4 episodes. Written by: Stephen Wyatt. Directed by: Nicholas Mallett. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.
THE PLOT
The Doctor takes Mel to Paradise Towers, a massive apartment complex erected at the end of the 21st century. Mel is looking forward to using the complex's luxurious swimming pool, while the Doctor plans to explore the award-winning architecture.
When they arrive, they discover that a complex that is neglected and worn down. Cut off from the outside world, those who live in Paradise Towers fall into three groups. There are the Kangs, teen girl gangs who roam the corridors evading the Caretakers, who live only to enforce their impractical rulebook. Finally, there are the Rezzies, the older residents of Paradise Towers, who have been reduced by circumstances to cannibalism. For the Doctor to set this community to rights, he will have to face the Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers), and the secret that is lurking in the basement, guarded by the murderous mechanical Cleaners...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Sylvester McCoy starts to really settle into the role in this serial. He had good moments in Time and the Rani, but the frenetic nature of the story and the mixed aphorisms got in his way. Here, he gets a chance to start growing into the character. He gets a particularly good moment in Episode Two, in which he uses the Caretakers' worship of a rule book with whose contents they aren't really that familiar to confuse them into allowing him to escape. He does still have scenes in which he seems a bit lost or out of step with the movements of the script, but they are fewer here. It's taken him longer than any previous Doctor, but by the end of his second televised serial he does seem to actually be the Doctor.
Mel: The only story in which Mel genuinely does annoy me, and it's mostly writer Stephen Wyatt's fault. Wyatt admitted to not really knowing what to do with such a "generic companion." As a result, we get a ludicrous obsession with a swimming pool, which persists even after Mel has been tied up by Kangs and threatened by cannibalistic old women. Bonnie Langford's still not bad - she plays fairly well opposite Howard Cooke's Pex, for instance, and the disappointed look she gives him at the end is very well done - but she really does have no character to play.
THOUGHTS
Keff McCullough's music was just about adequate for Time and the Rani, but it's quite awful here. His "sinister" theme, when we first see the cleaners, sounds like something that a spandex-clad '80's exercise freak would put on to provide themselves with a generic beat while jogging. It certainly undermines any sense of threat generated by the situation or the (in this case, fairly well-judged) lighting. Still, I will make one positive comment about McCullough's work. Going from the credits into the opening episode, the final sting of the theme melds with a wonderfully discordant sustained note to create an eerie feel for a few seconds. If that was deliberate, then McCullough is capable of better work than he does in the rest of this serial. If it was an accident... Well, even a broken clock can be right twice a day, because it's a lovely musical moment in a serial whose music is probably its single weakest aspect.
I say "probably," because several of the guest performances are severely misjudged. The script is a dark piece, primarily a horror story with a few clever bits of satire woven into the fabric. So why are almost all of the guest actors playing it like they think they're in a comedy? The caretaker who is killed off in the opening 10 minutes actually gives one of the best guest performances in the piece, because he appears genuinely scared. Clive Merrison's deputy chief caretaker, by contrast, does comedy "so-there" acting when producing the rulebook for the Doctor, then comedy running when in fear of the cleaners. This serial needs the actors to play their roles with conviction. Without that, so much of the effectiveness of what should be an excellent story is lost.
The worst offender, infamously, is Richard Briers. A respected, RSC-trained actor, Briers should have been a casting coup. Unfortunately (and more or less by his own admission), he felt that the thing to do with a Doctor Who villain was to send it up. This is defensible in the first three episodes, when playing the bumbling Chief Caretaker. But when he is taken over by the evil Kroagnan for the final episode, Briers goes into ham overdrive and the results are disastrous. It says something that in his scenes opposite a still-settling Sylvester McCoy, it is McCoy who comes across more impressively. McCoy at least has the instinct to know when to stop the comedy business and give a stern, steely glare. Briers pulls comedy faces through virtually the entire serial.
All these things are wrong with it and more. Yet despite all the problems, I still quite enjoy Paradise Towers. Even with performers who think they're in a comedy, even with a soundtrack that encourages jumping jacks more than it encourages terror, even with robot monsters who look about as threatening as Robo-Smurfs, this is a very clever script whose virtues shine through. The core concept is intriguing, the background is sufficiently developed to create a halfway convincing fantasy world, and the various bits of the culture are well thought through. Stephen Wyatt has written a good teleplay, which even some very poor production and acting decisions can't fully unravel.
The first and last episodes are mostly pretty good. The story loses momentum in the middle, with a bit too much wheel-spinning, but that's hardly a rare flaw in Who. The first episode sets up the story and the various factions well, the last episode brings it to a convincing climax. Though the guest acting is variable, Howard Cooke manages to bring the would-be-heroic Pex to life, and even make something halfway effective out of Pex's final decision. That this decision seems motivated as much by sheer desperation as anything else makes the scene work considerably better than many similar Who scenes have.
In the end, it's a shame that this story had to be shot during Season Twenty-Four. The comedy overplaying and the rushed production blunt the effectiveness of what might have been an outstanding story. But it's still probably the only Season Twenty-Four story I would label as even approaching "Good." The story itself works, as do the performances of Sylvester McCoy and Howard Cooke. It's not even close to as well-made a story as, say, The Mark of the Rani. But it's a much better script, which lets it even out to a solidly watchable:
Rating: 6/10.
THE PLOT
The Doctor takes Mel to Paradise Towers, a massive apartment complex erected at the end of the 21st century. Mel is looking forward to using the complex's luxurious swimming pool, while the Doctor plans to explore the award-winning architecture.
When they arrive, they discover that a complex that is neglected and worn down. Cut off from the outside world, those who live in Paradise Towers fall into three groups. There are the Kangs, teen girl gangs who roam the corridors evading the Caretakers, who live only to enforce their impractical rulebook. Finally, there are the Rezzies, the older residents of Paradise Towers, who have been reduced by circumstances to cannibalism. For the Doctor to set this community to rights, he will have to face the Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers), and the secret that is lurking in the basement, guarded by the murderous mechanical Cleaners...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Sylvester McCoy starts to really settle into the role in this serial. He had good moments in Time and the Rani, but the frenetic nature of the story and the mixed aphorisms got in his way. Here, he gets a chance to start growing into the character. He gets a particularly good moment in Episode Two, in which he uses the Caretakers' worship of a rule book with whose contents they aren't really that familiar to confuse them into allowing him to escape. He does still have scenes in which he seems a bit lost or out of step with the movements of the script, but they are fewer here. It's taken him longer than any previous Doctor, but by the end of his second televised serial he does seem to actually be the Doctor.
Mel: The only story in which Mel genuinely does annoy me, and it's mostly writer Stephen Wyatt's fault. Wyatt admitted to not really knowing what to do with such a "generic companion." As a result, we get a ludicrous obsession with a swimming pool, which persists even after Mel has been tied up by Kangs and threatened by cannibalistic old women. Bonnie Langford's still not bad - she plays fairly well opposite Howard Cooke's Pex, for instance, and the disappointed look she gives him at the end is very well done - but she really does have no character to play.
THOUGHTS
Keff McCullough's music was just about adequate for Time and the Rani, but it's quite awful here. His "sinister" theme, when we first see the cleaners, sounds like something that a spandex-clad '80's exercise freak would put on to provide themselves with a generic beat while jogging. It certainly undermines any sense of threat generated by the situation or the (in this case, fairly well-judged) lighting. Still, I will make one positive comment about McCullough's work. Going from the credits into the opening episode, the final sting of the theme melds with a wonderfully discordant sustained note to create an eerie feel for a few seconds. If that was deliberate, then McCullough is capable of better work than he does in the rest of this serial. If it was an accident... Well, even a broken clock can be right twice a day, because it's a lovely musical moment in a serial whose music is probably its single weakest aspect.
I say "probably," because several of the guest performances are severely misjudged. The script is a dark piece, primarily a horror story with a few clever bits of satire woven into the fabric. So why are almost all of the guest actors playing it like they think they're in a comedy? The caretaker who is killed off in the opening 10 minutes actually gives one of the best guest performances in the piece, because he appears genuinely scared. Clive Merrison's deputy chief caretaker, by contrast, does comedy "so-there" acting when producing the rulebook for the Doctor, then comedy running when in fear of the cleaners. This serial needs the actors to play their roles with conviction. Without that, so much of the effectiveness of what should be an excellent story is lost.
The worst offender, infamously, is Richard Briers. A respected, RSC-trained actor, Briers should have been a casting coup. Unfortunately (and more or less by his own admission), he felt that the thing to do with a Doctor Who villain was to send it up. This is defensible in the first three episodes, when playing the bumbling Chief Caretaker. But when he is taken over by the evil Kroagnan for the final episode, Briers goes into ham overdrive and the results are disastrous. It says something that in his scenes opposite a still-settling Sylvester McCoy, it is McCoy who comes across more impressively. McCoy at least has the instinct to know when to stop the comedy business and give a stern, steely glare. Briers pulls comedy faces through virtually the entire serial.
All these things are wrong with it and more. Yet despite all the problems, I still quite enjoy Paradise Towers. Even with performers who think they're in a comedy, even with a soundtrack that encourages jumping jacks more than it encourages terror, even with robot monsters who look about as threatening as Robo-Smurfs, this is a very clever script whose virtues shine through. The core concept is intriguing, the background is sufficiently developed to create a halfway convincing fantasy world, and the various bits of the culture are well thought through. Stephen Wyatt has written a good teleplay, which even some very poor production and acting decisions can't fully unravel.
The first and last episodes are mostly pretty good. The story loses momentum in the middle, with a bit too much wheel-spinning, but that's hardly a rare flaw in Who. The first episode sets up the story and the various factions well, the last episode brings it to a convincing climax. Though the guest acting is variable, Howard Cooke manages to bring the would-be-heroic Pex to life, and even make something halfway effective out of Pex's final decision. That this decision seems motivated as much by sheer desperation as anything else makes the scene work considerably better than many similar Who scenes have.
In the end, it's a shame that this story had to be shot during Season Twenty-Four. The comedy overplaying and the rushed production blunt the effectiveness of what might have been an outstanding story. But it's still probably the only Season Twenty-Four story I would label as even approaching "Good." The story itself works, as do the performances of Sylvester McCoy and Howard Cooke. It's not even close to as well-made a story as, say, The Mark of the Rani. But it's a much better script, which lets it even out to a solidly watchable:
Rating: 6/10.
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