State Of Decay (Doctor Who)
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''State of Decay'' is the fourth serial of the 18th season in the British
science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...
series ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'', which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on
BBC1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and Flagship (broadcasting), flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includ ...
from 22 November to 13 December 1980. ''State of Decay'' is the second of three loosely connected serials set in another universe known as E-Space. In the serial, three
vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...
lords rule over a village deliberately kept at a low development level for a thousand years. The lords intend to revive their giant leader vampire, the "Great One", that converted them from humans after their spaceship crashed on the planet.


Plot

After the events of '' Full Circle'', the
Fourth Doctor The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He is portrayed by Tom Baker. Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from ...
, Romana, K9, and TARDIS
stowaway A stowaway or clandestine traveller is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as a ship, an aircraft, a train, cargo truck or bus. Sometimes, the purpose is to get from one place to another without paying for transportation. In other c ...
Adric arrive on a planet with a feudal society whose inhabitants live under the thrall of three lords—Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon—who dwell in a shadowy Tower. The Doctor and Romana discover evidence of advanced technology and wonder what happened to cause the planet to devolve to its current "state of decay". After being taken prisoner by the three lords, The Doctor and Romana discover that the great Tower in which the Lords dwell is a spaceship called ''Hydrax'', originally from
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...
. The three lords are members of the original crew, mutated into
vampires A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...
, while the subjects beneath them are the descendants of the other colonists, made dull and primitive by generations of breeding and oppression. A rebel called Tarak infiltrates the Tower, freeing the Doctor and Romana. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, while Romana stays with Tarak to search for Adric. They find Adric in a state of
trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...
. Zargo and Camilla attack them, but Aukon compels them to stop. He wants Adric as a Chosen One and Romana, a Time Lord, for sacrifice at the Arising, the first taste of revenge for their master, the "Great One." In the TARDIS the Doctor discovers that the Great Vampires could only be defeated using specially designed ships which fired steel bolts that speared the monsters through the heart. Deep within the tower, he finds the last Great Vampire, about to be revived. The Doctor rigs one of the spaceship's old scout ships to launch and fall back toward the ground, driving itself into the heart of the subterranean Great One. With the Great One dispatched, the three vampire Lords crumble to dust. The Doctor finds Romana and Adric and they leave the planet, hoping it will develop once again toward its former advanced state.


Production

Working titles for this story included ''The Wasting'' and ''The Witch Lords''. The serial was a re-written version of a story originally entitled ''The Witch Lords'', later retitled ''The Vampire Mutations'', which Dicks had submitted to the series in 1977, but which had been pulled just before production because of fears of a possible conflict with the BBC's ''
Count Dracula Count Dracula () is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. He is considered the prototypical and archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by some to have been i ...
'', a high-profile adaptation of
Bram Stoker Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912), better known by his pen name Bram Stoker, was an Irish novelist who wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. The book is widely considered a milestone in Vampire fiction, and one of t ...
's classic novel ''
Dracula ''Dracula'' is an 1897 Gothic fiction, Gothic horror fiction, horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is Epistolary novel, related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens ...
''. It was replaced by '' Horror of Fang Rock'' (1977). This serial and the following '' Warriors' Gate'' featured an improved K9 prop.


Broadcast and reception

For ''
Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...
'', Mark Braxton awarded ''State of Decay'' four stars out of five, writing that "Terrance Dicks's penultimate script for ''Doctor Who'' positively gushes with invention and wit. In fact, it's among his cleverest, and gives an already striking season 18 a tremendous shot in the arm." He considered it "a throwback to the Hinchcliffe/
Holmes Holmes may refer to: People and fictional characters * Holmes (surname), a list of people and fictional characters ** Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective * Holmes (given name), a list of people * Gordon Holmes, a penname used by Louis Trac ...
golden age, played with a totally straight bat and all the better for it." He regarded it as "gorgeously designed" and the "vampiric triumvirate" as "wonderfully cast", and "one of Tom Baker's finest outings", saying there was an "on-screen rapport" between him and Lalla Ward which was "charming and relaxed". He found some faults, stating that "some effectively chilly location filming at Burnham Beeches notwithstanding, the bats are a bit lame, rendered by stock footage, cut-outs dangled from a string or a tinkling electronic noise. Despite their simmering menace, Aukon, Camilla and Zargo are all threat and no bite, swishing about with some bizarrely stagey movements. And the Great One is a gloved hand." However, he concluded by stating that it was "supremely atmospheric, solid of script and with potent production values." Writing for ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' in 2019, Toby Hadoke described it as "a clever meld of vampire legend and science fiction". In ''Doctor Who: The Complete Guide'', Mark Campbell was less impressed, awarding it six out of ten, describing it as a "limply directed vampire tale that doesn't really gel – the horror should be more explicit, the vampirism more obvious. One feels the production team deliberately didn't want to plagiarise
Hammer A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nail (fastener), nails into wood, to sh ...
, which, considering the Hammeresque script, seems a mistake."


Commercial releases


In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by
Terrance Dicks Terrance William Dicks (14 April 1935 – 29 August 2019) was an English author and television screenwriter, script editor and producer. In television, he had a long association with the BBC science-fiction series ''Doctor Who'', working as a ...
, was published by W. H. Allen Ltd (hardback) in September 1981, with the paperback from
Target Books Target Books is a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became wel ...
following in January 1982. A novelisation with different text was written by Dicks for an audiobook read by Tom Baker and released on cassette by Pickwick in June 1981. On 7 January 2016 the full audiobook of the Target novelisation was released read by Geoffrey Beevers and John Leeson.


Home media

''State of Decay'' was released on
VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...
in October 1997. It was released on DVD in January 2009 as part of a boxed set entitled ''The E-Space Trilogy''. This serial was also released as part of the
Doctor Who DVD Files This is a list of ''Doctor Who'' serials and episodes that have been released on DVD and Blu-ray. DVD Release Most ''Doctor Who'' DVDs have been released first in the United Kingdom with DVD region code#Region codes and countries, Region ...
(issue 86) in April 2012. In 2020, it was released as part of the ''Time Lord Victorious: Road to the Dark Times'' Blu-ray.


References


External links

*


Target novelisation

* {{K9 stories, selected=Television 1980 British television episodes Doctor Who serials novelised by Terrance Dicks Fourth Doctor serials Television episodes about vampires Fiction set in the 4th millennium