State of Decay

State of Decay is, like the King Vampire, a strange beast. Beloved by most fans, when watching this story, I felt like I had to enjoy it. And I did. Well, kind of.

Although this serial has many great moments, it has faults. And some of these faults overshadow the highlights of the story.

Speaking of the story, our villains here are the Three Who Rule, who, tying into the E-Space arc, came from our universe but fell into E-Space, and somehow ended up becoming vampires, who want to free the King Vampire. I think. To be honest, I really can’t remember much of the plot of this story, only the set peices.

Aukon, who seems to be the main vampire out of the three, is played by Emrys James. The way he chose to play the character really irritates me, but apart from that, most of the acting is good.

Visually, this story is a real treat, the sets are beautiful, and the costumes are incredibly well designed.

It also has some wonderful sound design, with a stunning soundtrack.

But, a good atmosphere does not make up for an unintersting plot, which sadly, this story has.

Overall, State of Decay has great direction from Peter Grimwade, great acting from the regulars, but very middling writing from Terrance Dicks.

6/10

This is a solid serial with a very tight and well-written plot. The sets and costumes look excellent! The core concept itself is alright, although not the most interesting in my personal opinion. Overall, this is a very good serial.

I love vampires. The story may have been a little slow and simple, but the vibes were immaculate, and that's all I really care about. The costuming is gorgeous, the sets are interesting, and most of the men have fantastic beards.

Adric was definitely under-utilised, especially for his first story as a companion, and spending most of his on-screen time pretending makes it very difficult to figure out what he's like. Not a great start.

Overall, it's a nice serial to have on in the background, but probably not gripping enough to properly watch very often.

This is a really unusual story, in that it feels like a reject from the Philip Hinchcliffe era, even though it was originally commissioned for Season 15. It has all the hallmarks of the Hinchliffe era, with its hammer horror vibe, and yet it suits Season 18's more sombre vibes quite well.

State Of Decay is an excellent Doctor Who take on the classic vampire story. It adapts vampires into the Doctor Who universe arguably better than the new series' attempt with Vampires of Venice, with The Three Who Rule adding some great malice to the story. I liked the medieval vibes this serial was going for too, which gels nicely with the story that Terence Dicks is trying to tell.

My only gripe is that Adric is weirdly underused for a 'new' (at the time) companion. This is only his second story, and yet he's absent for a large chunk of it. He gets hardly any screentime with the Fourth Doctor and Romana, and in the little appearances he does make he comes across somewhat unlikeable. He may save Romana in the end from the vampires, but he still wanted to join them.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Full Circle

This story is very dull, it has some interesting ideas in it that amount to very little. The villains are annoying and nothing about the story stands out. I don't understand what the fascination is with sci-fi technology in a medieval setting. It was good once and ever since it's been really annoying to sit through.

Adric is much more interesting in this story, I like that we get to see a bit more of his worldview. I also like the extra lore we get on the Time Lords. The Type 40 being the only model with manuals on how to defeat vampires comes off as deus ex machina and doesn't make much sense even for Doctor Who.

The soundtrack is alright but, in my opinion, not nearly as good as it has been for the past few stories. Overall this is just a boring story with very little redeeming qualities. I'll take a bad story over an ok-but-boring one anyday

Next Story: The Invasion of E-Space

The first we've had from Terrance Dicks in since the excellent Horror of Fang Rock. It is rare to have a writer who is established on the show these days, so great to know it’s not the end of our time with Dicks.

Mathew Waterhouse is a little stiffer in this story. It feels like he should be getting notes from the director (direction seems all over the place). I love how he is introduced as a stowaway, without The Doctor or the audience realising he is there until well after the story had gotten started.

It’s another futuristic medieval setting, similar in some ways to Meglos, which I always find a little boring and lends itself to pompous, archaic verbiage. I had to watch the cliffhanger for part 1 twice to really get what was going on. It was so low energy and poorly realised that it was not very obvious at all that The Doctor and Romana were supposed to be being attacked by birds. Considering that the last story had one of the best cliffhangers ever (watermelon spider) it’s a bit of a shame to see a shoddy production impact the overall quality here.

I’m surprised this sits side by side with Full Circle in this season given that they both feature a disused spaceship that has sat there for generations and a population who is having their behaviour and access to the truth limited. Bidmead and JNT should have been looking at these similarities from a higher level view and weeding them out. The use of vampires however is something that has until now not been fully explored in Doctor Who (and no, I’m not counting The Chase).

The best parts of this story are when The Doctor and Romana or K-9 are chatting to each other and have interesting character moments that the show often doesn’t have time for. When it gets stuck into the plot there are generic baddies and predictable perils. Dicks makes Adric appear ungrateful and foolish before revealing his apparent attitude to be all part of his plan. This is a good beat for him but in general he doesn’t shine quite as well here as the story before.

The way the story ties up, with the very large monster being pierced with a spaceship that had *just* enough fuel left to blast off before hurtling back down to earth, was very clever. It doesn’t quite make up for the rather unremarkable villains though. There is something about Middle Ages inspired characters who speak in overly formal, arch and hyperbolic ways that bores me to death.