Paradise Towers Episode 1

Season24@30. A quantum leap from the shenanigans on Lakertya this episode is the moment where Doctor Who emerged from its post `Caves of Androzani` downturn and started to get good again. Stephen Wyatt and the production team create an intriguing environment in which to place the Doctor and Mel. It’s an environment the duo explore just like the old days but this is a strange place that is as much 1987 as anything. Colour coded girl gangs, rule touting officials, eccentric old ladies and corridors that are actually long enough to allow the participants to run properly- this is great stuff. It’s a pleasure to watch.

On reflection `Time and The Rani` was transitional - bedevilled by a forced regeneration and not really under Andrew Cartmel’s control. It was in `Paradise Towers` when we started to see a new version of Doctor Who. This is actually the one from the season I remember the least and have seen the fewest times so the narrative is quite fresh. I remember the key images but not the detail so had forgotten for example about the caretaker we see gradually becoming more afraid as the corridors he traverses get darker.

Stephen Wyatt was quite a find and here takes JG Ballard’s High Rise as a starting point and introduces aspects that would resonate with the Eighties audiences. The Kangs (rhymes with gangs of course!) are a bewitching creation with different hair colours and their own language surely a mirror of many a youth culture down to their own greeting. They have their code of conduct and their rituals and some of it is depicted by graffiti or in their speak Wallscrawl.

Then we have the caretakers whose mantra of rulebooks and numbers suggests that the writer had himself endured a run in with similar characters in real life. Officialdom for its own sake to seems to reign in Paradise Towers hiding the problems that are clearly there. The Rezzies, Tabby and Tilda, named after cats (tigers perhaps?) and wonderfully vague in their explanations to Mel – “one thing after another” – as to how the place came to be in the state it is in. Elizabeth Spriggs and Brenda Bruce are friendly and creepy at once in a scene which has an undercurrent and ends quite unexpectedly with Pex’s dramatic arrival. 

Being Doctor Who the episode doesn’t forget more tangible frights so the opening sequence of the yellow Kang’s demise is a good hook later improved further by that caretaker’s demise. The sight of victims’ feet sticking out of the cleaner’s trolley adds a macabre touch.
There are a few issues. For one the marauding cleaning machines don't fit the aesthetic of the rest of the place being too pristine and clean. Surely they would be metallic, rusting and covered in detritus? Likewise the Rezzie's home seems to obviously 80s in design rather than old fashioned. There is also a lack of outside context, for example where exactly is this block? Plus the idea that with all of time and space to explore Mel chooses a swimming pool on top of a high rise building seems unlikely.
Two other things worth mentioning. Bonnie Langford gets a lot of stick and while Mel was never the most well thought out companion, I’ve no complaints about her performance in this episode which sees Mel intuitive and interesting at all times. Then there’s Richard Briers, at the time extremely well known, who later himself seemed apologetic as to his portrayal of the Chief Caretaker. Watching him though I think he hits the right level- its certainly no more or less an arch performance than that given by others in what is an episode full of a heightened unreality. Maybe the moustache is a step too far- or perhaps it comes from the same mischievous typewriter that created this intriguing, absorbing world that gets the seventh Doctor’s era off to a proper distinctive start.