State of Decay, part of the eighteenth season of Doctor Who. The serial is the only one of the original series to have been produced at BBC studios outside London. Engineering work at those studios meant that it was made at the Pebble Mill Studios of BBC Birmingham instead. According to the DVD commentary supplied by Louise Jameson, John Abbott and Terrance Dicks, a scene in part three was crucial to the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jameson and co-star Tom Baker. In one scene, he consistently came in ahead of his cue, thereby upstaging her. On the grounds that this move was "not what they had rehearsed" she insisted on three successive retakes until he came in at the rehearsed time. This eventually won his respect. From that point forward, she claims their working relationship was much smoother. Louise Jameson stops wearing her brown contacts at the end of this serial, with the sudden change in colour being explained as a pigment dispersal caused by looking directly into a bright explosion. As mentioned in more than one DVD commentary Jameson had found the contacts painful to wear, and made their removal a condition for her agreeing to play Leela for another season. The Ballad of Flannan Isle Many elements of the episode were based on a poem, Flannan Isle by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, which the Doctor quotes from at the end of the story; the poem itself was inspired by the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from the Flannan Isles in 1900. Cast notes Alan Rowe had previously played Dr. Evans and provided the voice from Space Control in The Moonbase (1967) as well as Edward of Wessex in The Time Warrior (1973–74) and later appeared as Garif in the serial Full Circle (1980). Ralph Watson had previously played Captain Knight in The Web of Fear (1968) as well as Ettis in The Monster of Peladon (1974). Colin Douglas had previously played Donald Bruce in The Enemy of the World (1967–68). Broadcast and reception Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "A masterpiece, designed to do nothing more than scare kids, which it does very efficiently. It's a very good Leela story, too." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker were also positive, describing it as "a tightly constructed drama that succeeds because of, rather than