Doctor Who – Paradise Towers

Story 145
5-26 October, 1987

After establishing  his new persona, the Doctor takes his companion Mel to a tower block in space on the verge of collapse. A killer is at large, dragging victims to the basement to eat them up whole yet no one is interested in doing anything to stop the deaths. Fighting against impossible odds, the Doctor must put Paradise Towers to rights or it will collapse upon itself.

Each period of Doctor Who is marked by change, be it a change in production team or in the lead actor. In 1986, replacing the leading actor of Doctor Who was not the only task set before John Nathan-Turner and incoming script editor Andrew Cartmell. Frustrated with the lack of communication and his relationship (or lack thereof) with JNT, script editor Eric Saward walked off the set of the second part of Trial Of a Time Lord, leaving everyone in a fine mess. The ratings that had fallen so sharply for the 22nd series rose slightly for the 23rd, but BBC controller Michael Grade felt that more change needed to be introduced starting with the Doctor himself.

Theatrical actor Sylvester McCoy was the favorite choice due to his diminutive stature (in sharp opposition to Colin Baker’s sturdy frame) and his impish behavior mixed with an otherworldly kind of intensity. Paradise Towers was the first story to be written for McCoy but it was commissioned and written with no knowledge of the 7th incarnation. The script by Stephen Wyatt was heavily influenced by the novel High Rise by JG Ballard, a brutally violent fiction set in a scientific marvel of an apartment block where the inhabitants are trapped and devolve into primitive social castes. Both Cartmell and Wyatt were on the same page regarding their excitement to develop such a story through the strange lens of Doctor Who… and the results are mixed.

The Doctor and Mel are looking for a holiday spot, something that the time traveling nomad finds wasteful. In any case, the Doctor compromises by taking the TARDIS to a state of the art masterpiece Paradise Towers. They arrive to find the structure to be a trash-ridden haven for hoodlums, patrolled by bureaucratic slobs acting as caretakers. Something has happened that has reduced the population of Paradise Towers into craven cowards scavenging for existence while an unknown menace kills off any of the unlucky ones. The Doctor must not only discover the source of this threat but unite the people of Paradise Towers in the face of a common foe.

Mel and the Doctor meet the Red Kang leader Fire Escape

There are many influences on the modern BBC Wales version of Doctor Who that can be found in the 24th series. Specifically, the fairy tale look and style of the program is very strong in Paradise Towers, something that was most recently picked up by the last two series. The drama and acting are so strained and obvious that it all comes off as children’s entertainment. The Kangs look like harmless escapees from an off-Broadway play and the camp Caretakers are a joke. The sets are inspired but the lighting keeps them from achieving any real sense of danger or dread. Many fans point to these things as drawbacks but personally I think that they are part of the success of Paradise Towers and series 24 as a whole.

After several years of space opera and action/adventure, Doctor Who morphed into a kind of experimental program that posed as one thing but was actually another. I challenge any viewer to find a more saccharine sweet and innocent looking era than the 24th and 25th years of Doctor Who yet they contained some of the most horrific concepts in the programs history nested inside of a colorful kid’s show. The clearest example of this is when Mel is captured by the two Rezzies Tabby and Tilda who trap her in a crochet net and threaten to cook and eat her. Not only that, they reveal that they have been sustaining their rotund figures by luring and eating teenage girls!

Paradise Towers is a bit of a failure, to be sure, but it also achieved so many fantastic moments and attempted to transform what had been a safe and predictable program into something entirely new. The characters of Tilda and Tabby and admittedly the only real pieces of evidence for this, but the cliffhanger featuring Mel screaming as they advance on her is completely terrific in its terror.

A deadly cleaner patrols the alleys of Paradise Towers

At the insistence of JNT, a monster was called for and the result was ‘the Cleaners,’ by far the most useless robot threat ever seen in Doctor Who. Apparently Cartmel and Wyatt imagined an organic beast pulling people down the waste chutes via tentacles, but this was nixed.

Armed with a dull slowly rotating cardboard blade, drill and pincer claw it is not only unclear how they could harm anyone it’s also a mystery to me how they could clean anything! Exactly how does a drill or saw blade remove graffiti? It’s no wonder the towers are so dirty. These things make the War Machines look downright menacing.

The Doctor is arrested by the Caretakers only to meet a ‘deadly’ cleaning robot

Celebrity guest stars may seem like a new thing to Doctor Who, but they littered the 1980’s and this story is no exception. Known for his comedic work, Richard Briers is actually quite good as the Chief Caretaker. A bizarre micro-managing Hitler, he never really appears all that dangerous but he is clearly mad and a direct opponent to the Doctor’s mission to fix the problems of Paradise Towers. When he is transformed into a weird robot-zombie, he not only gains a silver sheen and a silly voice but somehow grows a full mustache! What was that all about?

The Doctor (McCoy) is threatened by the Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers)

I have to admit that when I first saw Paradise Towers I really liked it. I was a fan of the 70’s and 80’s material (I still had no knowledge of the 60’s) but this was so different that I felt some kind of ownership to it. This would certainly not appeal to the average fan of Pyramids of Mars or even Caves of Androzani. The 24th series was so absurd that it made the final Graham Williams efforts such as Nightmare of Eden and Horns of Nimon look sensible. There was a kind of darkly twisted situation comedy element as actors portrayed character types that were very familiar to viewers then took them in a different direction.

Mel is fattened up by a pair of 'Rezzies'

Bonnie Langford gets a lot of stick for her portrayal of Melanie Bush and I can’t say it is entirely undeserved. While her more recent audio dramas vindicate her entirely, on screen she was a perky sprite with a squeaky voice who stumbled into trouble every week. Given that this was a more innocent era of Doctor Who, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect companion to include. Her exchanges of dialog with the Kangs are laughable as she insists that she is a good girl who would never want to be in a gang. Likewise when Pex attempts to impress her with feats of strength his advances bounce right off of her androgynous figure. In the right story, Mel works very well, but one has to remember that she is a simpler character than Leela or Sarah Jane Smith. She is simply a know-it-all who can’t seem to stay out of trouble and is completely incapable of helping herself.

This of course allows for the Doctor to be a tactical genius.

Mel is threatened by a pool cleaning robot

The Seventh Doctor was still a work in progress for Paradise Towers, but you’d never know it to watch the story. McCoy makes the part his own almost immediately with his physical mannerisms and infectious enthusiasm. One can see the influence of Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel and other early film stars in his behavior but all of that melts away in key moments where he interrogates the Chief Caretaker or argues with the inhabitants of the towers to defend themselves. I imagine that the actor was given very little to work with and he certainly filled up the blanks wonderfully. Paradise Towers may not be your kind of thing, but it does feature a very strong performance from McCoy.

I do disagree with the Doctor’s ‘brilliant plan’ of asking the monster to come out of his home and then blowing him up. Surely there would have been a better resolution to the situation. Given that the Chief Caretaker was possessed by a great evil and the Doctor had just united the residents, kangs and caretakers in a spirit of peaceful coexistence it seems odd to limit that philosophy and just kill the villain. The BBC Wales program starring David Tennant had a similar view on good and evil and it just never washed with me. If the Doctor is so smart and heroic why doesn’t he at least attempt to save the day without violence instead of formulating a scheme that revolves around explosives?

Stephen Wyatt would thankfully return in the following year with the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, an adventure that is still praised by fans as one of the finest Seventh Doctor stories. Featuring quirky characters, an unusual setting and bizarre threats it builds on what was evident here and produces a much more polished end product. Still, I have a soft spot for Paradise Towers.

The DVD just released has plenty of extras including a documentary shedding light on the production and even the aborted music score by David Snell. I highly recommend the secondary music track in favor of the naff one by Keff McCulloch that was used on transmission. Neither is perfect, but at least Snell’s is evocative of a mood and doesn’t include synthesized clapping sounds (what was that all about?).

If you are a fan of the McCoy era, this DVD belongs in your collection. If you are a devotee of the Tom Baker or Pertwee stories, I’d recommend skipping this one. But if you are a brave soul, you may want to give this one a try and see what Doctor Who was like when it was wild and fearless.