(538) State of Decay - Episode 2

The second episode of this story still sees Adric separated from the Doctor and Romana. I don’t know if this is deliberate but the unexpected bonus because it is making Adric a stronger companion. The episode starts off with something rather strange, the Doctor has blue blood. Now the last time that the Doctor bled was in ‘The Deadly Assassin’ his blood was red and this is apparently a Tom Baker idea which is silly really but something else which was quite strange was the fact that Aukon was entering a room and it was clearly daylight outside which does slightly confuse the whole vampire thing.

The Doctor and Romana spend the vast majority of the episode exploring the tower which has a control room which will become relevant in future episodes but I liked the interaction between the two which considering how much tension there was apparently during recording is a surprising fact. The reaction that the Doctor gives when he comes across a barrel with blood in it is the sort of reaction he would have given during the early days of his tenure.

As this is a Terrance Dicks, it is perhaps not surprising that the story has worked as well as it has. The characters are all well rounded and at no point have I found myself bored with the story and it shows that Terrance Dicks hasn’t lost any of his magic that he has shown in the past. Peter Moffatt has directed this story rather well but due to the fact that the story is written so well and the performances are so good, the directing doesn’t really stand out which is a shame really but my abiding memory of this story so far isn’t the directing.

The revelation that Aukon, Zargo & Camilla’s names are similar to names that the Doctor and Romana read in the previous episode along with the control room development is perhaps the big thing of this episode. I really like the bit at the end where we see the model shot in the Resting place where the floor is moving up and down like a massive heartbeat. The last shot is of a close up of Aukon’s eyes which is good cliffhanger but for perhaps different reasons to normal. On one hand it was perhaps drama light but bearing in mind what had just shown up on screen it was the right ending to the episode and apart from a few individual errors, this was another solid episode with some solid performances.