Trivia / Doctor Who S18 E4 "State of Decay"

• Creative Differences: Both Terrance Dicks and director Peter Moffatt were at odds with Christopher H. Bidmead. They were keen to emphasise the Hammer Horror aspects, while he thought it was against the hard science fiction approach he had in mind.
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Lalla Ward and Matthew Waterhouse both named this as their favourite story.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were not on speaking terms, after Ward spurned his attempts to rekindle their romance weeks earlier. Moffatt recalled asking Baker if he could help Ward down in the engine room pipe scene and he retorted, "Why, is she a bloody cripple?"
  • Baker and Ward, however, were both united in their dislike of Matthew Waterhouse. He found them intimidating, while they found him impertinent and disrespectful at times, refusing to follow the instructions of cast and crew with vastly more experience than he. Ward recalled one instance where Waterhouse was rude to costume designer Amy Roberts because she wouldn't let him go to the canteen in his costume, prompting her to intervene. Waterhouse went to the canteen anyway to introduce himself to Baker and waited for him to come over. Two hours had passed and Waterhouse finally went over to him and was told to piss off. According to director Peter Moffatt, Waterhouse also made the fatal mistake of advising Baker on how to say a line. Baker "nearly hit him" and Moffatt had to tell Waterhouse off.
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: For the only time during his tenure, Tom Baker had to have his hair permed before filming. His ill health had made him lose his natural curl.
• Wag the Director: Peter Moffatt found that Tom Baker was argumentative and wanted to direct the production himself. Eventually he took Baker for a drink and told him that while he was open to suggestions from the actors, he was the director and Baker was the actor and he should bear that in mind. After that frank discussion, he found Baker was far more cooperative.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Terrance Dicks originally wrote the story as the opener for Season 15. However, because the BBC were worried about audiences comparing it with Count Dracula (1977), which was due to premiere at around the same time, it was shoved aside, with Dicks writing "Horror of Fang Rock" in its place. He eventually brought the script back for Season 18, with rewrites to accommodate Romana, Adric, K9, and the E-Space subplot.
  • Colin Baker, Steven Berkoff, Donald Houston, Martin Jarvis, Michael Jayston, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Peter Vaughan, David Warner and Peter Wyngarde were considered for Aukon.
  • The Time Lord hermit who told the Doctor about the Great Vampire was originally an old woman.
  • Subplots involving townsfolk nocturnally wandering the forest like zombies and rebellious citizens being found with bat-like bite marks on their necks were removed from the script.
  • Camilla was intially called Karmilla.
  • Aukon and Habris were originally known as Mikos and Harkan, respectively.
• Working Title: The Witch Lords, The Vampire Mutation, The Vampire Mutations and The Wasting.

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