The State of Decay

Still looking for the way out of E Space, the Doctor, Romana and K9 arrive at a small inhabited planet hoping to find some help. What they find instead is a society where the people are living in a cultural dark age, working all day in fields to service the needs to the Three Who Rule in their tower. Adric has managed to stow away on board the TARDIS and falls under the thrall of the Three, who plan to induct him into their order. The Doctor and Romana discover that the rulers are not benevolant but are instead vicious vampires following the ways of the Great Vampire himself, an ancient enemy of the Time Lords who vanished from known space thousands of years previous after the Time Lords hunted down and killed the rest of its people.

There's nothing like good atmospheric vampire story, and The State of Decay is just that. There are vampire bats. There is a creepy old tower. There are superstitious peasants and gothic-looking robes, extreme makeup, blood, and a bit of overacting from the players representing Zargo, Camilla and Aukon, but all in good fun. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward continue to make a solid Doctor and companion team, but Matthew Waterhouse's Adric leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth of a true fan, wondering why producer John Nathan-Turner felt the need to clutter up the TARDIS crew with an annoying young boy. Hm.

The sustained thread of E Space comes up a few times over the course of the show, with it being revealed that the Great Vampire deliberately came here to escape the Time Lords, and at the time of his awakening will go back and resume his path of destruction and killing to satisfy his appetite.

Maybe I've watched too much Buffy though, and my ideas of what makes a vampire scary have changed. These three aren't that scary, just their fashion sense is. I'm not quite sure what it is they lack. Maybe we needed to see them killing more people.

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