State of Decay

Dear Gary—

“There are vampire legends on almost every inhabited planet.”

State of Decay is a return to the gothic glory days of old. “Protective castle; village dwellings huddled like ducklings round their mother; typical medieval scene.” Creepy rulers; frightened peasants; swarming bats. The Selection; the Wasting; the Arising. “A feeding system for something that lives on human blood;” a society that has evolved backwards; “a sociopathetic chasm.”

“I’ve never seen such a state of decay.”

The one gripe I have with this story is Romana. She’s OK to start, but once we get into the horror gothic of it all she is just plain boring. This story cries out for a Sarah Jane Smith. Someone who is brave and intelligent and resourceful, like Romana, but someone who also has some character and personality. In fact, throw out Adric and Romana both—Sarah Jane is all you’d need.

But alas it is not to be.

Actually, I rather like Adric in the first half of this. He has a sort of boyish charm as he cleverly outwits K9 and then sneaks into the peasant village. (I have to say, however, that Adric has established himself as a rather pathetic food thief as first evidenced in Full Circle when he drops the river fruit upon being recognized.) His brief encounter with Marta is touching, although this is mainly due to Marta rather than Adric. Too bad Marta isn’t given more screen time—she would have added some depth to the peasant uprising, more so than what her husband provides.

Romana, too, starts out well, asking pertinent questions, offering relevant observations, applying her considerable knowledge to the problems at hand. She is even quite endearing as she works out the names—Sharky, MacMillan, O’Connor to Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon—the Law of Consonantal Shift as defined by the Brothers Grimm.

But then the two of them, Adric and Romana, are captured by the deadly trio, Zargo, Camilla, and Aukon, and I just lose interest in them. They are bland captives as they sit passively with their hands feebly tied in front of them. I never sense any real peril for either. If Adric had been sincere in his conversion to the dark side things might have been a bit more interesting, but his lame attempt at acting is laughable and ultimately goes nowhere.

For a vampire story, it is not the action that holds my interest (there is very little), but it is the working out of the mystery that compels me. That is what the Fourth Doctor is good at.

“It’s quite a technocotheca you’ve got here.” (“Doctor, what’s a technocotheca?” “I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of museum.”)

The discovery of Earth technology on a planet in E-Space; a society that is sinking backwards into primitivism; the association of names and faces from the Earth ship to the current rulers twenty generations later; all clues leading the Doctor onward.

Onward and to the tower and to Aukon, Camilla, and Zargo.

Aukon—Science Officer Anthony O’Connor. “Power, Doctor. It is the only reality.”

Camilla—Navigational Officer Lauren MacMillan. “Yet flesh and blood has its place.”

Zargo—Captain Miles Sharky. “Why am I still afraid?”

In typical Doctor Who style, with just a very few lines entire back stories are understood.

O’Connor, the ambitious. MacMillan, the lustful. Sharky, the insecure.

From the three, the Doctor works to the one. “When the bodies were counted, the King Vampire, mightiest and most malevolent of all, had vanished, even unto his shadow, from time and space.” This is a very effective scene. Just the Doctor and K9, the TARDIS and the ancient Record of Rassilon. The Doctor reading of the mighty battle; of bowships and vampires; of “the misty dawn of history, when even Rassilon was young.”

And the full story is revealed. The King Vampire, speaking through O’Connor, lured the ship Hydrax into E-Space, giving eternal life to the three officers as they now prepare for the Arising and the promise of power, breeding their crew through the generations to serve and to feed on, but also searching in vain for minds worthy to share in their future glory of swarming back into N-Space and spreading devastation across the universe.

It is all very simply and believably done. The makeup and elaborate costumes alone on our terrible triad speaks volumes. The looks, gestures, and briefest of lines tells the rest of the tale. The sudden onset of night, the wind in the trees, the bats overhead, the medieval castle and village all add to the atmosphere of gloom. Like the great black and white Bela Lugosi Dracula of old, the dark mysteries of the mind are far more terrifying than the graphic rending of flesh.

Too bad a pasty faced Romana serenely laid out on a slab is offered up as our sacrifice. She looks like the blood has already been drained from her body.

The villagers storming the castle are disappointing as well. Perhaps if this had occurred at night with blazing torches and a pitchfork or two it would have helped. Instead we get some playacting of villagers and guards going at it with sticks, the guards falling over with little resistance, and K9 sitting atop the throne to give the order to retreat.

Also, what should have been a climactic scene of the peasant Ivo confronting the guard Habris is a complete letdown. Again, this would have been so much more effective if Marta had been allowed her sweet justice.

Speaking of Habris and as an aside, I do love Aukon’s response to Habris when he states the guards are outnumbered and will surely be killed: “Then die. That is the purpose of guards.”

Wrapping up the ending, though, I do like that the King Vampire is never shown in its entirety. Given the history of giant Doctor Who monsters, this is probably for the best. The huge hand emerging from the earth before being speared by the rocket is sufficient. And the final aging and disintegration of Aukon, Camilla, and Zargo is terrific.

“Knowing’s easy,” the Doctor says to start out our story. “Everyone does that ad nauseam. I just sort of hope.” I love this quote, Gary. It is so typical of Tom Baker’s Doctor, even now as he is winding to a close.

And so as I wind to a close I send this out to you dear Gary, sort of hoping . . .