Well, except that this is now being edited by scientifically-minded Christopher H. Bidmead, which means that there's a tension between fantasy and science in this story, with the Three Who Rule holding back the development of the peasants by forbidding any sort of scientific knowledge. Bidmead was reportedly very unhappy with the more fantastic elements and kept stripping them out, only for director Peter Moffatt to keep putting them back in. But the final result is a good balance between the two positions, with the more horror/fantasy elements placed in opposition to the peasants' attempts to acquire forbidden knowledge.
Another advantage this story has is that the production team has made a concerted effort to rein in Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, which means that there's a seriousness to events that probably would have been missing a year before. The danger that the Three Who Rule represent is much more palpable as a result, and when combined with the moody direction from Moffatt, the result is a compelling story.
It's not perfect, of course; there are some draft artifacts from earlier incarnations that get some emphasis (namely that the Three in the tower protect the peasants from something called the Wasting) before being completely forgotten (so good luck figuring out what the Wasting is about), and there's also Adric. He's stowed away, it seems, and worryingly, his first scene shows that he can't even walk across the TARDIS console room convincingly, instead smiling fatuously and deliberately looking at nothing as he jauntily strides across the room. It's a cringe-inducing moment, and while it doesn't seem to be the norm for the remainder of Adric's scenes in these first two episodes (in which he veers from acceptable to quite good), it doesn't exactly endear him to the audience.
But his interaction with the script is actually quite limited thus far, and it's far more interesting to watch the Doctor and Romana, as they discuss Grimm's law and the implications of language change in regards to the crew's original names and that of their descendants112, and then go about exploring the tower (which is actually an Earth vessel called Hydrax, which, weirdly, seems to have left in the 1990s), discovering some nasty things along the way. All the bats, stored blood, and general oddities of the three leaders have brought the Doctor to some unpleasant conclusions: "Do you know, it just occurs to me; there are vampire legends on almost every inhabited planet. ... Creatures that stalk in the night and feast on the blood of the living. Creatures that fear sunlight and running water and certain herbs. Creatures that are so strong they can only be killed by beheading, or a stake through the heart." And while they're trying to work out why they can hear a giant heartbeat down at the base of the tower, they're confronted by Aukon, the chancellor member of the Three Who Rule, in the cliffhanger to part two. "You are in the resting place," he says. "I am Aukon. Welcome to my domain."
112 It's a good thought, but there are some anomalies if we take seriously the Doctor's suggestion that this is Grimm's law at play -- it would be incredibly strange, for instance, for the [k] in "Sharkey" ([ʃa:ki]) to become the [g] in "Zargo" ([za:go]), as that's the exact opposite direction of the law (in which voiced stops like [g] becomes voiceless like [k]). Still, at the very least it shows that someone (likely Bidmead) was thinking about this topic, and maybe it caused kids to look up Grimm's law, in the spirit of the best Hartnell historicals, and thus introduce them to the broader idea of language change. Well, I looked it up, at least.