Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 16 (Doctor Who: State Of Decay)

What? Yes, vampires go extra on their eyeshadow like that.

I'm here way too early. There exists, somewhere in the fertile ground of my mental idea garden, a plan to do a project talking about every story of Season 18 of classic Doctor Who. I don't know if anything will ever come from it, but this story's from it. Consider this either a teaser for what's to come, or the only goddamned part of it that ever gets written. Time will tell. So, a little background for this set of four Doctor Who episodes, because the background's kind of interesting and actually mirrors what ended up on screen. (Yeah, ain't gonna stop talking about mirrors in Doctor Who any time soon.) Originally written for the mid-70's, smack dab around the Hinchcliffe Horror era (which we've covered once or twice before in Halloween marathons past, I do believe), it got shelved because it was a "Doctor Who does vampires" story at a time when the BBC was doing a Serious Dramatic Adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula and didn't want Tom Baker taking the piss right alongside it. Or something. It remained on the back burner until 1980, when it was revived and retooled to fit an ongoing story arc. State Of Decay now was the middle chapter of the E-Space trilogy, so called because the Doctor and his Time Lady companion Romana were stuck in an alternate universe called Exo-Space and were trying to get back to their own reality. I really don't want to blow my wad for a potential Season 18 project, but I find the E-Space arc to be utterly fascinating. I'm kind of a sucker for other realities and all, so any story where the TARDIS slips sideways instead of back and forth makes me perk up. Why does this make the story mirror the background of its eventual filming? Because of the simple fact that it follows the old tropes of the Hinchcliffe Horror era; specifically, the touch of the main baddie being a menacing monster thought long dead but returned for one last grasp. The King Vampire of this story is the last of a race of super-vampires that the Time Lords had a great and massive war with (Hello, future!) who fled into E-Space and is now lost outside of normal time. So, too, is this story the last of its kind; the final grasp of the Hinchcliffe Horror era, warped out of time and space into the far reaches of 1980, when the program was on an eve of massive change. I love this crunchy stuff. How about the story itself? It's okay.


Let me set the scene for you here; it's been a hell of a day here, weather-wise. Gale force winds are blowing against the house and have been all day, and as I fired the DVD up the sun was setting. It was literally a dark and stormy night as I viewed State of Decay, and that just added to the atmosphere. The parts of it that are Gothic horror are dripping with it, particularly the main throne room of the three vampires. You've got a village full of peasants terrorized by them, and it all seems standard vampire stuff... but then you have the glimmers of space technology. The band of villagers who hide technology and try to learn from it to overthrow their Lords. The fact that the vampire's lair is actually a giant rocket ship, its fuel tanks used as blood storage for the Great Vampire which slumbers below the earth. It may be Gothic horror, but it's still Doctor Who, baby. What I really love is the one scene where the Doctor and Romana first meet two of the Lords, and just absolutely take the piss out of all of their statements that what they do is for the good of the peasants. (I'll just defer to the ever-wonderful Jack Graham for this bit.) That's peak Doctor Who for me, right there. I also really quite love the soundtrack, believe it or not. I used to be down on the whole synthy thing but this has grown on me. I particularly love the "twinkling" synth noises uses to represent bats. It's just so weird and uncanny that it actually makes things feel more alien in retrospect. It shouldn't work, but it does. What doesn't work? Adric, I suppose. I understand that he was tacked on. I understand he has a... reputation. I won't critique that, but I will say that he doesn't work here. He spends a lot of the story just wandering around, has a bit near the end where he pretends to be tempted by becoming a vampire, and then tries to betray them and fails. Doesn't accomplish much, but again... he wasn't supposed to be here.


Look, it works, okay? Maybe the Great Vampire effects could have been better, but I can't be a downer on a story with as metal of a fucking ending as "Doctor Who launches a rocketship into space to have it come down to earth and be used as a giant stake to kill a giant vampire". I mean, Jesus Christ. Is it my favorite E-Space story? Not really. I think I'd still give that one to the story following this, Warrior's Gate. It's all weird and dreamy and... neat. Sure, there's some sort of Dark Souls-y stuff going on with it but it's not really a spooky one. Not like this story, with vampires and blood and stakes and shit. I think I've done okay here. I've covered just enough for a Halloween marathon post, but left enough gonzo takes open that I won't be totally repeating myself if the Season 18 Project ever happens. Well done. Now. What the hell ELSE can I talk about...?