1. "Deep in the dead planet of Kastria,
a trap laid long ago waits to be sprung..."
(Radio Times)Copy !req
2. This episode was first shown on 23 October 1976.Copy !req
3. Helped by newspaper publicity for the ending,
it achieved the serial's highest audience figure,
12 million.Copy !req
4. The technical planning meeting for this serial
got a burst of song from Marion McDougall,
apropos of the Kastrian dart:Copy !req
5. "The greatest killer of them all!
Guaranteed to shatter any girl!"Copy !req
6. The first take was technically unusable,
but was also the one in which the fluid
bubbled the best.Copy !req
7. The dart had to be refilled between takes.Copy !req
8. At one point it leaked onto the studio floor.Copy !req
9. In the draft script,
Eldrad's progressive disintegration
is more alarming than in the final version.Copy !req
10. Her skin cracks "like windscreen glass",Copy !req
11. but the acid in the tube was old
and has "lost some of its bite", explains the Doctor,Copy !req
12. so it isn't until later that we see
the side of Eldrad's face shatter.Copy !req
13. The script calls for the voice to be "scratchy
and tired, like that of an Edison phonograph".Copy !req
14. The lift cage is stationary on the studio floor.
The moving background is inserted electronically
using green-screen.Copy !req
15. In storylining the Kastrian sequence,
Robert Holmes drew
on several previous Doctor Who scripts.Copy !req
16. The tunnel scenes owe something
to 'Death to the Daleks' (1974),
the first serial he worked on as script editor,Copy !req
17. in which the Doctor encounters
a series of booby-traps
as he enters a dead alien city,Copy !req
18. while his progress is remotely monitored
by a sinister figure
(who later turns out to be a dead body).Copy !req
19. The script calls for "a column of smoke".Copy !req
20. At a very early stage, the production team
considered killing off Sarah Jane in her final serial.Copy !req
21. An alternative script proposed for the slot,
written by Douglas Camfield,Copy !req
22. ended with her being buried,
with full military honours,
by the French Foreign Legion.Copy !req
23. "Great!" she says in the script.
"That's real sympathy.
It's nothing to smirk about. I thought I was dying."Copy !req
24. When producer Philip Hinchcliffe asked
her how she wanted Sarah to go,Copy !req
25. Elisabeth Sladen asked him not to kill her,
in case it might traumatise younger viewers.Copy !req
26. "We almost had several miles of Kastria
on top of us," says the Doctor in the script.Copy !req
27. In the script, the Doctor's a bit worried
that there may be some Kastrians left.Copy !req
28. "We might not be popular for bringing her back?"
Realises Sarah.Copy !req
29. "Hard to say in such a dry atmosphere,"
answers the Doctor in the script.Copy !req
30. "It's all just one immense mausoleum."Copy !req
31. In her discussion with Philip Hinchcliffe,
Elisabeth Sladen made two other requests
as to the manner of her going.Copy !req
32. She didn't want Sarah to be married off,
like her predecessor, Jo Grant (Katy Manning).Copy !req
33. And she didn't want it to be
the mainspring of the story.Copy !req
34. Reasoning that Sarah was not
the series' central character,
she asked for a conventional Doctor Who serial,Copy !req
35. with her departure added
as an unconnected final scene.Copy !req
36. "A bit rough, but I think we can make it,"
he says in the script.Copy !req
37. The actors are continually moving
through the same area of set.Copy !req
38. The rocks were moved about between shots
to create the illusion
that they are in different areas of cave.Copy !req
39. It is unusual for television sets to have ceilings,
because they are usually lit
from an overhead gantry.Copy !req
40. For the caves, Christine Ruscoe
incorporated intermittent sections of roof
suspended on thin wires.Copy !req
41. Elisabeth Sladen had been in Doctor Who
since 1973.Copy !req
42. She had been thinking of moving on for some time,Copy !req
43. but stayed partly because there was talk
of making a Doctor Who feature film.Copy !req
44. Tom Baker and lan Marter wrote a script together,Copy !req
45. and Elisabeth also contributed some ideas
as they worked on it during rehearsals in 1975.Copy !req
46. Tom didn't want to see anyone else playing Sarah,
but film companies began talking about Twiggy.Copy !req
47. The film stayed in development hell until 1980,
and died when Tom left Doctor Who.Copy !req
48. In the draft script, there's no ready-made bridge
across the chasm: The Doctor has to build one
using metal sections of the tunnel wall.Copy !req
49. In the script, Sarah flatly refuses to use the bridge
("I'm not crossing on that!"),Copy !req
50. so the Doctor leaves her behind on her own.Copy !req
51. He then pretends to be in danger, calls out,Copy !req
52. and Sarah blindly rushes across to help him.Copy !req
53. Robert Holmes often had the Doctor trick Sarah
into making an effort in spite of herself,Copy !req
54. notably in his 1975 script 'The Ark in Space'.
("Conned again!" she said on that occasion.)Copy !req
55. In the script,
the door is marked with Kastrian hieroglyphics.Copy !req
56. The draft script describes Eldrad's ring
as "the Kastrian master-key".Copy !req
57. The shoulder strap of Elisabeth Sladen's dungarees
has come adrift here.Copy !req
58. She reset it between shots.Copy !req
59. As the script puts it: "Bam splat powee!"Copy !req
60. The underside of the regenerator press
was coated with reflective material.Copy !req
61. The plan was to use Front Axial Projection
to make it glow.Copy !req
62. This was abandoned after the difficulties
with Eldrad's glowing eyes.Copy !req
63. In the draft script, Eldrad's body crumbles to dust
as she lies on the slab,Copy !req
64. leaving only the ring hand intact.Copy !req
65. "She's all cracking up," says Sarah in the script.Copy !req
66. "The storage cells are very low," says the Doctor.
"Just have to take a chance,
put them all through one."Copy !req
67. A shot of Eldrad's head shattering was planned,
but omitted.Copy !req
68. A long sequence followed, in which the upper slab
descends slowly onto Eldrad
while the Doctor tries in vain to stop it.Copy !req
69. The press was designed with a cut-out system
to stop it coming down too farCopy !req
70. but in the studio the cut-out failed,
and Judith Paris escaped with a bruised face.Copy !req
71. As that sequence was originally structured,
we firstsee the slab start to descend,Copy !req
72. then hear there is too little power,Copy !req
73. and then see Eldrad crunched
to smithereens anyway.Copy !req
74. After the final recording session,
Kastria was dismantled:Copy !req
75. Christine Ruscoe's sets were taken down overnight
and the studio thoroughly cleaned,
ready for the next day's work.Copy !req
76. Another day, another programme...
in the case of Studio 8, this was Top of the Pops.Copy !req
77. "A new, enlarged, economy-sized Eldrad emerges,"
says the script.Copy !req
78. He's played by Stephen Thorne,
who had worked with Elisabeth Sladen before.Copy !req
79. He played a snake-tongued alien
at the 1973 audition
which won her the role of Sarah.Copy !req
80. The costume was built around a pair of deep
rubber trousers, rather like a fisherman's waders,
which came up to Thorne's armpits.Copy !req
81. He found the costume very hot indeed
under the studio lights.Copy !req
82. After the recording,
pints of perspiration were poured out of the boots.Copy !req
83. Post-production on 'The Hand of Fear'
began with an experimental sound session
on 22 July.Copy !req
84. On 5 August, Lennie Mayne
met with composer Dudley Simpson
and sound effects supremo Dick MillsCopy !req
85. for a nine-hour session to review the four episodes
and discuss their contributions.Copy !req
86. The final dubbing sessions took place on four days
between 15 September and 6 October.Copy !req
87. Each episode was completed and ready
for transmission with about a fortnight to spare...
at the time, a comfortable margin.Copy !req
88. The script calls Rokon the overlord of Kastria:
"Old, cunning, ascetic, metallic".Copy !req
89. "Now I shall have my final revenge,"
adds Eldrad in the script.Copy !req
90. 'The Hand of Fear'
was one of Lennie Mayne's last productions.Copy !req
91. On 20 May 1977, he was lost at seaCopy !req
92. when a freak wave overturned his dinghy
in the English Channel.Copy !req
93. This is another staple theme of mid-1970s
Doctor Who: The war criminal
returned from the grave.Copy !req
94. This was a science fiction take on the popular
"Hitler survived World War Il" scenario,Copy !req
95. and featured, differently inflected,
in four other 1975-7 Doctor Who serials:Copy !req
96. 'Pyramids of Mars', 'The Brain of Morbius',
'The Deadly Assassin',
and 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang'.Copy !req
97. The draft script proposed that Kastrian architecture
should be based around triangular shapes,Copy !req
98. reflecting the crystallography of the silicon
out of which their bodies are composed.Copy !req
99. "The barely balanced crystalline column of particles
that was once a king
dissolves into a heap of powder," says the script.Copy !req
100. At this point one of the studio microphones
packed up, forcing a retake.Copy !req
101. Rokon's recorded message from the distant past
is drawn from 'The Ark in Space',Copy !req
102. in which humanity survives a solar disaster
by putting a selection of pioneers
into suspended animation:Copy !req
103. A race bank for reanimation in the distant future,
like the one Eldrad speaks of here.Copy !req
104. Look at the back wall behind Sarah,
and see if you can spot the moving shadow
of the boom mike.Copy !req
105. The script, frugally economising on the set,
described the race bank chamber
as a "shallow alcove",Copy !req
106. but Lennie Mayne decided to make it
rather more spectacular.Copy !req
107. Except for the doorway,
this is a painting on a sheet of glass.Copy !req
108. The camera is lined up to shoot the door
through the unpainted middle part of the glass,
creating the impression of a vast room.Copy !req
109. The action was tightly choreographedCopy !req
110. to keep Eldrad in the unmasked area of the glass.Copy !req
111. Rokon is played by Roy Skelton,Copy !req
112. who worked on no fewer than 16 Doctor Who serials
between 1966 and 1988.Copy !req
113. In 1975, he turned down the iconic role
of Davros in 'Genesis of the Daleks'.Copy !req
114. Other rubber-suit work included the Mock Turtle
in Barry Letts's production
of Alice in Wonderland (1986),Copy !req
115. which also featured Elisabeth Sladen
as the Dormouse.Copy !req
116. But he is mainly known for his voice work,
including many a Dalek,
a robot in Out of the Unknown (1967),Copy !req
117. and a 20-year stint as Zippy and George the Hippo
in the pre-school series, Rainbow (1973-92).Copy !req
118. After 'The Hand of Fear', the next project
for Bob Baker and Dave Martin was the ITV
children's serial, King of the Castle (1977),Copy !req
119. a horror story set in a squalid modern tower block.Copy !req
120. In the script, Rokon gives "one last smile"
before he vanishes.Copy !req
121. "Eldrad shakes with cold, frustrated fury."Copy !req
122. Camera 1 is visible in the doorway
to the left of Sarah, ready to take the next shot.Copy !req
123. In the draft script, Eldrad kicks at the dust
of Rokon's remains.Copy !req
124. Dudley Simpson was commissioned to compose
the incidental music on 21 April,
nearly two months before shooting began.Copy !req
125. He wrote, in all, 46 minutes and 23 seconds
of incidental music, in 62 different cues.Copy !req
126. This is Cue 60, one of the longer ones,Copy !req
127. which means there are only two more to come.
It was agreed not to use any background music
for Sarah's departure.Copy !req
128. Instead the actors' performances were allowed
to carry the full emotional weight of the scene.Copy !req
129. Dudley Simpson assembled a six-man orchestra,
who recorded the music in two three-hour sessionsCopy !req
130. on the morning of 6 September
and the evening of 22 September.Copy !req
131. Among the instruments used are two cymbals,
a bass drum, a tom-tom, a side drum,
four pedal tympani, a vibraflap, a vibraphone,Copy !req
132. a xylophone, a Yamaha electric organ,
a saxophone, and a bass clarinet.Copy !req
133. A longer chase sequence was recorded,
but cut for timing reasons.Copy !req
134. One of the shots had to be retaken
because Eldrad was running in the wrong direction,
left to right.Copy !req
135. Eldrad is mixed into the black background
of the abyss using Colour Separation Overlay.Copy !req
136. Initial plans to suspend him on a harness
were abandoned
as unduly time-consuming to set up.Copy !req
137. In the script, Sarah asks to keep the ring
as a souvenir, but the Doctor tells her
it belongs to Eldrad.Copy !req
138. To get Sarah back across the bridge,
he uses the same trick as before:Copy !req
139. Pretends to stumble on the far side
so that she'll rush over to his aid without thinking.Copy !req
140. We then see the systems monitoring
the lift's ascent, and the power finally fading out.Copy !req
141. On the first take, the console was wrongly aligned,Copy !req
142. so that when the Doctor opened the panel,
the functional buttons weren't there,
just a tatty cardboard mock-up.Copy !req
143. The heavy prop had to be physically turned around
before recording could continue.Copy !req
144. While the scene-shifters laboured,
Tom Baker passed the time by tap-dancing.Copy !req
145. In the draft script, the Doctor says the coldest place
in the galaxy is the planet Berberus.Copy !req
146. They run so many electric fires
that the entire surface is covered in power stations.Copy !req
147. But the cold has an advantage: Superconductivity.
"Cheapest power in the Milky Way."Copy !req
148. "Look, I want some attention,"
she tells him in the script.Copy !req
149. Bob Baker and Dave Martin were briefed
to leave Sarah's departure to be written in-house.Copy !req
150. They wrote a comical scene anyway, in which
the Doctor gives Sarah "a large white furry object":
A lucky squirk's foot.Copy !req
151. "You can use it as a paperweight, he says,
and she retorts, "That's what people always say
about totally useless objects."Copy !req
152. This line was Elisabeth Sladen's unscripted input.Copy !req
153. The draft scene, in which Sarah refuses
the squirk's foot
because the Doctor will need more luck than her,Copy !req
154. was not liked by the two actors.
("Soppy," Elisabeth Sladen called it.)Copy !req
155. Robert Holmes wrote a new version,
which Tom and Elisabeth
then tweaked to suit themselves.Copy !req
156. "Don't you think it would be funnier
if she stepped over me?" suggested Tom Baker
during camera rehearsals... so she did.Copy !req
157. Once the production team
knew Sarah would be leavingCopy !req
158. they needed to find a better reason
for her to go than a fit of pique.Copy !req
159. They also needed to decide what to do
next with Doctor Who.Copy !req
160. One radical idea was to attempt a serial
featuring the Doctor alone,
without a secondary lead character.Copy !req
161. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe also wanted
to feature the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey.Copy !req
162. So the next serial, 'The Deadly Assassin',
saw an interlude between Sarah and her successor,
the primitive Leela.Copy !req
163. And once that was settled, Gallifrey became
the solution to the problem of writing out Sarah.Copy !req
164. The address was originally
"Thornton Heath, Norwood, Croydon".Copy !req
165. "Ah, Sarah," he says in the script.
"Forget about the zues plug."
The eventual line was Tom Baker's contribution.Copy !req
166. Tom was upset to be losing Elisabeth Sladen,
with whom he had formed
a close working relationship.Copy !req
167. There was also a worry about her replacement:
Would he be stuck having to say a posh,
polysyllabic name like Jonquil or Jessamine?Copy !req
168. This was one of the few sequences in
'The Hand of Fear' shot out of story order.Copy !req
169. It was recorded on the penultimate studio day,
19 July.Copy !req
170. The final day was devoted
to the underground scenes on Kastria.Copy !req
171. The principal reason was to group the Tardis scenes
together, so that it would not be necessary
to use the set on a second day.Copy !req
172. But the effect was also to help the actors
concentrate on their performances,Copy !req
173. so that they could make a powerful show
of Sarah's farewell without the emotional distraction
of its also being Elisabeth's.Copy !req
174. The exteriors were shot on Friday 18 June,
the last day of location filming.Copy !req
175. Many retakes were necessary
because of intruding aircraft noise,Copy !req
176. not to mention local residents who chose exactly
the wrong moment to leave their homes!Copy !req
177. On the recording day, Elisabeth Sladen kept quietly
running through this scene whenever she was free.Copy !req
178. After making 'The Hand of Fear',
she returned to the theatre,Copy !req
179. appearing that autumn in
Saturday, Sunday, Monday and
The Lion in Winter at the Liverpool Playhouse.Copy !req
180. Because of the nature of theatre work,
she was unable to see
'The Hand of Fear' when it was broadcast.Copy !req
181. Her next television appearances were as the
presenter of two editions of the BBC Schools
programme, Merry-Go-Round (1977).Copy !req
182. In the last episode, the Doctor told her
that travel broadens the mind,
but she wasn't convinced.Copy !req
183. In the script, the Doctor replies, "A stitch in time
saves nine" and "Look before you leap,"
which were her lines in Part 3.Copy !req
184. "Bring on 35 violins!"
Called Lennie Mayne when the scene was finished.Copy !req
185. Elisabeth Sladen took the cuddly owl home with her,
and years later gave it to her baby daughter
(who was sick on it).Copy !req
186. No, it's Stokefield Close
in Thornbury, Gloucestershire.Copy !req
187. Speaking to the dog was Elisabeth Sladen's
unscripted input.Copy !req
188. The dog, named Fifi, belonged to Frances Pidgeon,
who played Miss Jackson.Copy !req
189. The tune is the music-hall favourite,
'Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow' (1892).Copy !req
190. The concluding freeze-frame
was Elisabeth Sladen's idea.Copy !req
191. Uncredited production contributors
to this serial included:Copy !req
192. Nansi Davies (Artists' Contracts),
Phyllis Page (Artists' Booking)Copy !req
193. Ronnie Peverall (Senior Cameraman)
Johnny Norris (Show Working Supervisor)Copy !req
194. Nick Lake (Vision Mixer)
Dave Chapman (Inlay Operator)Copy !req
195. Lan Brindle (Film Operations Manager)
Stan Sweatman (Grips)Copy !req
196. Jim Hering, John Phillips,
Jim Short, Alan Thompson (Film Operatives)Copy !req
197. John Dymock, James Guest,
James Hughes, Mary Weston (Film Unit)Copy !req
198. Janet Gilpin, Jennifer Hughes,
Caroline O'Neill (Make-up Assistants)Copy !req
199. Alan Muhley, George Best, Dave Child,
Dave Gurney (Film Lighting)Copy !req
200. Roger Williams (Props Buyer)Copy !req
201. Production text commentary by Martin WigginsCopy !req
202. Hey.Copy !req
203. You.Copy !req
204. He blew it.Copy !req