Build high for happiness.
As befits a science fiction show, Doctor Who adorns its plots with scientific trappings, drawing on physics and chemistry and applied mathematics, both fanciful and real, to propel and occasionally deepen the stories on offer. Seldom, though, does the series invoke social science, making Stephen Wyatt’s “Paradise Towers” (Story Production Code 7E) something of a rarity, presenting not some technological conundrum in its exploration of a decrepit mega-structure but an anthropological mystery. The question of how a gleaming residential resort turns into a dystopian shambles in the space of ten or so years drives the entire story forwards, and Wyatt devotes extensive screen time to the various sub-cultures that have developed amidst the detritus, much as another writer might lard expository scenes with technobabble about quantum flux reversals or temporal continuity generators.
Dystopian settings feature frequently enough on Doctor Who, the most recent examples being “Vengeance on Varos,” “Timelash,” and “The Mysterious Planet,” but typically such stories emphasize stopping a clearly defined antagonist, the warped culture inevitably a side effect of this malign influence. While “Paradise Towers” ultimately presents a Big Bad for the Doctor to defeat, the real plot complications stem from the behavior patterns of the inhabitants of this structure, the true villain only being revealed towards the end. When the Seventh Doctor and Mel arrive at the eponymous holiday destination, its amenities described in an infomercial on the TARDIS screens, they find not sun-dappled lounge chairs or luxurious mud baths but a decayed ruin. The Doctor’s curiosity peaks, and he begins to dig about the rubble and rubbish, only to have his archaeological meanderings interrupted by the Red Kangs, a group of crimson-clad young women armed with crossbows who, they quickly inform him, are “the best.”
In Doctor Who‘s early years, the Doctor quite often finds himself confronted with alien species which, although possessing that universal ability to speak English (later handwaved away as a function of being a Time Lord or the intervention of the TARDIS), behave in distinctly non-human ways, as in “The Sensorites” or “The Web Planet” especially. Here, on an unnamed planet, ostensibly populated by Earth-descended humans, the Seventh Doctor must channel those long-past experiences, and he shows a handy facility with understanding and mirroring the ritualistic behavior of the Red Kangs, winning their good graces—until they tire of the games and tie up him and Mel. Empathy only goes so far, it seems, and the plot is ticking.
Wyatt and director Nicholas Mallett intercut the Doctor’s encounter with the Kangs via scenes of a Yellow Kang (Astra Sheridan) killed offscreen by a mysterious assailant and then a cravenly Caretaker (Joseph Young) hesitantly making his way through the dark, graffiti-festooned corridors. He discovers the bloody remains of the Yellow Kang, then encounters her killer, a Robot Cleaner, with a similar outcome. The Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers) comments, after his young charge’s death, that he will make a “nice little snack” for yet another offscreen figure, represented by flashing lights in the basement. The fairly rapid accumulation of questions in this story could easily become tedious, and typically does on Doctor Who when a writer becomes enamored of his or her own cleverness, but Wyatt manages to keep things moving, with the Doctor’s probing interrogation of the Kangs—who are all named after common objects, like Fire Escape (Julie Brennon) and Bin Liner (Annabel Yuresha)—slowly doling out answers.
The Kangs—divided into Red, Yellow, and Blue groups—rule the corridors but are frequently chased by the Caretakers, an all-male force of pseudo-police under the Chief Caretaker’s command. Both groups fear the Cleaners, which take their remit somewhat literally, treating humans as refuse to gather up. And if that weren’t enough, after Mel and the Doctor are separated when the Caretakers raid the Red Kangs, our plucky companion meets yet another group inhabiting Paradise Towers: the Rezzies, or residents, in the form of two older women, Tilda (Brenda Bruce) and Tabby (Elizabeth Spriggs), who offer her tea and cakes. The better to fatten you up, my dear…
Yes, they are cannibals, though given the appearance of anthropophages in the recent “Vengeance on Varos” and “The Two Doctors,” perhaps it should come as little surprise. Mallett makes no bones (sorry) about their behavior, showing a plate with skeletal human remains on their table, which is hastily removed just before Mel enters their apartment. The timely intervention of self-appointed vigilante Pex (Howard Cooke), who bursts through their door, eager to “put the world of Paradise Towers to rights,” or so he says, stops their menu planning. Thus given an exit from the cannibals’ den, Mel teams up with Pex to try to find the Doctor, who has been apprehended by the Caretakers. After a quick escape from yet another Robot Cleaner, the Doctor and his captors appear before the Chief Caretaker, who declares him to be the Grand Architect, responsible for building this magnificent structure. And then, in a rather successful cliffhanger to the first of four episodes, orders him killed.
Just as the Doctor navigates the folkways of the Kangs, he outwits his new captors by using their totemic obedience to their Rulebook against them. “If it’s there, it’s true. Rules are rules, orders are orders,” insists the Deputy Chief (Clive Merrison), but because they do not actually know the contents of the book, following its dictates by rote rather than understanding, the Doctor simply declaims new rules once he acquires a copy of the sacred tome, enabling him to escape. It’s a telling scene, one that helps define this new Doctor—no fisticuffs, no technological skulduggery, just badinage and whimsical cleverness. The moment does not work without the story’s overarching focus on building up the cultural setting, which, it must be said, comes at the expense of any real plot.
Instead, the development of Paradise Towers itself and its inhabitants serves as the story. The Doctor and Mel basically just run through corridors for four episodes, missing each other and encountering new sources of information at every turn. The leader of the Blue Kangs (Catherine Cusack), for instance, reveals to Mel that when the “In-Betweens” sent the young and the old people to Paradise Towers because of a war, Pex snuck on the ship to avoid fighting, explaining why, other than the Caretakers, everyone else is either in their late teens or late middle age. The Doctor, meanwhile, spells out the thrust of the story after reuniting with the Red Kangs:
Seventh Doctor: We must find Mel and discover the mystery of Paradise Towers, because I’ve learned enough to realise that its very existence is at stake.
Not since the two stories in the Mara sequence does the exploration of the setting serve so directly as the impetus of the narrative, and even then, the psychological machinations of the snake entity take precedence over the anthropological study of the cultures affected by it.
And how does the Doctor work to uncover this mystery? By having a movie night with the Red Kangs. After being recaptured by the Caretakers, the Red Kangs bust him loose (with surprising ease), and he takes with him from their control center a video disc with an “illustrated prospectus” of Paradise Towers. We watch them watch television, a recurring theme in the last few years of Doctor Who. In a somewhat weak bit of plotting, the Doctor recognizes the Great Architect, Kroagnon, from a prior building referenced in the video-mercial; believing people to sully the perfection of his architectural masterpieces, Kroagnon killed all the residents of his prior building, Miracle City, and the Doctor surmises that the In-Betweens trapped him in the basement of Paradise Towers to prevent something similar from happening here.
After settling a disagreement between the Red and the Blue Kangs, he leads a small force to the basement, where they witness Kroagnon—the disembodied voice being fed “snacks” by the cleaners throughout the story—transfer his brain into the Chief Caretaker. In case anyone was confused, Wyatt has Kroagnon explain everything in an expository sequence to open the fourth episode:
Kroagnon: Attention all Robotic Cleaners. At last Kroagnon can leave the basement prison they trapped his bodiless brain in and return in this borrowed body to the corridors and lifts of his own creation. They buried me away because I wanted to stop them using the Towers, and now you and I will destroy them.
If only all Doctor Who villains (and their writers) were so clear in their motivations, though it comes across as a sop to the audience for accepting such a sudden change in the story’s trajectory. Hints were there, with Kroagnon, the Great Architect, being built up steadily, but the volte-face feels unearned, and indeed an unwelcome interruption in the cultural exploration that was taking place.
Mel and Pex, meanwhile, have made their way to the fabled rooftop pool, where she and the Doctor agreed to meet if (as is inevitable) they are separated. Despite everything going on, Mel takes a dip in the pool, inhabited by a large yellow crab-like cleaner, that she blasts with Pex’s gun. It’s worth noting that Mel functions as a Doctor-surrogate, not unlike Romana, capable of handling situations on her own; she spends the better part of the story driving the plot strands regarding Pex and the Rezzies. All the factions—Kangs, Rezzies, Caretakers—eventually wind up at the pool, with the Doctor brokering an uneasy truce between the groups. Peace is aided by Maddy (the delightful Judy Cornwell, the third star of Keeping Up Appearances to have appeared on the series after Geoffrey Hughes and Clive Swift), making amends for the (non-cannibal) Rezzies’ admittedly poor treatment of the Kangs over the years.
After three episodes of carefully constructing a living setting, Wyatt’s conclusion falls flat, owing entirely to Kroagnon’s paper-thin motivations. There’s no nuance at all, just a monomania driven by a belief in his own aesthetic superiority, one the Doctor exploits by claiming to see flaws in his architectural decisions, drawing him out of his lair as a result. It’s a trade-off of sorts for the focus on the cultures of Paradise Towers, though, and one that does not overly affect the experience of the story as a whole, even if one might have preferred a final episode more directly rooted in the experiences of the three factions of the towers.
As in “Time and the Rani,” explosives save the day, with Pex atoning for his cowardice throughout the story by pushing Kroagnon into a trap, killing himself along with the Great Architect. It’s another pithy ending, with redemption and resolution purchased quite dearly and the Doctor simply walking away after altering an admittedly-bad situation permanently. And yet, it’s noteworthy that the Doctor’s contribution here comes solely via interpersonal interaction. He cajoles, he tricks, he inveigles, he even insults, all to bring about change. There’s no technobabble at work, only a reliance on understanding where people are coming from, a skill as important as any amount of theoretical quantum mechanics.
With a large speaking guest cast, and even more non-speaking extras, Richard Briers manages to stand out as the Chief Caretaker/Kroagnon, though perhaps more for his over-the-top approach to the dual roles. It’s a difficult part to pull off, lacking in any subtlety, especially with the costume decision to pattern his look after a particularly odious, mustachioed historical figure, but Briers does manage to imbue each half of the role with a different personality. It’s not one for the highlight reel, but given the almost comic nature of the antagonists, his presentation still retains a bit of pathos. Clive Merrison as the Deputy Chief likewise takes a role with a thin ambit, that of the hide-bound and slightly dim bureaucrat who has elevated rules to a religion, and creates a frankly likable character, such that the audience is happy for him to survive a story with a higher-than-usual death count.
Producer John Nathan-Turner and new script editor Andrew Cartmel seem to have quite a bit of faith in Bonnie Langford’s Mel, as she, as much as the Doctor, carries “Paradise Towers,” moving the story along in the Time Lord’s absence, and with far more agency than the character is given in “Time and the Rani.” Alas, Langford is called upon to scream quite frequently again, an invocation of terror at odds with the almost jocular nature of the story. Acting for most of the story against the craven Pex, she fulfills the action hero role in the story, gunning down Cleaners and making bold decisions. It’s a mode that suits Langford well.
For his sophomore outing, Sylvester McCoy continues to take the Seventh Doctor in an agreeably friendly and even-keeled direction. He’s seldom flustered, quick-witted, and just quirky enough to keep his interlocutors—and the audience—guessing. His antics have not, as yet, reached the clowning of the Second Doctor or the frenetic energy of the Fourth Doctor, but neither have his depths reached the nadir of the Fifth and Sixth Doctor’s penances. McCoy’s take on everyone’s favorite Gallifreyan, though still a work in progress, seems destined for something unique—right in the middle, a just so Doctor.
If Sylvester McCoy’s first story, “Time and the Rani,” succeeds because of its dialogue rather than its plot, then his second can fairly be said to succeed because of its setting rather than its plot. Just as the science on Doctor Who seldom measures up to the real thing, so too the anthropology here—it’s more a conceit, an examination, a lens, and because the Doctor typically has to unpack alien species, there’s a special thrill in watching him decipher the manners and mores of human groups.
Despite the Doctor being threatened with death and Mel being sized up for supper, there’s very little real danger to drive the story; the violence, even the on-screen attacks by the Cleaners, is undercut by the broadly comic nature of the various factions’ characterizations. The stakes here are smaller scale, a welcome respite from the universe-shaking spectacles of the season just past. Instead, we simply spend time with characters we come to appreciate. Bin Liner, Fire Escape, the Deputy Chief, Maddy, and even Pex gain importance beyond that usually conferred to guest cast; we actually care about them and their fates, and that’s as fine a resolution as any the Doctor could conjure.
(Previous Story: Time and the Rani)
Post 155 of the Doctor Who Project