The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: State Of Decay
State Of Decay: Part One (22/11/20)
This week's episode felt more like Doctor Who than the series has in a while! I'd hazard a guess this is partly because it was written by Terrance Dicks, but it also had a very Gothic feel akin to some of the Hinchcliffe era (but better).
It opened with scenes which seemed to be set in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages with the Three Who Rule in their rather gorgeous castle and peasants in the adjoining village being taken away at a selection (including the Head Man's son). I'm guessing that the Doctor and Romana arrived some time later due to the way Ivo and the Head Guard were talking about the fate of Ivo's son. It turns out that the castle and village are the only civilisation on the planet, and the advanced technology K9 detected was because they're all descendants of a ship from Earth which passed through the CVE that brought the TARDIS to E-Space a thousand years ago. The peasants seem to live in fear of the Three Who Rule, understandably since all knowledge is forbidden (even though a band of rebels have set up camp in the forest with salvaged technology once part of the ship (which is how Romana and the Doctor found out about the villagers' origins), but the rulers also protect the locals from something called The Wasting.
Biggest surprise this week was that Adric stowed away on the TARDIS! He, weirdly, looks somehow younger than in 'Full Circle', but that may be his haircut. K9 had some nice comedy moments during their brief conversation before Adric left the TARDIS for the village.
The Three Who Rule have found out about 'strangers' in the village from the Head Guard and sent bats out to attack them, finding the Doctor and Romana in the twilit forest.
It all looks really good, already the best this series, and Tom seems to be enjoying himself again. Lalla has a gorgeous mauve outfit, and all the costumes are really nicely designed. The sets all look great, but the forest is outstanding, absolutely gorgeous like something out of a Hammer Horror! If this is even half as good as Uncle Tewwance's last outing it'll be the best in a very long time! Definitely looking forward to seeing how this story pans out!
State Of Decay: Part Two (29/11/20)
Okay, so this is all very Hammer Horror which is great because it's a vampire story. Adric didn't do a lot except get taken away and hypnotised by Aukon, then chosen to join him with Camilla and Zargo as One Who Rules (they're the vampires, incidentally), and there was no sign of K9 which just continues his sidelining this series, but otherwise this was a bloody (excuse the pun) good episode!
Zargo (who's actually strikingly handsome when you have a good look), Camilla and Aukon are descendants of the original Pilot, Co-Pilot and Flight Officer who have spent generations preparing for 'The Rising' and halve finally picked Adric to join The Chosen having bred dullness and stupidity into the descendants of the Hydrax's crew. The Doctor and Romana were caught by the guards and taken to the Tower where they met Zargo and Camilla and had a beautifully scripted exchange full of innuendo and word play, then left alone when a guard informed Zargo and Camilla that the Chosen One had been found. This allowed the Doctor and Romana to figure out that they're actually in the spaceship and go exploring - first finding a scout ship at the top of the Tower, then the Selected being drained of blood in the fuel tank room in order to feed some creature. It concluded with Aukon discovering them in a cavern below the ship's thrusters where something with a very loud heartbeat was making the cavern floor rise and fall.
As good as the last few stories have been, this story is a throwback to the old days of three or four years back in the best way. It helps that it's from the pen of Terrance Dicks and it's a worthy successor to 'Horror Of Fang Rock' and exudes his literary confidence and talent.
Tom and Lalla are at their peak, bouncing off one another with the incredibly witty dialogue and the perfect partnership of leading actors. The design work is stunning and the score suitably dramatic. This may well be the best story of the season (unless it all goes 'Stones Of Blood' and relocates to a Sci Fi setting next week - but since Dicks' last story stuck to Gothic Horror for all four episodes I doubt that'll happen). All said, this has all the positives of the last season without any of the negatives. Halfway through, I'm hoping it stays this good!
Oh! And in last week's cliffhanger it looked like the Doctor has blue blood (I noticed in the recap)! Yet Romana clearly has red blood when she cut herself in the Tower. Just an observation and it may have been the lighting on location that tinted the Doctor's blood, but even so!
State Of Decay: Part Three (06/12/20)
This week's episode was mainly filler, but nonetheless atmospheric. The main gist of it is that Zargo, Camilla and Aukon are servants of a huge vampire which is the leader and sole survivor of a massive, fuck-off battle with the Time Lords in the distant past "when even Rassilon was young"!
Early on, the Doctor and Romana were caught and locked up, learning that Adric had stowed away and come looking for them only to become one of the vampires' Chosen. They're ready for the giant vampire to rise again after centuries of feeding off the blood of the descendants of the crew of the Hydrax which he lured through the CVE to E-Space, and (having learnt that they're Time Lords) Romana and the Doctor are to be the first sacrifices! Incidentally, we also learnt that Ivo's son wasn't made a guard and ended up as fodder for the Great One. Ivo, as a result, is mounting an attack on the Tower with the remaining villagers.
There was an extended sequence in the cell where Tom and Lalla gave an absolutely brilliant performance talking about K'anpo - the Hermit the Doctor knew growing up (though they didn't mention him as such) - and the myths about vampires. Then Tarak (a rebel who infiltrated the Tower) rescued them (in another brilliantly directed sequence where he burst into the cell and coshed the Doctor with the door).
The Doctor went back to the TARDIS to basically chat with K9 (yay!) and find out exactly what he and Romana had ascertained from memory in the cell in a wonderful bit of water-treading, whilst Tarak took Romana to rescue Adric. He's okay (and been absent for at least 20 minutes of this episode) but Zargo and Camilla woke up, killed Tarak and turned on Romana and Adric (for breakfast)!
This is by far the best story this series, largely because Terrance Dicks has written such witty dialogue. Tom and Lalla are running with it and whilst it feels like a throwback to previous stories, it does so in a good way. It's nice to have such a great atmosphere exude from the cast whilst the story itself retains an air of darkness, adventure and drama. I think we have here the best balance between the show's past and the vision of the new Production Team. I'm certainly looking forward to next week's finale and hope that the rest of this season remains as good!
State Of Decay: Part Four (13/12/20)
Well, that was certainly the best story this series, at the very least on a par with 'Full Circle'. It was more traditional, though, and far more enjoyable. Tom and Lalla work so well together as the Doctor and Romana, just as good as Tom and Louise but with a completely different relationship - much closer, much more like a couple.
Adric and K9 got a lot more to do this week; K9 led the villagers and rebels when they stormed the Tower, blasting guards down as he went. Adric, meanwhile, seemed to side with Aukon and the vampires giving quite a reasonable speech when Romana challenged him - one of his family has already died for the Doctor and one is enough, plus if it's a choice between "being on the menu or one of the diners...". It turned out to be a bluff as he tried (and failed) to save Romana at the moment Aukon chose to sacrifice her to the Great Vampire. Fortunately, the Doctor had climbed up to the scout ships in the nose of the Hydrax/Tower, got one working and targeted it to go straight up and then straight down into the Great Vampire's heart. The sacrifice was interrupted, the Great Vampire was killed, and the Three Who Rule, as the Doctor said, "just went to pieces". It was a suitably grim death for them, and the Doctor, Romana, K9 and Adric left the villagers with their new technology, free and able to live in peace, and maybe return to Earth some day.
All in all, it was a great little story with some truly wonderful costumes, particularly the outfits given to Adric and Romana by the vampires. Less successful in realisation was the Great Vampire. This is where it fell short compared to 'Full Circle' which was brilliantly designed across the board. Scanning the base of the Tower with an X-Ray, the Doctor discovered a piss-poor static gargoyle thing being wiggled about by a Stage Hand, possibly the same Stage Hand that popped up through the miniature cavern set wearing a 'demonic' glove-hand. Frankly, it was shit, but was the only negative in an otherwise brilliant story.
And now we have a break over Yule, the series returning in the New Year! The Doctor says he's taking Adric back to the Starliner, but I doubt it. It's going to be interesting having three companions after so long. I've kind of missed a busy TARDIS!
Quite rightly, this story is often pointed out as the leftover from the Philip Hinchcliffe era it was, being a quasi-Gothic Hammer Horror pastiche that fits in perfectly with the stuff that was being churned out in Seasons Thirteen and Fourteen in particular. But as you point out - not that it's never been noticed before, but it doesn't get as much attention as the aforementioned fact - it's also surprisingly witty, showing that Terrance Dicks clearly got the memo when originally writing it between producers that he had to temper the Grand Guignol with humour. In that sense, and especially with a [thin] veneer of Bidmead in the E-space stuff, it comes across as an almost perfect fusion of the three distinct Tom Baker eras.
ReplyDeleteIt's not perfect though, because it's got Adric/Matthew Waterhouse in it (the actor's first recorded story, making him even more awkward and unsure of himself than usual) and some of the effects are a let-down, so it still ranks lower on my list than Full Circle, and probably even below The Leisure Hive, which edges this for me its newness and vibrancy. But I agree on the whole that it's a more than decent production all round, and a very cosy story to watch. Ironically.
Whilst I agree that Waterhouse does come across as a bit awkward, I think the story nonetheless benefits by the fact that he's barely in it. It's ages until we actually find out he stowed away and even then he just wanders to the village and has a couple of scenes where he eats. He has a couple of scenes in Part Two and is absent from Part Three until the final three minutes where he's mostly coming round from hypnosis. The final episode is the only one where he has any substantial screen time and much of that he's getting growled at by Romana/Lalla. But it's nevertheless a great story mixing the best elements of the last six seasons. Overall, the series at this point has hit its stride.
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