DOCTOR WHO: Take Me Down to the PARADISE TOWERS, Where the Sass is Mean and the Girls are Kangs

“Paradise Towers” – Season 24, Serial 2, Story 146 – The Seventh Doctor and AAAAAIIIIIIYYYYYY!!!!!! visit the plush and luxurious Paradise Towers so Mel can jump in a pool (God, I love science-fiction), only to find it’s a run down dump full of female gangs, fascist security guards, fat old cannibals, killer wet-dry vacuum cleaners, and Pex the Cowardly Rambo. People are dying because the building’s architect has been trapped in the basement and he wants all the living people dead. Oh, and when they get to the pool, it totally blows, but they’ve got no choice. Because The Doctor Had To Jettison the TARDIS Pool.

The Seventh Doctor’s second adventure starts awful, then gets really good, then finishes awful.

Part of this may be due to the incredible newness of everyone involved. If these serials were filmed in order, then we have a Doctor on his second serial, a Companion on her fourth, a script editor on his second, a writer on his first, and a director on his second. None of them have involvement with the show prior to the previous season. New blood can bring new energy, but it can also take some time to learn how to channel that energy most effectively.

In Part One, the problem is that the set-up just isn’t compelling as the show has to get too many balls rolling: the arrival of Doctor and Mel, the death of the last Yellow Kang, the introduction of the Red Kangs, the explanation of the Red/Yellow/Blue Kang dynamic, the introduction of the Caretakers, the introduction of the Cleaners, the introduction of the mystery of who’s killing the people of Paradise Towers, the raid on the Red Kangs by the Caretakers, the capture of the Doctor and Mel by the Red Kangs, the separation of the Doctor and Mel, the capture of the Doctor by the Caretakers, Mel escaping the Kangs, the introduction of the Rezzies and their possible creepy desire to eat Mel, the introduction of the Caretakers’ reliance on the all-important rule book, the Doctor and his guards running away from a Cleaner, the backstory of the Towers, the introduction of Pex, the introduction of the Chief Caretaker, Pex attaching himself to Mel, the Blue Kangs’ memorializing the last Yellow Kang so we know the Kangs aren’t so evil, the Chief Caretaker accusing the Doctor of being the Great Architect who designed the Towers, and the Chief Caretaker ordering the Doctor to be put to death.

Most of it is important to get the story going, but most of it is presented ineffectively, due largely to issues of pacing. There’s always going to be a danger of pacing problems if you introduce that many new characters into a 25 minute episode, especially if every time someone new shows up they have to stand in place and have an elongated chat about things.

Here’s a few things that don’t work:

Let’s start with the silly way the Red Kangs officially greet the Doctor, which is with a series of hand gestures that easily takes 36 seconds to complete. Okay, maybe it’s like seven seconds, but that’s six seconds longer than a hand shake. We’re already getting the visual information that they live in the basement of Scandal’s “Warrior” video where everyone wants to look like Patty Smyth but they’re poor so they have to do all of their shopping at Rich’s and Spag’s (I loved Spag’s), and the verbal information that they have names like “Fire Escape” and “Bin Liner,” and they don’t like Mel because she wears Blue, like the Crip- er, Blue Kangs. The Kangs don’t want to tell the Doctor all of the information he needs to start solving the mystery of who’s killing people in the Towers, because then we wouldn’t need Part Two. We get it – they’ve got silly names, they’re a gang, they’re worried about what’s going on but don’t want to admit it, they don’t like the Blue Kangs, and-

Wait. What’s with those stupid names? Fire Escape? Bin Liner? Um, where did they come from? The idea of PARADISE TOWERS is that there’s this fancy apartment building that’s fallen into disrepair after all the men (except for Pex, who’s a fraidy cat) left to fight a war and apparently got their asses handed to them because they’ve never come back. (I like to think they ended up on a world that lives by the rules of an Andy Sidaris movie.) The Great Architect built the place, didn’t want people to move in, and ends up having his disembodied mind or something placed in the basement, where he proceeds to get the Cleaners (which have to be the slowest, most straining-credibility-that-this-is-actually-a-threat-villain since Gargamel) to kill them when they’re not busy vacuuming the floors.

If PARADISE TOWERS had been made ten seasons earlier, it would have been handled by the Philip Hinchcliffe/Bob Holmes duo in a season that gave us such solid horror tales as MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA, HAND OF FEAR, and TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG and we would have gotten a serial that emphasized the creepiness and terror of a disembodied mind trapped in the basement using machines to kill the residents of the Towers. Instead, we get one that focuses on reestablishing the Doctor as smart, resourceful, and fun and uses the Caretakes and Kangs to demonstrate that. (The Rezzies and Pex are included to show Mel as someone who is resourceful but not always able to get herself out of sticky situations.) But what’s with those names?

The building looks like it’s been falling into disrepair for a very long time, which would work with the Caretakers treating the rule book as a religious text that cannot be questioned and why the Kangs have names of common objects, and yet the it hasn’t been so long that the Rezzies don’t remember life before the men left, and Pex (the one man who didn’t leave) looks no older than 30-35 years old. Maybe the Kangs have gang names, but that wouldn’t explain why they’re sorta dumb. The Doctor has to show them how to use a soda machine, after all.

There’s that silly gesture-driven greeting, too, which isn’t the worst thing ever, but serves as the symbol of all the little things that trip this serial’s first episode up.

The most egregious mistake is Mel’s meeting with the Rezzies, Tabby and Tilda, who wants to crush Mel’s fleshies and eats her bones. Or the other way around. The scene goes on too long and kills the burgeoning momentum and doesn’t trust the audience to figure out that the two fat ladies with sharp knives, hungry glances at Mel, and knowing glances at each other actually want to cook Mel as a meal, so they keep alluding to it over and over. There’s too much conversation over tea and cookies to keep that just-gained momentum.

To be fair, here’s what works:

The opening sequence. Mel is trying to convince the Doctor into going to Paradise Towers for their wonderful pool (which doesn’t look all that wonderful, but maybe Mel is pool-desperate), and these scenes are intercut with the Yellow Kang being chased by loud, obnoxious women we don’t see. (This would be one of the other Kang groups.) The chasing women give up the chase, and Yellow Kang is all happy until something kills her. The Doctor and Mel arrive at Paradise Towers to go for Mel’s much desired swim. They land in the basement because if they land on the roof right by the pool, it would take too long for the story to get going. Things are rundown and mysterious and I’m intrigued for a few minutes before we get those silly hand gestures and names of the Red Kangs.

Parts Two and Three work rather well; there’s drama of both a physical and mental kind, there’s action, intrigue, and mystery, the producers employ an actual movie-sounding score at times (and some rather silly music at others), and plenty of Richard Briers.

Then Part 4 comes and they give Briers a Frankenstein turn; The Great Architect kills the Chief Caretaker, and puts his own brain or brain waves into the Chief Caretaker’s body, resulting in Briers walking around and talking like he’s Frankenstein – big, dumb, and slow. Total waste – if you’re going to have the big scary robot brain (or whatever the Architect actually is) take over a body, either have it be Briers’ and let him keep the ability to talk properly, or stick it in another character not as talented. He was making a very solid villain – even if the Hitler mustache was silly.

Everyone on the good guy’s team meets at the pool and they decide to put aside their differences and team up. The Kangs rip on Pex so much he almost cries, but then he saves the day, sacrificing himself to kill the Architect, and they make him an honorary Kang. The Doctor and Mel leave in the TARDIS. Hooray

What saves the serial is McCoy, who plays a Doctor that can be deadly serious, playful, and caring with an ease that Colin Baker, unfortunately, never had.