not terribly distracting.

    The layer change occurs between episodes 3 and 4 and is not noticeable.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is one English language Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 Kbps) audio track and one commentary track available.

    The dialogue is mostly quite clear, but the limited definition of the original source is noticeable.

    There is no particularly noticeable use of the surround channels or subwoofer.

    Dudley Simpson's score is a fairly generic Dr Who score that harks back to 1950s sci-fi with many of its synth stabs.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    Brief clips from the story play to some dramatic music behind the main menus.

Featurette - Changing Time (50:28)

    A lacklustre documentary made for this DVD release that focuses largely on how a number of the personnel who worked on The Hand of Fear came to be involved with Dr. Who and what they brought to the series. This doco goes a little way into how they came to be able to shoot at a real nuclear power station and the development of the script for the story.

    This featurette is not nearly as interesting as many of the other featurette documentaries produced for the Dr. Who DVD releases and is unlikely to bear repeat viewing even for die-hard fans.

Continuity Featurette (1:25)

    A collection of continuity announcements, introducing the episodes over credits or BBC logos, from when these episodes aired in the UK.

Multi-Coloured Swap Shop Excerpt from 2 October 1976 (10:56)

    An excerpt from an appearance of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen on the popular BBC kids show Multi-Coloured Swap Shop just prior to the initial airing of the first episode of The Hand of Fear. The pair are interviewed by presenter Noel Edmonds and a number of viewers via telephone.

    This is an interesting interview, featuring Tom Baker on his best behaviour and Elisabeth Sladen dropping the bombshell of her departure.

Photo Gallery (5:07)

    A sizeable set of production stills, but nothing of particular note is buried in this five minute slideshow.

Audio Commentary with Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Phillip Hinchcliffe, Bob Baker and Judith Paris

    This commentary is a rather messy affair. It contains some interesting bits, and some great Tom Baker moments (for those unfamiliar with him, Tom Baker tends to be off with the fairies at the best of times), but it does not hang together well as a whole. It has been assembled from several studio sessions, each with different commentators, and has ended up being rather choppy. As soon as a couple of the commentators start getting an interesting discussion going, the commentary cuts to a single, dry commentator (typically Phillip Hinchcliffe) who will cover much of the same ground.

Informational Subtitles

    One of the subtitle tracks consists of trivia, script excerpts and other assorted tid-bits of information about the episodes. This feature is fantastic and generally proves much more interesting than the audio commentary track.

    The final story that was filmed for The Hand of Fear was considerably different to the original story commissioned with that title. After several years of re-work, a final version was produced that had many of the same plot elements of the original story and some very similar scenes. As well as provide a wealth of other trivia, these subtitles discuss the similarities in the final version to what was originally planned for The Hand of Fear.

The Dr. Who Annual 1977 (DVD-ROM)

    A 74 page PDF version of the 1977 Dr. Who annual, featuring stories, comics, puzzles and illustrations. This is a great piece of nostalgia and one of the better special features I've come across.

Radio Times Billings (DVD-ROM)

    A 5 page PDF document that collates a variety of clippings about the episodes from the Radio Times (Britain's equivalent to the TV Guide) when the episodes first aired. Interesting archival material.

        An identical package is available in both Region 1 and Region 2, although Region 1 is NTSC formatted and features different cover art. Choose the local version for its original PAL format.

    A decent 4 part classic Dr. Who story with a good extras package.

    The video quality is good for the age of the material, but far from what would be expected of a newer show.

    The audio is basic, but true to the original source material and has no faults.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall