State Of Decay is the 113th Doctor Who serial and it aired November 22 and ran through December 13 1980. It's the 4th serial of the 18th season and Tom Baker is still the 4th Doctor. Lalla Ward is Romana, Michael Waterhouse is the new companion Adric and John Leeson is K-9. The story was written by Terrance Dicks. It was directed by Peter Moffatt.
The Tardis, still in E-Space, comes across a planet with a feudal society. The locals are under the thumb of a trio of vampires who demand humans for lunch. The vampires worship a powerful but unseen entity that the Doctor figures out is one of the Great Vampires. Once a powerful race they fought the Time Lords and were vanquished. The body of the King of the Great Vampires was never found and the Doc figures this is where he wound up. The evil being is buried under the floor in a basement of the castle.
The Great Vampire lured Earthmen from normal space and their decedents are the snacks that exist today. While the Doc and Romana are on their initial sortie Adric comes out of hiding and he tricks K-9 into letting him out of the ship. He gets captured pretty quick and winds up in the vampire's castle. That turns out to be the Earthmen's space ship covered with plants and dirt. That will be important when it comes time to destroy the Great Vampire who really doesn't live up to his name. All we see is it's hand before the Doctor drops a pointy scout craft on it. You can see the hand set below. It's pretty silly looking, even without the unknown hand of someone adjusting the set. I took that out of a series of test shots. The Great Vampire has a huge hand, bigger than a man, which busts out of the floor. It's filmed and mixed with green screen shots of people standing in the forground. I did like that the spaceship turned into a castle. I wasn't too keen on the story after it all played out. It wasn't anything too special. I'm not caring much for Adric either. I'm going to be sad when it's just him and the Doctor.
The commentary track is by Mathew Waterhouse, Peter Moffatt and Terrance Dicks. It was better than some other commentaries. Terrance Dicks is usually interesting and has plenty of stories and opinions. There's a making of that was ok, a couple of shorts on vampires and blood, an info track, a couple of other less interesting pieces and an isolated score.
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