State of Decay

Good old Terrance Dicks , he’s one of my favourite writers for both the show and the novels range of doctor who.
Here in one of his last and latest entries he’d make to the show, the Doctor, Romana and stowaway Adric fund them sleeves on a backwards world with a humble gold inslabed by lords.
These lords are intact vampires, but merely servents of a higher threat, a great vampire and an old enemy of Gallifreyans of any sort.

This makes for a rather hinchcliffe era story and although it’s very much the eighties in a number of ways... it shows that it was intended earlier.
I personally love doctor who when it does gothic or hammer horror themed stories. A gripe I could make is that in E space it does feel a little like it could have just been in our universe but bah!! I loved it. A strong centre story for the fun e space trilogy.

Oh how we've missed you Terrance! Like a homecoming: from tone; to charm; to comic moments; to simple (yet intriguing) mystery and plot structure, Uncle Terry knocks the ball out of the park again.

It's a godsend that Terry's original rather than the Bidmead draft was shot - it could fit smugly aside Horror of Fang Rock in some fabled season never produced. Hypothesising and dreaming aside, State of Decay is quality Doctor Who with a chain of mysteries unravelled. A pastiche of low sci-fi and high gothic melodrama, a ragtag bunch of peasants and malevolent grouping of Vampiric devotees have our protagonists do battle with the last of the canon / lore expanding Great Vampires.

From building on lore, to effective use of macguffins (ala Fang Rock) this whole piece feels incredibly solid with a top notch guest cast just falling short of hamming it up, whilst still revelling the hammeresque elements. Even Adric works, written as the artful dodger which he never really grew to be - I'm convinced if Adric was written with the aplomb of Decay from Full Circle to Earthshock, his impact on fans would've been nowhere near as poor.

Few minor gripes, sets not meshing together, some elements considerably less thought through than others and some peasants being too 'stock' for their own good. Minor gripes aside, it's a solid story and well worth a good viewing. Cracking DVD documentary extras too!

State of Decay has the Doctor and Romana landing on another planet (with Adric having stolen away without their knowledge) in E-space where Vampires have taken over and ruled for a thousand years plunging the native civilization into ignorance. The piece is scary and atmospheric, it gives some nice back story on the Time Lords, and is an enjoyable story despite a few plot contrivances at the end and a somewhat redundant search for a message from Rassilon.