State of Decay Part One

The one where the Doctor and Romana encounter a swarm of carnivorous bats...

I have a deep-rooted relationship with State of Decay. When I was five I had the Pickwick audio cassette of the story which I listened to over and over again, both fascinated by and slightly afraid of Tom Baker's doom-laden narration. It came out before the Target novelisation, and differs from both the TV and book versions significantly (I seem to remember it cuts a lot of K-9 out). Another fundamental connection I have with this story is that (I believe) it is the first memory I have of watching Doctor Who. There's a very specific scene and shot (maybe in part 3 - I'll know when I get to it) of Romana and the Doctor climbing the ladder to the top of the Hydrax, which for some reason, despite its humdrum quality, stayed with me. I can even visualise it in the same hazy way I could for all those years until I got the VHS and could relive it again.

The episode opens with a tracking shot of a huge cathedral-like tower looming over a rural landscape and village. So far, so folk horror. The architecture inside the tower is what I might call gothic, others might call rococo, still others might call Romanesque, but whatever the truth, it's a gorgeous design by Christine Ruscoe which, in partnership with Amy Roberts' sumptuous costumes, just screams HAMMER HORROR! Doctor Who and Hammer are two of my favourite things in the world, so State of Decay is already shaping up well.

It's all so beautifully Bavarian, evoking that look and atmosphere the Hammer films drew upon regularly to represent the indefinable vampiric world of Dracula and his fanged cronies. Norma Hill's make-up is also splendidly theatrical, making the Lords in the tower look like New Romantic opera singers in a production staged by Hammer designer Bernard Robinson. It's gorgeous!

In the village, the local peasants are lining up for the Selection process, where villagers are chosen by the Lords' guard captain Habris to go to the tower and serve the Three Who Rule. Husband and wife Ivo and Marta do their best to distract Habris from the fact their strapping son Karl seems like ideal material for the Selection, but Habris obviously has an eye for these things, and spots him hiding in a corner. Karl is taken off to the tower, and Ivo and Marta have to accept their son's fate.

Into this primitive world walk the Doctor and Romana, who are trying to track down scientists so that they might find a way out of E-Space. On the face of it, they're not likely to find many people familiar with Charged Vacuum Emboitements on this planet, where it seems things like knowledge, education and science are banned by the Lords in the tower. But there is evidence that this planet and civilisation once understood advanced technology, which is hinted at when Ivo takes out a secret CB radio to communicate with an unseen colleague.

The Doctor asks Ivo if there are any scientists about, but the villager feigns ignorance. The Doctor also asks if there are any witch-wigglers about, or fortune tellers, wangerteurs or woondenoogoos (Ivo seems to recognise that last term!), but all he really gets out of them is mention of The Wasting. Everybody is quite unwilling to expand on what The Wasting is ("The Wasting is... The Wasting!"), but the Doctor does seem to have an inkling of recognition, as if he suspects what it might be but needs confirmation.

Continuing their way through the perfectly Hammer-esque woodland, the Doctor and Romana are next captured by Tarak and his men, and taken to a cave where their leader, the elderly Kalmar, sits among a collection of defunct keyboards, monitors and computer banks. It's quite the technocotheka, a word dropped into the script by Christopher H Bidmead to mean museum, which is what writer Terrance Dicks probably first wrote. Along with the likes of wangerteur and woondenoogoo, it feels a bit childish to put made-up words into the story for no reason whatsoever. It's the sort of thing I did when I was writing Doctor Who fiction at the age of 12. It sounds clever, but it's actually nonsense.

For 1,000 years, the peasants have toiled in the fields, uneducated and unloved, while the Three Who Rule gad about in their tower, occasionally sending out for villagers to replenish the staff. Kalmar is keen to get the computers working again, and thankfully the Doctor has a knack with these things.

The tech seems to be taken from an old spaceship from Earth called the Hydrax, which was on its way to Beta II in the Perugellis sector when it tumbled through a CVE and ended up in E-Space, just like the TARDIS. It had a three-strong crew: Captain Miles Sharkey, Navigational Officer Lauren MacMillan, and Science Officer Anthony O'Connor. The information displayed on the clunky old BBC Micro appears to confirm that the system files for the Hydrax are dated December 12th, 1998. This is all very interesting, especially when Tarak confirms that the faces of Sharkey, MacMillan and O'Connor he sees on the monitor he used to see every day when he was a tower guard. But the ship crashed hundreds of years ago, so how could they be the same people? And why are the Earth space travellers dressed like Vikings?

Another revelation in this episode is that Adric, the impish Alzarian from Full Circle, stowed aboard the TARDIS and is, unbeknownst to the Doctor and Romana, also wandering around the planet. He scampers his way to the village to try and steal some food. Adric is being presented here as Oliver Twist, but it doesn't flow very well from his debut story, where he's just seen his brother Varsh killed by the Marshmen. Adric should be in mourning, but instead he smugly grins his way through his introductory scene with K-9, and once he reaches the tavern, comes over as a rude, entitled prig. I realise State of Decay was filmed before Full Circle, but there is such a thing as continuity (which producer John Nathan-Turner seemed so fond of) so there's very little excuse not to reflect the truth of the character in these scenes. Adric should not be chirpy, he should be grieving! Cheese should not be his priority right now!

This is a slow-burning episode which peels back layers of the story very slowly but intriguingly, as the Doctor and Romana explore the planet, community by community. No doubt their next port of call will be the tower itself, where even more answers will lie. It's nice to have a straightforward, almost old-fashioned story to get our teeth into after the science and tech heavy serials we've had so far this season. Doctor Who doing Hammer Horror cannot possibly go wrong!

First broadcast: November 22nd, 1980

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The simplicity of Terrance Dicks' storytelling unfolds beautifully, which makes a change.
The Bad: The characterisation of Adric is unforgivably remiss.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

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

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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