Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually watched anything but the newest episodes. Before that, I was making a respectable run at getting through the original series, most of which I haven’t seen for decades. For various reasons, lately it has felt like it’s time to get back into it. 

Paradise Towers

Starring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor.
Companion:  Bonnie Langford as Melanie

Written by Stephen Wyatt.  Directed by Nicholas Mallett. Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Script Edited by Andrew Cartmel.

Format:  4 episodes, each about 25 minutes long
Originally Aired:  October 1987 (Episodes 5-8 of Season 24)

Season 24 is, to my thinking, a strong contender for the low point of all of classic Doctor Who. I don’t dislike Sylvester McCoy, but my feeling is that both he and the whole production team became a lot more confident in what they were doing when they got to the next two seasons of the show. A big part of that was the introduction of Ace, who in general is a much more successful character than Mel, who in my opinion is one of the least interesting of the whole show (at least if you limit yourself to televised appearances).

So having said all that, I was quite surprised as to how enjoyable I thought Paradise Towers was.

Spoilers Ahead!

Part of the unappeal of Doctor Who in the 80s is the overall vibe of pantomime that the show often had. In its efforts to delivery more glitzy sci-fi stories, the show often looked transparently artificial. Of course, the show always looked artificial, but somehow the gaudiness of the design in the John Nathan-Turner era accentuated that, giving the decade its own special brand of goofiness.

This is Paradise Towers’ biggest weakness. The costumes, the characterisations, the general tone of everything has an over-the-top and childish kitschiness that is hard to ignore. I’m not just talking about limited special effects (though this comes into it), but more of a self-aware, “for the kids” vibe of adults playing dress-up that permeates everything.

This bleeds into the performances (Richard Briers as the Chief Caretaker is particularly notorious in this regard) and into certain story beats–take for instance how comically dim-witted the Caretakers are when the Doctor convinces them to obey fake rules that demand they close their eyes, hold their hands over their heads and allow him to escape.

But if you can look past all that, there is a lot about Paradise Towers that really works. The plot is mostly solid, the story has got some interesting themes, and the world-building is pretty elaborate.

The story has the Doctor and Melanie travelling to the titular Paradise Towers for a bit of a holiday, only to find the place in bizarre factional chaos.

Actually, it’s all sort of anticipates a lot of YA dystopias, when you think of it. There are gangs of young people, all girls, called “Kings”, who are divided by color, and who speak in their own special slang and roam around causing mischief. There are older disinterested “Rezzi’s” (ie residents), who mostly just go on with their lives keeping out of everybody’s way. And there are the authoritarian Caretakers, who enforce a set of written rules that they don’t really understand, with an iron grip.

All these people have been left behind, we come to learn, by a society who went off to fight a war and never came back. But little do they know that all of them are victims-in-waiting to Kroagnon, the insane architect who designed the building (and now exists as a disembodied intelligence in the basement).

When the Doctor comes into the midst of all of this his goal is not just to defeat Kroagnon and to save lives, but to bring the disparate sides of the population together. It gives the story more emotional heft then it would have otherwise–he’s fighting not just to save the inhabitants from a monster, but to help them find a way forward as a people. It thus becomes quite gratifying when most of them actually survive, especially numerous characters that you’d figure would just play the role of victim. There’s a bit of that in the first episode, but after that, the story busies itself in other ways.

And overall I enjoyed the guest cast quite a bit. The actresses who play the Kangs (Julie Brennon, Annabel Yuresha, Catherine Cusack) are a lively bunch, and manage to deliver all their nonsense slang (“Build high for happiness,” “Make unalive” and so on) with plausible naïveté. The two residents who secretly eat people who wander into their flat (Elizabeth Spriggs, Brenda Bruce) are quite funny in a darkly macabre kind of way.

And the Deputy Caretaker (Clive Merrison) is the kind of guy I’d have most assumed was going to die, but then nicely pulls himself together to become part of the rebuilt society at the end.

I’m not sure what to think of Richard Briers as the Chief Caretaker. I don’t find him as off-putting as his reputation would suggest, but he definitely feels more like part of the story’s pantomime-esque veneer than an actual character, particurarly when he is possessed by Kroagnon in the last episode.

But I got a huge kick out of Howard Cooke’s Pex, full of over-the-top machismo as he is.

He is genuinely funny and sympathetic, and is a great foil for Mel for much of the story. His death at the end is sad, but makes sense in terms of his story arc. Ending the story on the graffiti that “Pex Lives” is kind of inspiring. It would have be an absurd deep dive but I think it’d be kind of funny if they’d brought the character back in the modern series, now that Mel has been turning up as a recurring character–actually, I’d have far preferred it over the return of Omega that the last season half-heartedly delivered.

I’m being pretty positive about Paradise Towers and I did overall like it, but that’s not to say there aren’t a whole bunch of story problems, even beyond certain moments of silliness that I already alluded to. For one thing, what exactly is going on with Kroagnon and the Chief Character is never really explained? If the people of whatever world Paradise Towers rests on were so concerned with Kroagnon and so aware of him as someone who built murder buildings, why did they leave his mind at the heart of the Towers? (Something similar happens in Dragonfire, a couple of serials later). And what sort of hold or influence does he have over the Chief Caretaker that would compel the guy to willingly feed the Kroagnon monster all sorts of people to eat?

And why, oh why, after everything that has happened and all the near-death she has experienced, does Mel decide she wants to actually go swimming in the pool at the top of the Towers? She gets up there and just acts like she’s finally arrived at her vacation spot, even deriding Pex for not taking advantage of it like she is, as if the whole story we’ve been watching hadn’t happened at all. It’s so transparently so she can get herself threatened by a big pool toy robot monster that she is somehow unable to spot even though it is a) pretty big and b) right there; it’s just ridiculous and makes Mel look like an idiot.

I generally thought that Paradise Towers is quite well directed by Nicholas Mallet, but there are some weak moments which come, predictably, in the action sequences. The Residents throwing a scarf over top of one of the Cleaner Robots seems like ti would have been completely ineffectual in real life, and one doesn’t really believe that Tabby and Tilda are being pulled down that garbage chute. But the worst is the final confrontation between the Doctor, Pex and Kroagnon–Mel, the Deputy Caretaker and a bunch of Kangs just stand around and look helpless while poor Pex lets himself be shamed into sacrificing himself to save everyone. I get the idea of the moment and like it from a storytelling perspective, but it’s so clumsily staged that it threatens to spoil my enjoyment of this critical part of the story.

But on balance, in spite of its many flaws, I generally enjoyed Paradise Towers. It’s a far cry better than either Time and the Rani or Dragonfire, from the same season. I haven’t rewatched Deta and the Bannermen, yet (and indeed, I’ve never seen the whole thing) but maybe it will turn out that this story is the absolute highlight of the season.