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ELDRAD MUST LIVE!
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This silicon-based, crystalline alien based its look on Sarah Jane Smith!
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OLD STONY FACE
Eldrad is a Kastrian, a crystalline, silicon-based lifeform so closely resembling stone that when her hand is found on Earth it’s mistaken for a fossil. Inspection by microscope reveals a geodetic lattice.
RING THE CHANGES
The crystal in the ring Eldrad wears on the little finger of his right hand carries his genetic code, a master print from which he can reconstitute himself using radiation.
BLUE ME OVER
The ring has other powers, glowing blue as it exerts them. It can possess the minds of humans so that they offer assistance to Eldrad when she commands. It can also stun humans, and seems able to unlock the sealed doors inside a nuclear reactor.
LOOKY LIKEY
Eldrad can regenerate his body through irradiation, even when just his hand survives. In doing so, he can also choose aspects of his form, modelling his new body on that of Sarah Jane Smith so that he will be better accepted by the primitive people of Earth.
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Judith Paris played the wicked alien Eldrad in the final two episodes of The Hand of Fear. “I’d not met the director, lovely Lennie Mayne, before,” she tells the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. “But we had a natural rapport at the interview. He’d been a dancer many years previously, as I had, and we talked about commercial dancing. Plus I have this evil-looking face. It’s a terrible thing to say about yourself and I don’t have an evil bone in my body, but I’m never cast as mothers.”
On Monday 14 June 1976, Judith was on location at ARC Quarry in Cromhall, Gloucestershire, for the first day of filming, which should have included a single word of dialogue.
TELECINE 6:
Ext. Quarry. Day.
On them walking from the
car through the deserted
quarry. They pass the place
where the hand was
discovered.
A scornful smile from ELDRAD:
They continue to the Tardis:
ELDRAD: This?
A smile and a nod from
THE DOCTOR. He takes out his key.
However, the Eldrad costume had not been finished in time so Judith wore an incomplete version for the scene, “and only in long shot,” she says. Costume designer Barbara Lane was painstakingly patching together an outfit of rock-like crystalline pieces in line with the Doctor’s description of Eldrad as a silicon-based lifeform, the hand discovered in the quarry mistaken for a fossil. It was also hoped that the crystalline pieces would enable particular visual effects when in studio.
After her inauspicious first day, Judith rejoined the cast on 8 July to begin rehearsals for studio recording of parts three and four of the story. The script gave various clues as to how to play Eldrad. For example, in part four the Doctor says, “You modelled yourself on the first primitive you came in contact [with]” - ie his companion Sarah. Was Judith cast or asked to emulate actress Elisabeth Sladen? “No! But I would have liked to have been Lis. She got a lot more work than I did!”
Stage directions also refer to Eldrad throughout as “he”, even in female form. “Don’t they just? Though there I was in a rather provocative shape!” She didn’t consider playing Eldrad as masculine or androgynous? “No, I was going for feminine wiles. I thought, to begin with, that she would appeal to the Doctor more if she showed the more feminine side of her nature. It was only towards the end that I became more masculine. I was furious with Lennie when he then ran my voice thought a vocoder machine to put a bit of bass on it!”
She was happier with the costume - at least from the outside. “That was a work of art,” she says. “Most actors depend on how they look: costume and make-up designers can create your character, so you just have to say your lines.” As well as Barbara Lane’s costume, make-up supervisor Judy Neame and her team oversaw the casting and fitting of the crystalline pieces applied to Judith’s head and hands. Her hair had to be washed and swept up into an anchoring support for the jewelled headpiece. Crystalline strands were then applied to her face and neck, with blue make-up hiding the joins. “It took hours,” says Judith.
The episodes were recorded in Television Centre’s Studio 8 on 19 and 20 July. “I already had an idea what it would be like, having worn uncomfortable wooden bodices for Elizabethan drama. But frankly I’m glad it was only for a couple of days. Once I was stitched into the costume with all those rock crystals attached over me, I couldn’t sit down, go to the lavatory or eat or drink. All day, I had tiny sips of water, and in breaks I would prop myself against a wall. They glued rock crystals on my cheekbones and forehead, and the head-dress was very tight but still had to be balanced right. I could walk, and use my face and arms, but not do much with my body. I also had those funny contact lenses, and was wobbling around in high-heeled boots unable to see where my feet were because I couldn’t bend to look. It was a matter of keeping very calm and quiet between takes, and trying not to trip over Tom Baker’s wretched scarf - which he used to dangle deliberately, knowing I couldn’t see it!”
In part four, Tom Baker also had to carry her. “That was uncomfortable for me and even more for him! It did all get a bit riotous. I couldn’t see, he couldn’t lift, that bloody scarf kept getting in the way, and he and Lis Sladen were giggling…” In her autobiography, Lis Sladen wrote that, “Poor old Judith … was being thrown around like a sack of potatoes and I think she got pretty pissed off. ‘Look, can we just do this so I can go and have a fag?’” Judith laughs at this now. “Yes, I was smoking at the time and can identify with that. Oh dear, Lis was so lovely - and such a good actress. Absolutely stunning.”
The script specifies that when we first see Eldrad, emerging from the nuclear reactor, she is “glowing like coals in the fire”. The painstaking construction of the costume should have meant that this, and the cracks in Eldrad’s body seen in part four, was achieved using front axial projection. Unfortunately, the studio lighting prevented this working effectively and colour separation overlay was used instead.
A more serious problem occurred in the regeneration chamber. “I was on this slab and the lid is coming down on top of me,” says Judith. “It was supposed to stop just above my nose. But it kept on coming. I thought my face would squash and screamed my head off! That was a horrible experience.” The director wisely opted to cut this from the finished episode.
“I did enjoy my Doctor Who,” Judith insists. “I loved what Lis did, and Tom Baker was such a naughty boy. I’m a huge fan of his, too. And it’s invigorating to play somebody really evil.” She sighs. “It was lovely."
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ELDRAD’S MASCULINE SIDE
In part four of The Hand of Fear, Eldrad is played by Stephen Thorne, who director Lennie Mayne had previously cast as Omega in The Three Doctors (1972-73).
How much Judith discuss with Thorne how they would play this same character? “I don’t remember any conversation like that during rehearsal and I don’t think he made much attempt to be me.” Did she try to convey anything of Thorne’s performance? She laughs. “They put me in a figure-hugging body stocking, complete with hips and tits, plus a pair of high heels. I didn’t feel very masculine.”
Thorne wore a costume in the same style as Judith’s, with a larger, vacuum-formed headpiece supplied by the visual effects department. A single male version of the costume was made, worn first by Roy Skelton as Rokon before Thorne changed into it to complete recording of their scene together. A dummy with a rough cast of the same head piece was used so the two Kastrians could both appear in the same shot.
“The basis of my costume was green wellies,” Thorne told the Valiant convention in 2010. “The rest was this awful rubber latex, which gets terribly hot. When I came to have [the costume] prised off, I would empty out these green wellies of half a pint of sweat.” Yuck.
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