Original air dates are 2 October 1976 – 23 October 1976. Another 4th doctor episode.
Been a while since I’ve watched so I don’t remember where I was.
Space ships! And a dome on an ice world where they’re freezing. Something about obliteration of the Valeyard. Big goofy costumes. Destruction will be early to prevent them from failing altogether. There’s a 1 in 3 million chance particles will survive, but they take that chance and evacuate.
Cut to a quarry where the TARDIS appears, just as men are about to set off a detonation charge. Timing, Doctor, timing. The crew detonates the explosive and the wall comes crashing down. Doctor is more or less all right but Sarah Jane Smith is not to be seen.
She’s alive, trapped under a rock, and finds a hand. She screams, summoning the others.
She goes to hospital. Doctor goes to hospital. Doctor starts investigating things. Finds the hand the Sarah grabbed. Dates it to 150 million years ago, and silicon based. Confounds Earthmen. Goes back to quarry to poke around.
Sarah wakes up, but isn’t Sarah. Goes to Pathology, stuns or kills the doctor (not The Doctor, just a doctor) there, steals hand, runs off.
Doctor at quarry looks for clues.
Oh good, the Pathology doctor isn’t dead. He calls the police; she’s been gone an hour. The sample in the Electron Microscope is changing; Doctor suggests it’s from radiation exposure. Wants to know where the nearest nuclear reactor is. Cut to Sarah Jane walking up to the gates, stunning a hapless guard. She has the hand in menacing Tupperware.
Sarah goes deeper and deeper into the complex, with the Doctor and doctor following. Doctor and Doctor Carter stopped by security. Sarah goes to high-rad area, opens the dread tupperware. Episode ends to alarms and alerts.
Next EP. Hand starts to regenerate. Sarah talks to it. Eldrad must live. Sarah Jane Smith is alive and recived no radiation. They get the hand out of the reactor. They have it on video now, Thinging around.
They send someone to find the ring. Doctor puts Sarah under a hypnosis to find out what an Eldrad is. Light of Castro. Eldrad must live. Very repitive. Hand starts trying to break free of the radiation safe.
Hand leads minion back to reactor, while operations clears site. Doctor and SJS chase minion and hand into reactor, stopping in the nick of time. Credits roll, end of ep.
The doctor explains what’s going on. They’ve got ten minutes before the air command nukes the station. Doctor wants to talk to it. Nukes do nothing. Doctor wants to talk to it.
Eldrad is a humanoid covered in rock. Femaleish. It will rule again! They go in to talk to it. “Let me explain” it says.
They go to Castria, where Eldrad talks a lot and turns things back on. They are going to free the people, when she is stabbed with a giant arrow through the heart. Ow. Credits roll.
They slog through the catacombs searching for a regeneration chamber for the Elderad. They’re stopped. Wobbly sets over an abyss.
They regenerate Elderad. Elderad wants to conquer the universe. He’s big and mighty now, and full of words. He has an army awaiting him once he regenerates them. The Doctor is just letting him talk, giving him rope. Turns out the people didn’t wait in servitude and took death over his return. He is now King of Nothing.
Doctor and Sarah trip Elderad and send him into the abyss they found earlier. They hike back to the TARDIS.
SJS gets grumpy, wants to go home. Doctor gets a mental call from Galifrey and decides he has to take Sarah home anyway. He sends her to her home. He misses, of course, and leaves her somepalce vaguely close. Credits roll.