Paradise Towers is a story that like most in this season isn’t
one that I rate very highly. I don’t know why and hope that watching this
serial over four days might shed some light on it. The Doctor and Mel are on
their way to Paradise Towers which seems to be a lovely place to go but we get
to see that it’s not as nice as they think. What I find amusing about the state
that they find it in is that you have Mel as a perky bubbly person and yet
finds herself in such a dump.
The Kangs are really annoying. The Red Kangs are the first
group that we meet and the noticeable thing is that they are all women which isn’t
something that has been seen in the show before. There is a bit of dancing that
wouldn’t have come straight from Adam Ant’s Prince Charming music video if I didn’t
know better. Another thing that doesn’t look quite so well is the cleaner which
doesn’t seem to be interested in cleaning the tower block up but more
interested in killing people and disposing of their bodies. Pex is introduced
quite late in this episode and seems to be a sort of Rambo style character but unfortunately
Howard Cooke who plays Pex is nothing like Sylvester Stallone and so I don’t believe
that he is a tough guy. Even Mel isn’t impressed with him. It’s slightly
disappointing the way that the role of Mel has been devalued in the past five
episodes. She was quite inquisitive with Colin Baker’s Doctor and yet seems to
have taken several steps back.
There are things that I think did work well in this episode.
Firstly there is the idea that there is a tower block that has become a rather unpleasant
place because it seemed to mirror the feelings of tower blocks at that time and
perhaps even today. Richard Briers is another good thing for this serial
because at first we don’t see him but just hear him and the character sounds
like rather soulless individual. Briers is perhaps best known for appearing in
the BBC sitcom The Good Life (1975-78) and an appearance in Torchwood. The
Chief Caretaker assumes that the Doctor is the Great Architect.
Something that has changed in my opinion is that of Tilda
and Tabby who seem like two nice old ladies but have a rather sinister dark
side. A first clue is some bones on a table that Tilda tells Tabby to get rid
of before Mel comes in. A question is raised when its clear that they are living
in a rather nice apartment whereas everything outside of that apartment is
horrible. How are they able to live like this and seemingly have a normal life?
As an episode it was a slightly (just) better than I
remember it. There are things that are going to bring this story down and there
are things that are going to maintain my interest. After being very
underwhelmed with the last story, its good to report that things have got
better. To be fair they couldn’t get any worse but there is a long way to go
before the show can get back to where it was even at the previous series. I
mentioned in a previous review that Doctor Who was now up against Coronation
Street. The ratings for the first episode of Time and the Rani was 5.1 million
whereas Coronation Street got 14 million. Now for this episode it was watched by
4.5 million and the Corrie episode was being watched by 15.5 million so it was
clear who was winning this ratings war.
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