The Hand of Fear is the second serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 2 to 23 October 1976.
In the serial, the alien Kastrian Eldrad (Judith Paris and Stephen Thorne) seeks to regrow their nearly-obliterated body with radiation so they can enact revenge on their people.
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 Doctor takes her to the local hospital, where the mesmeric power of the hand becomes more complete and both Sarah Jane and a pathologist called Dr Carter are brought under its control.
Admitting that he destroyed the barriers during his attempt to usurp the Kastrian leadership, Eldrad finds the remains of Rokon and learns from a pre-recorded message that the Kastrian race accepted extinction over living a miserable existence underground, destroying their race banks in case Eldrad returned.
When Eldrad decides to make his new empire on Earth, the Doctor trips the would-be tyrant into an abyss, then throws the Kastrian's ring into it to ensure he cannot regenerate.
When Sladen announced her intention to leave the series, Sarah was originally supposed to be killed off in a pseudo-historical story involving aliens and the French Foreign Legion.
The original script for the story featured an ageing Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, who had been moved from UNIT to the Extraterrestrial Xenological Intelligence Taskforce to study UFO activities.
Director Lennie Mayne built up the part, changed the gender, and cast his wife Frances Pidgeon in the role.
[4] Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote in The Discontinuity Guide (1995) that the serial was "engaging and well-acted", particularly praising Sladen.
However, they noted that "It all goes a bit pear shaped in the final episode, with Stephen Thorne doing his best Brian Blessed impersonation and Eldrad eventually tripping over the Doctor's scarf.
[6] In 2010, Mark Braxton of Radio Times was positive towards the location filming and the female Eldrad, but criticised Kastria and felt that the last episode was "a protracted preamble" to Sarah's departure.
[7] DVD Talk's Stuart Galbraith gave The Hand of Fear three out of five stars, saying that while the female Eldrad was effective, the story was "all over the map" and ran out of steam near the end, with the fourth episode being "largely a disaster".