Tom Baker’s in good form, not least when lusting after Judith Paris.

I Didn’t Know That Until I Read The Information Text:

Elisabeth Sladen can’t whistle, so the whistling in the final sequence was done by Lennie Mayne.

-Changing Time, a dual-purpose documentary covering Sarah Jame Smith’s journey and the making of ‘The Hand of Fear’

-Swap Shop, an excerpt in which Noel Edmonds interviews Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker; unfortunately doesn’t include the moment where Elisabeth Sladen gets swapped for a Scalextric.

-Continuities, being a selection of announcements from the end of ‘The Masque of Mandragora’ and one from Part Four of ‘Hand’ for ‘The Deadly Assassin’.

-Photo Gallery

-The Doctor Who Annual 1977 (this being the one that all second-hand bookshops are legally obliged to have in stock)

-Radio Times billings

A fairly swift return to Tom Baker’s era, then, for "Sarah Jane Smith’s Final Classic Story", although there were several good reasons for releasing ‘Hand’ at this stage. A release following swiftly after the broadcast of ‘School Reunion’ makes sense, but the story was always one of the most sought-after of the VHS range, having been brought out shortly before the abortive revival of 1996 and caught up in the mass clear-out shortly thereafter (although my own copy came from a W H Smith clearance store in Bradford for £3). It’s perhaps not the most popular or indeed the strongest story from this era, but the time was right to bring out a story which many fans had never had the opportunity to own legitimately.

The commentary is above average, as Tom Baker is on exuberant form alongside Elisabeth Sladen and later Judith Paris, while Bob Baker tends to sit in the background and Philip Hinchcliffe’s involvement takes the form of pre-recorded inserts, but the format allows for a number of voices to be heard alongside Baker’s inevitable anecdotes and flights of fancy. ‘Changing Time’ allows for even more contributors- you get Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks on the conception of Sarah Jane’s character, and also Stephen Thorne and Glyn Houston on ‘The Hand of Fear’, but it’s difficult to avoid a sense of two separate items having been forced into one, even if there’s a nice directorial touch of having people being seen sitting in the background as other people are talking about them. The most interesting thing about the ‘Swap Shop’ item (apart from Tom Baker looking as if he’s about to punch Noel Edmonds at one stage, and frankly haven’t we all wanted to do that at some point?) is watching Tom Baker dropping into Doctor mode to speak to the children who ring in, although there’s a curious reference to "the new series" beginning that night which threw me until I realised that it was Edmonds’s way of referring to the new story. The continuity announcements are nice to have and from the early days of home taping- the earliest video copy I’ve personally seen was ‘The Seeds of Doom’- and are quite restrained, being limited to an announcement over the closing credits and a caption slide. There doesn’t seem to be anything dramatically revelatory in the photo gallery or indeed (apart from a nice picture or two of Tom Baker) much on the Radio Times listings, while for many long-term fans the 1977 Annual probably dates from the height of the series’ general popularity and is thus familiar from a dozen and one jumble sales, second-hand bookshops and well-meaning family members.

After a run of very generous releases, then, it’s not an unwelcome step to go back to a single four-parter with a simple but effective look at how the story was made, and the focus on one of the series’ most popular supporting characters. Having Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen on the commentary for this story would probably have been sufficient, but the additional voices are welcome, as is the contextual material. It’s a quieter release, then, which doesn’t perhaps attract quite as much attention as some of the releases around it, but as an attempt at covering a story which isn’t perhaps considered as one of the first rank, it’s a good effort and concentrates on the interest in Sarah’s departure rather than trying to persuade us that the story is better than it is.