#Doctor who state of decay 3 full

#Doctor who state of decay 3 full

Of course, State of Decay still fits with the larger themes of the season around it. As with Full Circle, there’s a sense of a society trapped in stasis, a theme very close to the show’s heart at this point in its extended run. “Nothing has changed in a thousand years.” However, for people who grew up watching Doctor Who live, or before the steady stream of home media releases, these homages were as close as they got to revisiting the era. So the whole point of a Hinchcliffe homage is lost on me as a viewer forty years removed from that original context. Via DVD, I can revisit the actual, real Hinchcliffe era anytime. That makes a big difference in terms of how I consumed the show. I approached Doctor Who after the 2005 revival, via the DVD releases being put out by the Restoration Team. That said, I was always baffled when fans - even the linear notes in the recent blu ray release - describe State of Decay as an underrated classic.īeing honest, I suspect that’s simply down to how I watched it. I’ve never had a problem with it, but I’ve never been a fan of it, either. The production design is nice, and the tonal contrast of doing a vampire story in a season that otherwise leans toward sci-fi concepts is compelling. Personally, my relationship with State of Decay is interesting. When Hinchcliffe invoked the Letts era in stories like Return of the Cybermen, it was frequently to mock it and deconstruct it. However when Williams and Nathan Turner evoke the Hinchcliffe era, it’s much more nostalgic and yearning a sign of the show’s lost glory days. Indeed, the way in which later iterations of Doctor Who invoke the Hinchcliffe era are interesting. The story’s contrast between “ medieval design” and “ high technology” immediately establishes State of Play as a homage to the Hinchcliffe era. It’s remarkable how quickly Doctor Who realised that this particular “ Golden Age” had passed, and how eagerly it looked back to it. As such, it is a strange fit for a season that is largely about trying to break with the show’s past. State of Decay is a Doctor Who story literally out of time. The script had famously been commissioned in the mid-seventies, but shelved for fear of being seen as a parody of the BBC’s high-profile and relatively big-budget Dracula adaptation. Looking at the production design, State of Decay feelings suspiciously like a prequel to What We Do in the Shadows.