N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

State of Decay, despite a couple of rather odd cliffhangers — stock footage of bats and Aukon’s eyes, anyone? — continues the upturn in season eighteen’s quality.

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

The Doctor, State of Decay: Part Two

Its first couple of episodes, in particular, are terrifically atmospheric and, given it’s a vampire tale, its resolution is suitably gruesome. Doctor Who, especially Fourth Doctor Doctor Who, has always done Gothic horror well and this is a fine addition to that tradition.

It’s also the fourth story in a row that deals with decay and decline and the passage of time. Whether it’s the dying days of the Argolins in The Leisure Hive, Meglos the last Zolfa-Thuran, the coming of Mistfall and the the Alzarians’ endless preparation for take-off in Full Circle, or the centuries the Three-Who-Rule have lorded it over the villagers here, there’s a distinct sense of things coming to an end in all these stories.

Do I sense a theme developing? It certainly feels as though we’re building to something.

Even though it was probably born of necessity due to Terrance Dicks having to graft him onto his original script, it works rather well that Adric is kept out of the action until later on. It means that the Doctor and Romana don’t know he’s stowed away with them until Part Three. (It also means there was a chance Adric could have been left behind without their even knowing about it! I certainly wouldn’t have relied on K-9 to have told them he’d sneaked aboard.)

“There was once an old hermit from the mountains of south Gallifrey.”

The Doctor, State of Decay: Part Three

I also like that the script relates the Great Vampires to Time Lord lore, with the strong implication that the Great One might have been the vampire who’d eluded them. I’m a sucker for this kind of Time Lord mythologising in passing — Robert Holmes was also a master at it too — and it made me wonder whether Romana’s fear of the vampires (she does seems especially frightened here) is perhaps some form of Time Lord race memory?

Leaving aside such speculation — the vampires don’t seem to bother the Doctor that much, after all — State of Decay remains a solid tale, one that fits as well into this new era of Doctor Who as it would’ve done in Philip Hinchcliffe’s or Graham Williams’.

In fact, it might be time to dust off my Ditto audio cassette and give it a listen.