Day 345 — December 11th 2021
Paradise Towers Parts Three and Four
Paradise Towers — Part Three
The biggest issue I have with this story picks up on something I was complaining about yesterday. I feel as though the concept of Paradise Towers — the world in which the story is set — is really well thought through. Stephen Wyatt has clearly given a lot of thought to this society and the way in which it works, and I think he’s got a clear vision of that world in his head. The problem is that it hasn’t translated to the screen quite so well.
In producing the New Testament, every episode is the subject of a tone meeting, in which all the departments sit down with the producers and director and work out together exactly what the story is going to look like. They go on for hours while they discuss every detail, from the smallest prop to the largest set. The locations, the costumes, the make up and the prosthetics… they don’t leave a stone unturned, and the idea is that everyone is on the same page to make sure that the finished episode feels cohesive as a whole. I feel like we need that for this story, because as much as I love the corridors, I just don’t feel like everything hangs together.
Yesterday I complained about the Rezzies’ flat, and that continues to be an issue today. It’s too bright and clean and airy. It just doesn’t feel like it’s on the other side of the door into that hallway. I understand that Tabby and Tilda might be house-proud but it should still feel like the same place, and even little touches like repeating the design of the pillars might have helped to tie the places together a little more.
And then there’s the swimming pool on the top floor, which might be the ultimate example of where things don’t quite add up for me. Mel has spent two and a half episodes desperate to reach the pool and when she gets there she reacts as though it’s the most beautiful pool she’s ever seen. In reality it just looks a bit like a naff leisure centre from the 1980s. There’s a reason for that. Crucially, though, it doesn’t look like in any way like it might be what’s really at the top of Paradise Towers. There’s nothing in the design which ties in with anything else we’ve seen. This is the only place we’ve seen real bricks — all the corridors below are plain concrete — and the same goes for the tiles on the floor or the design on the ceiling. The location work was done first, so it’s a shame there wasn’t at least some attempt to try and tie the studio sets in with the location.
There’s one other thing which sticks out for me, and I seem to recall it bothering me the last time I watched this story, too. Parts Two, Three and Four all open with the same establishing shot of the outside of Paradise Towers (the same shot is also seen on the TARDIS screen in Part One), and once again it doesn’t feel like it connects in any way to the world we see inside. It’s all glass and perfectly clean, and it makes me wonder what else is outside the building. Is there a whole city? Is it a single tower block in the middle of a barren nowhere? Either way, I feel like it needs to look more like the Barbican, all concrete and brutalism, to look in any way right for the world inside.
Another 7/10.
Paradise Towers — Part Four
Richard Briers’ performance in this one has been a major point of discussion over the last 35 years, and it’s not without reason. It’s the broadest performance the series has seen since the days of The Horns of Nimon, and there’s points in this episode in particular where he almost seems to be channelling Graham Crowden. It’s fair to say that Briers didn’t take his work on the series particularly seriously, as he explained to Doctor Who Magazine in issue 326;
‘Doctor Who enabled me to overact, and I enjoy that. The producer (John Nathan-Turner) worried that I wasn’t taking the role seriously. He thought that Doctor Who was some kind of classic, which I suppose it was, but he considered it a classic like one of Shakespeare’s plays. He thought that I wanted to send up Doctor Who. I think he was frightened that I would start overdoing it…so I did! I thought I had leeway.’
The general consensus seems to be that his performance in this one isn’t very good, and that his willingness to take the piss bleeds into other aspects of the production, especially into other performances from the guest cast. But I have to say I’m going against popular opinion here because I’ve really enjoyed watching him! His regular performance in the first three episodes isn’t anything to particularly write home about, but when he goes fully over the top in this one I think it’s brilliant. It’s so much fun to watch, and somehow the sheer cheek of going so far makes it genuinely quite scary in places. He’s one of my favourite villains by a long chalk.
There’s another aspect of the casting in this one where my thoughts seem to go against the grain of general opinion, although I think they’re in tune with the way people used to feel about it. I think the part of Pex is woefully miscast, and that’s the biggest thing which spoils the story, even more than the various areas of the world not feeling tonally consistent. Pex needs to be played by a real muscle man, a proper action hero type. Whether you want to to more along the lines of Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis, you need it to be someone who’d plausibly a hero to really sell the cowardly moments where he retreats into himself and starts sucking his thumb. As it is, Pex comes across as a bit of a weakling so there’s no juxtaposition in seeing him act as one for much of the tale. You need there to be a real disparity, and I think that’s the biggest missed opportunity in this one.
I also feel like we could do with seeing the deaths of a few more Rezzies across the story, both from the Cleaner Robots and from other ways. In the end we get the killer waste disposal and a robot in the Pool, but Doctor Who has a line in this episode which hints at a really interesting version of the story that I’d love to have seen;
Mel: ‘Imagine building this beautiful pool and filling it with mechanical killers.’
Doctor Who: ‘The rest of the Towers would have been like this pool if he’d had his way. A killer in every corner.’
I want to see the version of this story where there is a killer in every corner, and where making it to the top of the tower is a real challenge.
I’m going with another 7/10. There’s so much to like in here, but I think there’s several missed opportunities, too. It’s a sign that the show is on the way up, though, and it’s not felt this creatively rich in a long time…
