State of Decay Part Four

The one where the Great Vampire arises (or his hand does)...

It's so hard to tell, which is why I missed it at the end of part 3, but Adric actually throws a knife at Zargo, which imbeds itself firmly into the vampire's heart. It's directed by Peter Moffatt with rather too much obfuscation, resulting in it passing me by completely the first time. I can understand they might not want to show something as graphic as a knife to the heart in a family show, but in that case, why have it in the final draft? At least we didn't get a comedy "booiiiing" sound effect like we did in The Robots of Death.

The Three Who Rule cannot wait for the Great Vampire to arise so that they can get on with swarming through the universe, devouring people and planets and growing ever greater in number. The Great One apparently knows the secret of passing more easily between E-Space and N-Space, so the threat is very real. Now that the Great One is sufficiently regenerated, all wounds healed, it's almost time for The Arising. In readiness, Aukon plans to sacrifice Romana, a Time Lord and sworn enemy of the Great Vampires.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is trying to rouse the rebels into actually being rebellious. Kalmar has dithered for too long, preferring to hold back an attack on the tower until they have more knowledge about what they face, but the doddery old fool's time is surely passed. First Tarak, then Ivo, then Veros question Kalmar's reticence, and finally the Doctor himself. He manages to convince Kalmar that they have no time to lose my using the x-ray scanner to show him what lurks at the foot of the tower - a writhing giant bat creature! Peter Moffatt was wise to smudge the image of the creature with x-ray effects because it doesn't look very convincing, but it looks vaguely convincing in the brief, blurry shot we get of it.

The Doctor leads the rebels to the tower, with K-9 used as a mobile laser gun yet again. K-9's laser is probably set to stun (although he does say he has "reconfigured in aggression mode"), but the men themselves look like they're spearing/ killing the tower guards, which is pretty callous when you remember that these guards are their family and friends. They are only guards because Habris picked them during the various Selections, and whether they are hypnotised into obedience or not, killing these men would be like killing your kith and kin.

Amusingly, the Doctor leaves K-9 in charge of the rebels while he climbs to the flight deck in the turret to try and get one of the three scout ships working. The shot of K-9 perched loftily on the throne of the Three Who Rule is wonderful!

The most interesting part of this episode is what's going on with Adric, or rather what's going on in his head. He's been chosen by Aukon to become a vampire to swell their ranks and swarm throughout the universe, devouring all they encounter. At first he doesn't seem all that complicit, as he throws that knife at Zargo, but the conversation he has with Romana in the throne room casts an ambiguous light on his thought process. He comes across as a spoilt, precocious brat yet again by dismissing the Doctor as a coward, and blaming Romana for failing to rescue him and getting Tarak killed in the process. He then says it would be better to be turned into a vampire, than be eaten by one ("You said yourself, you're on the menu. If it's a choice between that and joining the diners, I mean there's no sense in two of us getting the chop.")

This selfish attitude is quite shocking for someone who's supposed to be companion material, but at least it makes Adric a little more complex. By the end of the episode we're supposed to realise that it was all a bluff (he says as much himself), and that he had a plan all along to rescue Romana (although his plan to attack the vampires with a knife is a pretty weak plan after having seen how useless it was last time he tried!). But the rather traitorous conversation he has with Romana in the throne room cannot have been for show, as the Three Who Rule were not present at that time. Sure, a couple of guards were there, but the extent of Adric's apparent betrayal of the Doctor and Romana in that scene seems just that little bit too convincing. Of course, Adric is allowed to change his mind, but the way it plays out in the final edit, it feels like Adric really was going to sell the Doctor and Romana out to save his own neck, or at least to make his own neck timeless and eternal!

Emrys James is fabulous in this episode. He has ramped the performance level up a notch since part 1, but he can do that because the story's reaching its climax, and he's an evil vampire, so it's allowed. His Shakespearean-style delivery is gorgeous, and the joy he takes in some of the dialogue is wonderful to witness. When Habris says all the guards will be killed by the attacking rebels, Aukon leans menacingly into him and says: "Then die. That is the purpose of guards." Chilling!

The Arising is done quite effectively, with Paddy Kingsland ramping up the score and the stakes getting higher as Romana is prepared for sacrifice. The use of stock footage of swarming bats is cleverly integrated to make it look like they're entering the tower. A bat bites Romana on the neck at one point, but nothing comes of it, oddly. "Drink her soul and grow strong!" intones Aukon as the Great Vampire rises from his subterranean tomb. The Great One is represented by a giant clawed hand smashing its way up through the ground, which is wisely restrained and does the job well, although I suspect Terrance Dicks was probably thinking more of a fully-costumed monster in the vein of The Daemons' Azal originally.

A giant monster hand is fine by me, and the way the creature is dispatched is very clever, with the Doctor using the tower scout ship itself as a bolt of steel to pierce its heart. The monster screams in agony (is that the same scream sound effect used for the dying Gods of Ragnarok in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy?) and is vanquished, and sadly with it goes the secret of how to get to N-Space easily.

The demise of the Three Who Rule is deliciously gruesome, particularly for 6pm when this would have been seen. Norma Hill excels yet again with the prosthetic make-up as the vampires decompose, the different stages of dessication like something out of a George A Romero film. It's genuinely horrifying!

The end of the story sees the Doctor and Adric finally meet (they've not seen each other since Full Circle part 4), and the Doctor insisting that he go straight back to the Starliner. The Fourth Doctor has never chosen his own company, something he points out rather angrily in Logopolis: Sarah was inherited from his predecessor, Harry was meant to be a quick one-off trip, Leela forced her way aboard the TARDIS, Leela begged for K-9 to be allowed to join them, and Romana was forced on him by the White Guardian. Adric was a stowaway, so it's totally in character for the Doctor to want to take him back. This Doctor is a loner at hearts, he doesn't mind his own company (remember how unbothered he was by Romana having to return to Gallifrey?).

State of Decay is a beautiful production in almost every aspect: the way it's written, the way it looks, the way it's directed, the way it's performed. It's Doctor Who does Hammer Horror, a vampire film at Saturday teatime. That's very me! Tom and Lalla are on blistering form, Emrys James brings bags of gravitas to the part, and the Three Who Design - Amy Roberts, Christine Ruscoe and Norma Hill - truly excel themselves. But at the heart of it all, where the quality really stems from, is Terrance Dicks' script. He may not have been very pleased with the final product, questioning some of the changes script editor Christopher H Bidmead made, but it's a rich, atmospheric and ultimately very successful addition to the canon.

Dicks was pretty good at doing that.

Doctor Who took a couple of weeks off over Christmas, its time slot taken by the British TV premiere of the 1942 version of The Jungle Book, and It's a Christmas Knockout. When Season 18 resumed in the New Year, it was promoted as a "new season" by BBC1, and as a result ratings soared by up to three million.

First broadcast: December 13th, 1980

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The effect of the decomposing Three Who Rule is wonderfully gruesome.
The Bad: The awful line: "One of my family died for your lot already. I reckon one's enough."
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★ (story average: 9.3 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 24

NEXT TIME: Warriors' Gate...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/09/state-of-decay.html

State of Decay is available on BBC DVD as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Space-Trilogy-Warriors/dp/B001MWRTUY