An enjoyable who adventure on Earth and in the distant reaches of space, and markable as the last episode with Elisabeth Sladen playing Sarah Jane Smith as the Doctor’s companion (at least in the main series, she did later return in K-9 and Company and The Five Doctors and Dimensions in Time as well as some radio dramas, and eventually in the 2006 season of Doctor Who with David Tennant [and she still looked damn good too, a site better Billie Piper, that is for sure]). It is too bad the next episode is not on DVD, because it marks the return of the Master and I would love to see that, especially since he is returning in the current season of Tennant’s Doctor Who. When did the Tardis get this Retro look? It didn’t have it in his first season or in his last. Hmmm.

This episode starts with Space Aliens in the distant past, setting a space ship to explode on a distant inhospitable planet named Kastria in order to kill one of their own, but their is the chance it will not work, and their will not be complete destruction, which could cause trouble for the whole universe. In the present the Doctor (Tom Baker) returning to Earth with Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), but landing in a rock quary, where there is an explosion and Sarah is buried. She is alive, but has found a piece of petrified hand and a ring that is maybe 10 million years old, and the ring has taken over her mind, it is the ring of the Alien.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Sarah is taken to a hospital, but she appears find, but uses the ring to stun her doctor (not the Doctor) and steals the hand and escapes, heading for the nearby Nuton Complex for Research and Development, where she breaks into the Nuclear Core. The Doctor shows up, and the hand is moving and absorbing the energy of the radiation. The Doctor rescues Sarah, but the hand manages to take over the minds of other people, and manages to get all the way into the core. The army even drops a nuke on the facility, but the hand manages to absorb the radiation, and regenerate itself into a female form using Sarah’s genetic makeup, this is Eldrad (Judith Paris).

To get Eldrad off planet, The Doctor pretends to believe Eldrad’s sob story and agrees to take her to her home work, though not in the past, in the present, but he realizes she was in fact the criminal that destroyed her own planet.

WHen they return Eldrad uses a machine and her ring to restore herself to her actual male form (Stephen Thorne), where he plans to become king, and use the planets genetic store of all life on the planet to restore the race, and dominate it, but the old king thought of this and destroyed it’s own records so the race could never be taken, and The Doctor won’t take Eldrad, as he has no power in the Tardis. The Doctor tricks Eldrad and takes his ring, and knocks him into a chasm, where he then drops the ring.

The Doctor then gets a call from Gallifrey, and Sarah is pissed and is threatening to leave, and he must return home and can’t take her, so he is leaving her, and leaves her on her street, though he of course did not get it exactly right, and who knows where she is.

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An enjoyable episode and it is sad to see Elisabeth Sladen leave as she was an excellent companion for the Doctor.