They really missed a trick by not airing this around Halloween. Nevertheless, watching it this time of year offers the intended kind of atmosphere. It's been said many times, but it is pretty obvious while watching that this story was originally intended for the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era. It has the standard tricks of combining gothic horror tropes with sci-fi, this time the classic aristocratic vampires which are actually marooned space pilots from Earth.
The setting is nothing special admittedly (and the local villagers don't leave much of an impression even when they're leading a freedom movement), but the Doctor and Romana were both excellent in this story. Their humorous reactions to the three ruling vampires are amusing (especially Romana's claim that she is Camilla's "blood group separator"), and their obvious fear of the Great Vampire sells the threat. Adric is less impressive in his second outing, as he's written in a fairly unsympathetic way. The scene where he seems to sell out Romana so that he can become immortal put a bad taste in my mouth, even though he claims he was bluffing later.
It's fun getting more deep Time Lord lore even when we aren't on Gallifrey; I quite like the concept of them having an ancient war with these giant vampires. It's silly, but it works.
For all that this is a holdover from an earlier period of the show, I still found it thoroughly enjoyable. A nice little shot of classic Who. Warriors' Gate is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 24 October 2021.)
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