The A-Z of Classic Who

Ahem.

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Now I've got that out of my system, let's talk about Paradise Towers. Of course, I would rather be doing literally anything else, such as getting a root canal through my nose with a rusty shovel while having my balls fondled by a crocodile, but to review every Classic Who story means reviewing this one, and this is where we've ended up. Unfortunately.

I'll tell you now that if you like this story, then stop reading here. I am going to tear apart every single part of this horrific excuse of a story from top to bottom and I will not find time for anything positive. You have been warned.

Season 24, despite the best efforts of Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, remains the worst ever season of Doctor Who and it will probably be that way until someone makes a season that consists entirely of the Doctor screaming the word shit into the camera for the whole of every episode. The writing is consistently awful, the production hilariously and awfully dated, and well, it feels like a show with no direction and no clue. All four of the stories are awful, among the very worst (as much as I enjoy Dragonfire on an ironic level, it's a very incompetently produced piece of entertainment no question)

What makes it worse is that this was essentially Doctor Who's last chance, and it blew it big time. It's frankly astonishing watching these stories that this series got another two seasons. Who watched this and thought, "yes more of this please"?.

Pinning the blame for this utter disaster is difficult - the script is frankly amateurish, but Stephen Wyatt went on to write The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, a pretty decent story by all accounts. It's terribly directed and staged, but director Nicholas Mallett also did The Curse of Fenric, one of the more highly regarded stories of this era. While reportedly Andrew Cartmel's fingerprints were all over this, the problems I have with his writing tend to be more along the lines of 'his ambitions did not meet reality and this hurt scripts like Ghost Light', not 'he was a complete fucktard with no understanding of basic storytelling'. So I'm not sure there's anyone I can quite pin this on, but frankly, I don't care. Everyone involved in this story, from Wyatt and Mallett right down to the tea boy should have been utterly ashamed of working on this dreck and I feel no need to be anything but egalitarian with my share of the blame.

same

In our dissection of Paradise Towers' pathetic failure, let's start at the source - the script. Now you may be about to say that this actually some clever political analogy (from those of you who like the story who didn't stop reading at my warning) but frankly I don't care. Yes, there's reportedly some satire about building regulations or something in there, but it barely features and even where it does it's so badly inserted you'd need a magnifying glass to see it - it turns just having spouting crap about regulations does not a political analogy make. Who'd have thought. But we'll get to the caretakers.

The set-up for the story is so astonishingly lame it's a wonder they didn't just have the Doctor and Mel turn up because they were sent on a mission by God like in Blues Brothers - at least that would have had some dramatic edge to it, rather than the real reason, which is that Mel wants to go swimming. I'll repeat that, this entire story is set up because Mel wants a swim. Now that is not only the worst setup for a story in Doctor Who's history, it also shows just how disconnected from the reality of storytelling the people making this story were. How can anything that happens have any dramatic impact at all if its all happening for the purpose of Mel finding a swimming pool? Remember, everyone who dies in this story does so in the cause of Mel having a swim. If you think I'm belabouring this point, well then tough frankly, because it is so unbelievably stupid it makes me cross just thinking about it.

The worst part of it is that it isn't even necessary - in a ton of great stories, the Doctor and companion just turn up for no good reason and get involved with the plot like that. The Caves of Androzani for instance starts in precisely that way.

But does the swimming plot finish there? Oh no. Despite the murder, violence and cannibalism Mel encounters in Paradise Towers, when she reaches the swimming pool (conveniently justified by it being her set meeting place with the Doctor), SHE DECIDES TO GO FOR A SWIM. Yes, less than an hour earlier she saw two old women who were trying to eat her get brutally murdered, but who cares when it's time for some breaststroke! Frankly, I was hoping the water robot would put her out of our misery for being that stupid, but alas, Mel lives. We'll examine her a little more closely in a moment.

Would the plot have been hurt if the Doctor and Mel just arrived for no good reason like they sometimes do, Mel goes to the top floor to meet the Doctor despite the lack of a swimming pool and the awful pool scene is excised? It's hard to see how it could have been worse.

Idiot

Speaking of our two leads, Sylvester McCoy has very obviously not settled into the role yet in this, his second story. Indeed, as we all know, until Remembrance of the Daleks he would bumble his way through a poorly written and poorly defined role, desperately trying to do his best with the material he was given, and to be fair to him, that definitely applies to this story. It's frustrating to watch chiefly because he is trying his best with it, and we see in the next two seasons what he can do with good material. Just compare his confused gurning throughout this story with his scenes with Ace in Ghost Light and well, the different is stark shall we say. The Doctor acts like a bumbling fool throughout this story - unlike the best of Patrick Troughton's Doctor, where a confused, bumbling exterior disguised extraordinary cunning, here it's the opposite. The Doctor is presented as being this cunning figure but it's obvious to everyone watching he's actually an idiot, completely winging it and making funny faces whenever it's time for a cliffhanger. His 'plans' in this story are facepalmingly stupid and only ever work because of the idiocy of the bad guys - what's worse, this version of the Seventh Doctor has no authority or power to anything he does, and I don't mean like in The Caves of Androzani where he's caught in a desperate situation or anything like that. I mean he spends most of the first three episodes bouncing around being captured by different factions (and again only escaping because of their idiocy), failing to influence any of them. Even the Avengers Assemble teamup in Part Four (which we'll get to) comes out of necessity of survival for the participants rather than anything he's done. He's just unimpressive and ineffective for pretty much the entire story, and that's the worst thing the Doctor can be. The Doctor is at his best when he's confident and determined but thoughtful and empathetic - the NuWho silliness of turning him into this God-like figure is extremely silly, but it's just the other end of the extreme displayed in this story where he's just an imbecilic bystander. Special mention has to go to his final plan, which is to push the baddie down a lift shaft. Yes, really. This stupid plan is only bailed out by the fact that Pex is strong enough to do it, unlike the Doctor who, frankly, should have realised that it was probably not doable by him.

Me watching this story

Of course, that perception is not helped by his choice of travelling companion. I don't want to seem like I'm harping on Mel, because in the two previous stories of her we've reviewed I've not exactly been complimentary, and spoilers, in the two remaining ones after this I won't be either, but I don't necessarily dislike either her or Bonnie Langford. She was the wrong actress playing the wrong character at the wrong time, I certainly think that, but the simple problem was that the character just was written with her strengths in mind. After Tegan and Peri, a companion who's happy with the adventure of life in the TARDIS was certainly not a bad idea, and indeed much of Mel's character on paper should have worked. For instance, she's supposed to be a computer programmer - great, someone a bit more familiar with technology could have been an interesting angle. But they never used the character that way, instead making her an insufferable peppy cheerleader, who's either gratingly acting like a pantomime character or screaming in that ludicrous over the top fashion. Now the scripts did not help of course - I think Mel's best appearance is Terror of the Vervoids, which is also not coincidentally the best story (or sub-story) she had on TV. I also, again, do not dislike her or Langford - in Big Finish Mel has some great stories where the writers play to both the character and the actress' strengths and plays very well against both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

But this is not Big Finish, this is Paradise Towers, and well. Mel in this story has not quite reached the Rose or Clara levels of insufferable, but she's definitely in the tier directly below, comfortably sitting alongside Adric. I already discussed at length her ridiculous swimming obsession that at best wasted time and at worst actively got people killed - she also spends most of the story acting like a bewildered chipmunk, constantly getting into danger through her own naivety and stupidity. How the fuck anyone with a functioning brain can spend any time in a death tower filled with gangs of feral teenagers and killer robots can think that stopping for tea and crumpets with old ladies is both sensible and safe is utterly beyond me, but worse than that, she frequently has the nerve to treat Pex like a child who constantly needs emotional reassurance. Oh yeah, I'm sure his guilt at being a space draft-dodger has been worked through thoroughly after talking to you, squirrel brain. And I hate to belabour the point, but going for a swim after seeing people murdered in front of her very eyes probably ranks as the stupidest thing a companion has ever done. It's more than just an issue with the character of course, in fact it symbolises many of the problems with this story, but given she's the one doing it, well she has to take some of the blame.

What has surprised Mel here? Answers on a postcard please

Let's have a look at some of the other characters, because frankly, I think you all get the jist on the two regulars.

The Chief Caretaker is honestly one of the worst villains in the series' history, not least because of the dreadful performance from Richard Briers. He chews the scenery the entire story, but not in the good way like Graham Crowden in The Horns of Nimon or Edward Peel in Dragonfire - it's an unpleasant, dull and humourless performance. The over the top cheesiness is exceptionally grating and lends nothing to the character, which is an extraordinarily generic baddie figure. This has apparently been described as a career low for Briers, which I suppose is accurate, but that would imply it isn't a career low for everyone else involved, so I'm not sure I can totally agree. The character itself is flat and lifeless - his motivations are extremely confused and unclear and his reasons for aligning with the Big Bad are never made particularly clear (he believes in preserving order or something like that? Hilariously generic of course). What's more there's never any sense of threat from him - for instance, he always orders underlings to carry out his dirty work, and that usually gets tied up in the stupid bureaucratic nonsense that we'll get to in a moment, thus stripping away any impact it might have. So he's not threatening, he sure as fuck is not funny or entertaining - what is the point of him as a villain? And yet somehow he's not even the weakest villain in this story.

Plus why the fuck is he dressed like he should be on the front cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Caretakers themselves are ridiculous. The actor who plays the Deputy Chief gives a bored performance (who can blame him) and none of the other ones do anything an extra couldn't, so it's not as if they are threatening or entertaining either. Getting constantly outsmarted by the fucking Kangs makes them look pathetic and incompetent - it's a wonder they haven't all been wiped out much sooner than this. Oh, and the Deputy Chief Caretaker switches sides to join in the Avengers Assemble teamup in Part Four. Not only is this whole thing frankly juvenile ("we're all going to miraculously get along despite years of deep-seated resentment, hooray!") it's also laughable that the others would buy this. He's obviously just doing it to save his own skin, and if it was a cleverer story something would be made of that, but nope, he goes along with it and is happy to join in with the rebuilding into a pleasant society or whatever at the end. Yeah, I can't see that going badly, with opposing sides that have essentially been in a state of war for years having come together for all of about half an hour. That sure sounds like the foundations of a stable society.

Their big thing is that they're all bureaucratic and follow their rulebook religiously, complete with "hilariously" long numbers for each rule. This is entertaining for all of about six milliseconds before it becomes extremely tedious. This is apparently supposed to be where the political message is - bureaucracy in the housing system or some crap like that. Frankly, I barely even care about this - even if there is a worthwhile message in there, it's so heavily disguised under the utter shite that I don't feel like dignifying it by giving it the light of day, but even if that weren't the case, all they do is just quote and follow rules. Now whether this is supposed to be something about how bad authoritarianism is I can't even tell you, but if it is, then it genuinely might be the worst political metaphor in the show's history. It doesn't matter how ridiculous you make your strawman, the existence of rules does not suddenly make a society authoritarian. Frankly, it's fairly easy to read from the story that the writer actually thinks that the Caretakers shouldn't have to follow their rulebook... so essentially Paradise Tower's law enforcement should be able to act with impunity and not have to follow any kind of code of conduct. Have a think about that one in light of recent events.

Now to be fair (a phrase that will not be used often in this review) I highly doubt that was the intention, but for fucks sake, if I can literally read the opposite of what you're trying to say from your political metaphor, maybe it's a shit one? Comrade Malcolm Hulke, a good writer of left-wing political analogies in Doctor Who would probably have slapped Wyatt if not for the minor fact he'd been dead for nearly a decade. I'm absolutely positive I've used that exact line in a prior review but whatever.

Anyway moving on, let's talk about the Kangs. Even though I don't want to.

I wonder where they found all the red pieces of fabric

Anyone who thought these little shits were a good idea to include in this need to be banned from even looking at a keyboard ever again, because frankly, these might be the most annoying characters in the whole of Classic Who. Not only does their existence not make any sense (we'll look at that in a moment), every single one of them have ear-splittingly annoying voices and equally every single one of them is played by a really really awful actress. For some unfathomable reason, they all speak in broken English, replacing certain words with similar but not quite right ones, which basically comes out as gibberish. I hate this trope whenever it appears in science fiction to be frank - there is a reason I have not put the story on with the Japanese dubbing, it's because I want to understand what the fuck the characters are saying. When the Kangs say a sentence, frequently I ended up going "huh?" and having to think about what it was they said. It doesn't take very long but it takes me out of the story that's being told, and that's never a good thing. Ever. I don't even know what the Red Kangs vs Blue Kangs thing is trying to represent, but I suspect it's some extremely juvenile crap about 'we should all get along, we're not so different', which is pretty much verbatim what the Doctor says to bring them together. Let's go and try that in Israel and Palestine, I'm sure it would work an absolute treat. Amusingly, what seems to actually bring Red and Blue Kangs together is bullying Pex, which is a great metaphor for our times - we can all create common ground, by finding someone smaller than us and making their lives miserable. What a lovely message.

Of course, the worst Kang faction is the Yellow Kangs, who's sole survivor by the time of the beginning of the story probably gets the award for the Dumbest Character in Doctor Who History. After running away from one of the other Kang groups, she hides in a corridor, hears them giving up and saying "the Cleaners will get her!" She then decides to relax and have a sit down... only to be immediately killed by a Cleaner. I mean, it takes a special sort of imbecilic to be killed by something less than thirty seconds after being warned about it. It starts the story off on the kind of stupidity that will become very familiar throughout its runtime.

Oh hello

The Cleaners are probably among the worst enemies in the show's history - the design is pathetic. I can't believe this didn't look hideously cheesy and dated back when the story aired, never mind now. They look like shopping trolleys when the move, the attack with their claw looks funny more than threatening and have just as apalling sound design as visually. There's very little else to say honestly - just awful.

And then we come to Kroagnon, the Big Bad of the piece. Kroagnon may be one of the worst villains in the history of Doctor Who, and I'm encompassing NuWho in this. The Abzorbaloff is more embarrassing maybe, but even he has a semblance of a plan, a motivation, a backstory, something to flesh him out. God knows it fails miserably, but at least Love and Monsters tries, which is more than can be said for this piece of crap.

Kroagnon is the famous architect of places like Paradise Towers, before he went mad and disappeared after creating Paradise Towers. How do I know this? Why, I listened to the Doctor and the Kangs watch an informational film on it of course. Exposition by documentary, always a classic. The mere thought of providing and developing this information organically probably didn't even cross Wyatt's mind to be honest - this is evident when it becomes clear just how painfully underdeveloped Kroagnon is as a villain. I honestly still cannot tell you how he managed to become an evil disembodied maybe computer - this is just something we're just supposed to accept has happened. His motivations are unclear throughout the story - firstly it seems like he's just mindlessly looking for food (as frequently shown with irrelevant interruptions to the main plot so the Chief Caretaker can act like a prat in conversation with him) and the switch over to his being the Big Bad is both painfully obvious as soon as Kroagnon is mentioned as a character, and extremely abrupt and undeveloped. How human bodies provide him with sustenance is of course a mystery, and I think Wyatt didn't care - it sounds cool him going 'huuuunnngrrrry' like that, so that's why it was put in, as if NuWho and it stupid monster catchphrases for no reason other than they sound cool happened 18 years early. Once he's taken over the Chief Caretaker's body (obviously this is not explained how this happened), his motivation is suddenly... the same as the Chief Caretaker's? To install order and wipe out those who are disordering his work? Eh?

Oh no! It's a couple of pink bunny ears made out of those weirdly shaped lights!

It's just so hopeless trying to work out anything about what this character is for and is doing - he's not even any good on a superficial level. The maybe computer version is about as threatening and intimidating as Mel and the Chief Caretaker version just has more of Richard Briers' awful performance, with a dull, hammy monotone. There's not only no depth or thought put into it, there's also nothing to make him entertaining either. An awful awful villain.

Who else? Oh, Pex. Great.

Pex is the only ungrouped person in the towers, and that's because he's apparently a cowardly draft dodger from this faraway war, who's trying to redeem himself through becoming this beefy action hero. Now I will give this story the tiniest amount of credit, in that this is a potentially interesting character, and an equally potentially interesting, if a bit simple, character arc. I will also credit that Howard Cooke's performance is the closest to not being completely embarrassing, as he does seem to get that the character is supposed to have insecurities and is supposed to be covering them up. Unfortunately, it all falls flat, as there are one too many jokes about his Arnold/Stallone-like action hero persona, all of which are about as funny as they sound, and the scenes where his character could have been fleshed out are either long exposition scenes with Mel being insufferable, or the Kangs taunting him in their high pitched broken English. Paradise Towers - taking what little potential it has and showering it in shit. His character arc also doesn't really work - he's called a coward by the Kangs, but very little he does in the actual story is cowardly. He's only really supposed to be that way by reputation, and I'd much rather they have shown rather than told. After saving Mel from her own stupidity more than once, it's honestly just grating to see him taunted by the Kangs when that simply doesn't fit what we've seen.

Peak Physical Performance. Compared to the yahoos around him anyway

Pex also does bring us onto a discussion I do want to have about the overall backstory of the story. Again, it actually has potential - there was a far off war, with those eligible to fight going off to do so, while those not coming to the titular towers to live safely. This does have promise, but it falls so astonishingly flat in its execution. First of all, there is no context given to this. Where are we? What species are these people? Where is the war happening? What time period is this? All of these questions go completely unanswered, just leaving the viewer to guess. Additionally, all the adults were taken off to fight - what, all of them? Even the most harshest real life conscriptions have tended to focus on able-bodied young people (while real life conscriptions have obviously tended to exclude women, I'm guessing in the future/on this planet this is not the case) but not literally all of them. Now granted, the Caretakers seem to have some kind of exemption (which has to be inferred because it's never actually confirmed but whatever), but a society fighting a war needs more than just 'the police and the janitors' staying home. Who's sorting out their food supply? Who's practicing medicine? Who's keeping the electricity on and the water running? Some adults are clearly still needed to provide childcare, and indeed to continuing having babies in order for the reproductive cycle to continue. These obvious points are just completely ignored - all the men and women between the ages of 12 and 80 went off to war... except Pex. Yes, the solitary draft-dodger in this entire species-wide conflict, just this one guy. If that's not stretching credulity enough, the Kangs are obviously all girls - so what, they took the babies boys off to war as well? He's not old enough to shit in a toilet, but by god, he can hold a rifle! Also, it's clearly been some time since this happened, as the Kangs are in their mid to late teens but have clearly not grown up with any adult supervision, which means that they were essentially left alone as babies in this place. But the rezzies have seemingly aged very little (oh, and they're solely women as well, which means that both the toddlers and the octogenarians are both on the front lines in this conflict), which makes the timescale extremely strange. Some of the Caretakers we see are clearly quite young men, not that much older than the Kangs, which is the same for Pex as well - how have these people grown up and if there's nobody here to have babies, where did they come from?

You may think this is nitpicking, but I'd argue that creating a believable world is a fundamental part of storytelling. If you cannot convince me that the world this story is taking place in is real and makes sense, then why should I take it seriously? As far as I know, this society is full of lunatics who think that children barely off breastfeeding would make perfect commandos, and what indication am I ever given that this is not the case? None. The world this story exists in is fundamentally implausible, and it is one of the story's biggest flaws.

Finally, we'll look at probably my least favourite aspect of the story, which is saying something, the Rezzies. Tilda and Tabby are the worst supporting characters in Doctor Who history, absolutely no question, and I am absolutely including NuWho in that. The actresses are appalling and the dialogue they are given dreadful - even when they're supposed to be seen as innocent they are extremely creepy and unpleasant, and adding in the attempted cannibalism of Mel is frankly revolting to watch. It's not clever, it's not interesting, it's just the same kind of shock value violence that the show was trying to move on from after Season 22, only without at least some of the cleverness surrounding it that stories like Vengance on Varos managed. I'll talk about this story's tonal problems a little later on, but these are characters and scenes with nothing charming about them, in a story that is supposed to be a fairly light hearted adventure. It's shock value, done excruciatingly badly. As for the rest of the Rezzies, they are so flat and dull I can barely remember what any of them do, apart from participate in the Avengers Assemble teamup in Part Four... which by the way, I've already talked about how implausible bringing those groups together is, but most of them weren't even necessary. You could remove everyone except the Doctor, Pex and like a couple of Kangs to provide the distraction. It's not only nonsensical, it's also stupid.

But they're such lovely, pleasant cannibals!

My final observation on this story's script is that the dialogue is absolutely godawful. I've already talked about the Kang's broken English, but even for everyone else it's simplistic and frankly childlike - several of the characters feel the need to narrate what they're doing like this is some kind of cbeebies show and the toddlers won't get it otherwise. The Doctor literally narrates 'I'm trying to escape' while some Caretakers are within earshot, and could quite easily capture him. It's just so awkward and stilted, it's yet another thing about this piece of crap that fails miserably.

So, I think we've established the script is awful. But good scripts can sometimes by rescued by good production - to use a NuWho example for once, 42 is a dreadful script, a vastly inferior knock off of Planet of Evil (and it was written by one Mr C Chibnall, someone who I'm sure never had much involvement with Doctor Who again), but it actually manages to end up as a decent episode thanks to excellent direction from Graeme Harper, good performances from the cast and some top quality set and sound design.

Unfortunately, Paradise Towers does not fall into this category. Nicholas Mallett's direction is at best flat and uninspired, and at worst downright incompetent - in Part One especially some of the staging of the actors is honestly amateurish. He does nothing to create any tension or suspense - most of the filming is either dull or awkward, and the few attempts to do some interesting camerawork flop because of poor execution. The performances he gets out of his actors are awful, no question - credit to the few that are trying I suppose, like Sylvester McCoy and Howard Cooke, but their efforts are not enough.

It's almost as if any tension or atmosphere was actively being sucked out of the story - for instance, even if the cleaners weren't badly designed, they're always shot at the dullest, least threatening angles. It's like a slower version of camerawork you seen in a motor race, or like a video of a train going past. Part of the confusion of what precisely Kroagnon is supposed to be comes from the extremely strange shooting of the maybe computer. Similarly, when he takes over the Chief Caretaker, the way he's presented barely changes beyond the stupid voice Briers puts on.

When it's not being actively incompetent (I've already mentioned the terrible staging, but the cutting of certain shots is terrible and makes the movement of characters even less clear, and any moments of action are invariably badly shot), it's just dull and pedestrian. That may not sound like the worst crime, but sitting through this appalling script and grating characters with nothing interesting to look at either, it can get on one's nerves shall we say.

It's bizarre because as I said Nicholas Mallett had previously directed The Mysterious Planet, a decently if not spectacularly directed story, and went on to do The Curse of Fenric, a very well regarded story. Perhaps not really because of the direction, more because of the story and character work, but it certainly wasn't a shockingly incompetent mess, so who's to say what happened here. Not me, that's for sure.

Other aspects of the production hurt the story. You know those game shows, like that one with Richard Ayoade the name of which escapes me, where they have the lame and cheesy sets? Well, Paradise Towers has identical set design but without even a hint of irony. It is awful.

I'm running out of captions. Sorry.

Even if they didn't look hilariously cheap and tacky (they do) and even if they weren't lazily designed as to not have any sense of place (they are), they don't actually fit the theme of the location at all. Even if you cleaned them up a bit, this still looks like the most insanely dreary and miserable place. There's nothing visually exciting or upbeat about them. You may be saying 'well that fits the whole political thing about housing policy' but that misses the point entirely - it's irrelevant whether it fits the political theme or not if it doesn't fit the actual story beats, and having this be some dreary shithole does not, because that is absolutely not what it is meant to be. For instance, why would Kroagnon be so protective of his creation if it looked like a hybrid between 60s brutalism and the Death Star? It's like they remembered the terrible over-lit sets from Warriors of the Deep and massively overcorrected without thinking about the story they were actually trying to tell.

Furthermore, we've seen how awful the maybe computer version of Kroagnon looks further up (go and have a look if you've forgotten), which means the production design has further contributed to the weakening of an already dogshit villain. It all further contributes to the horribly cheap and tacky vibe all of this has.

Speaking of which, the entire story has a horribly cheap and tacky vibe. As well as looking terrible, the sets all look like they're made of styrofoam, the props all look fake as hell (including the cleaners and the aqua-cleaner of course), this effect is made much worse by the music (which we will get to in a moment) and of course the general vibe of the dialogue and the acting makes this feel like an amateur production frankly. I shit on NuWho all the time and most of the time it deserves it in my view, but the bit of credit I will give it is that once it got past a few teething problems in Series 1 it always makes sure it doesn't come out looking cheap and amateurish.

The biggest issue with the production though? The music. Oh lord, the music.

Anything except listen to another Keff soundtrack

I've gone on record before as saying that I'm generally not a fan of the Seventh Doctor era soundtracks, and I'll go on record again to say it. I'm generally not a fan of the Seventh Doctor era soundtracks. There are exceptions to this - Ghost Light and Survival for instance are two stories in this era I like the soundtracks to, but honestly to me at least they have more in common with the soundtracks from Classic Who's Golden Age of Soundtracks from 1980 to 1986 than the Keff McCulloch stuff. The more usual McCoy era soundtracks just don't sit with me right - the eighties cheesiness just isn't endearing to me and it sounds cheap and dated. Remembrance of the Daleks, as good as it is, is hurt by the fact that the Daleks entering on screen to silly cheesy eighties music does diminish the threat.

However, nothing in Seasons 25 and 26 comes even remotely close to the level of awful that this stories' soundtrack manages. There was in fact an original soundtrack for this story done by a bloke called David Snell that was thrown out for Keff's version. While Snell's soundtrack isn't really that good or anything, it certainly works quite a bit better for me from what I've heard - it at least tries to create some atmosphere and tension and gives the scenes a bit of much needed drama. Keff's is terrible. It clashes massively with the tone in several scenes, the cutting in and out of the music is frequently poorly timed and the tracks themselves at best sound like peppy eighties crap and at worst sound like the kind of thing you'd see in the opening titles of low budget documentaries in the nineties. Any tiny morsels of tension or atmosphere that might have remained are killed by the horrific soundtrack. Now to be 100% fair to Keff, he did have to write it in a week when JNT in his eternal wisdom decided Snell's soundtrack wasn't good enough, which means I'm not sure it's pair to pin the blame on him too much, but it doesn't change how awful it sounds and the fatal blow it gives to the story on a production footing.

Finally, I'll discuss what may be the very worst thing about this story, and given everything I've ranted and raved about you may think it's going to be a whopper. And maybe it is, I don't know. Or care. This thing is the tonal inconsistency that provides a millstone the story was never going to escape from.

To call it amateurish would be an insult to amateur productions, who at least probably usually realise that 'fun light-hearted sci-fi adventure' and 'cannibal grannies' do not quite mix and match. Now if this story had genuinely committed to the former approach then I would at least have some respect for it for trying. I would not have liked it, and I doubt it would have scored very highly here, but I could at least accept it going for that and trying to bring a bit of levity to a series that was in dire need of it. But instead we get the stories' 'jokes', with a bit of slapstick thrown in for good measure, alongside a story about bureaucracy in a housing system with cannibalism and gangs of feral teenagers with crossbows. How am I supposed to take it seriously as a comedy when I have to watch horribly unpleasant scenes of Mel nearly being eaten and people being murdered by the Cleaners? How am I supposed to take it seriously as a drama when I have to listen to the Doctor acting like a total buffoon for humour and the Caretakers thinking that repeating some long numbered rules approximately 48,000 times equals a joke?

It's just jarring to sit through a shit plot, terrible acting and amateurish production to not even have some kind of consistent storytelling style shown to me. To be pulled between different styles basically scene for scene makes the experience of watching it genuinely quite trying. Look at City of Death - generally a light-hearted piece, but with a strong dramatic plot as well. It succeeds by weaving them together and having them complement each other. The Doctor tells jokes, but never at moments when it would adversely affect the dramatic plot - but that doesn't mean they can't interact. The tension of the serious final confrontation is actually defused by the Doctor humour sly complementing Duggan's most important punch in history. That's sorely sorely lacking in Paradise Towers. Moments that we may want to take seriously are ruined by bad jokes - hell, even the cannibalism scene is interrupted by Pex breaking down the rezzies' door in the same way he had earlier, which to be fair is funny... in how utterly pathetic it is.

We all love terrible rear projection!

Paradise Towers is a total mess. For me, it is totally without redeeming feature. The story is stupid, ill thought out and uninteresting. The script is terrible with amateurish dialogue and worthless characters. The production is incompetent and boring. The tone shifts wildly and makes it impossible for the viewer to even place the story. Parts of it are genuinely quite uncomfortable to sit through, and other parts are so cringeworthy it wants to make me forget I ever saw this show.

How on earth, with Doctor Who in the position it was in at this point, anyone thought this was a good idea is just totally beyond me. This was the show's last chance - it needed to reinvent itself or it was finished. The show was on the chopping block, and by putting out crap like this, it did nothing to avoid the axe. Perhaps it was inevitable by this point - certainly by the time the show did manage to have some new life breathed into it starting with the next season the damage had been done and nothing was going to save it. But it is still inexcusable that stories of this quality were put out in a moment of crucial survival for Doctor Who. It simply instils one final thought in me - that regardless of how much I don't like how NuWho was produced and the decisions made with the show's return... Doctor Who probably deserved to die when it did. And for me to say that of my favourite TV show of all time saddens me. But that is what Paradise Towers has done to me. Perchance to weep. Anyway, back to screaming.

Final Score: 0/10. The worst of Classic Who no question. Irredeemable - not a single aspect of this works in any way. It's an incompetent, shockingly poor story that should never have seen the light of day. That this was put out when it was is embarrassing and reflects badly on the show as a whole, and thus I have no qualms making it the sole story to receive a score of zero out of ten.

Next Episode: Planet of Evil

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