Paradise Towers Part Three

The one where two flesh-eating grannies are dragged into the waste disposal...

Just that one sentence above makes it sound like Paradise Towers is peak Season 22 material, and the fact Tabby and Tilda are cannibals and cook human flesh on their gas stove is the sort of thing that I found a bit strong in The Two Doctors. But it feels much more light-hearted here, more pantomime-esque, even though it's being treated quite seriously. It's difficult to make something seem horrific with two old grannies dressed in lavender and pearls.

There's a dark comedy to it all though. It's in the way Tabby enthusiastically grinds pepper into her pot, in Tilda's "see if you can spot the basil!", and the comical strangulated face Elizabeth Spriggs pulls as she's dragged into the waste disposal. Seeing what's happened to her friend, Tilda's mood darkens and she sets about the screaming Mel with a (very floppy) carving knife. Luckily, Pex smashes through the door again to come to the rescue, even if he doesn't realise there's a real life emergency taking place!

With Tilda also disposed of - how does that Cleaner get behind the walls to be in the waste disposal chute? - Mel and Pex find a map of Paradise Towers: all 304 floors. The great pool in the sky is on Floor 304, which is where Mel is supposed to meet the Doctor, and the unlikely duo set out to find it. A lot of their time is wasted going up and down in broken lifts, but eventually they reach what Pex calls the "home of the unalive" (dead people go to Heaven).

Mel does not dwell on the terrifying experiences she's had on Floors 1-303 however. If nothing else, Mel is a positive person who sees the good before the bad, and here all she sees is an opportunity to relax and unwind. Never mind what's going on on the floor below, and what might have become of the Doctor: Mel wants to swim (and seems keen to get Pex into his Speedos too). However, there's something sinister lurking in the water, something bright yellow and surely very noticeable, but let's gloss over that...

Part 3 is really Sylvester McCoy's episode though, as he continues to hammer his portrayal into place in strongly scripted scenes. McCoy simmers beautifully through the scene between the Chief and Deputy Caretakers, casting that classic Seventh Doctor inscrutability as he takes in the moment. Then there's the wonderful sequence where the Chief Caretaker begins interrogating the Doctor, but our hero manages to seamlessly reverse the roles until it's he who's sitting in the interrogator's chair questioning his captor!

As with the rulebook escape scene in part 2, this is classic Seventh Doctor, and McCoy pitches every moment perfectly. This is a wily Doctor who uses words and psychology to get his way, a master manipulator with boho charm. The Doctor is then left in the charge of the Deputy Chief while the boss goes to investigate what's happened to Tabby and Tilda, but the Caretakers are so inept that they are easily overcome by the Red Kangs, who rescue their new hero (how they manage to accost and tie up the Caretakers without the Doctor noticing is unexplained).

The Doctor returns to the Red Kangs' brainquarters to view the Illustrated Prospectus of Paradise Towers, which appears to be a DVD (a decade before they were properly launched for retail). I also like how it's viewed on a little TV atop a trolley, reminding me of all those last days of term at school when we got to watch a film, or those Schools programmes that were shown in the mornings. The Prospectus shows us the Great Architect Kroagnon's other successes, including Golden Dream Park, the Bridge of Perpetual Motion and Miracle City, his greatest achievement. The thing is, Kroagnon wasn't keen on his masterpieces being spoiled and soiled by actual people, and devised deadly ways to get rid of them in order to preserve his works.

As a result, the in-betweens trapped Kroagnon somewhere in Paradise Towers (I'm guessing the basement) so that he could never finish it, and so never pose a threat to the young ones and old ones living there. The Doctor rallies the Red Kangs and the Blue Kangs together to fight for the future of the Towers, rather than fighting each other, and he heads to the basement with Fire Escape, Bin Liner, Air Duct and Drinking Fountain to see what they can see.

And what they see is the Chief Caretaker being pushed against his will toward his pet's smoking chamber, a voice booming out that the corpses the Cleaners have been feeding him have not been right. "Not right? What for?" asks the Chief. "For me to live in!" comes the reply. It's quite clear that the disembodied voice that's been festering in the basement is actually Kroagnon, trapped there somehow by the in-betweens before they left for war. And now he will have a new body at last: that of the Chief Caretaker!

Quick thoughts:

• Love the shot of the TARDIS having been wallscrawled by the Red Kangs (who are best), the first of a handful of times in the McCoy era when the police box gets vandalised (see also: The Happiness Patrol and Silver Nemesis).
• Although he's pitching his performance differently to the rest of the cast, Briers is really good in his scene with Judy Cornwell's Maddy. He has an understated threatening presence as he growls his lines, trying to suppress Maddy's anxieties, until he hits upon the ideal gag: let her have Tabby and Tilda's now vacant apartment. "It is substantially larger," he purrs, Maddy recoiling from his bad breath.
• And while I'm on this scene, how does anybody know Tabby and Tilda were eaten by the waste disposal? The only witnesses were Mel and Pex, and they've long gone. Surely people would think they'd mysteriously disappeared?
• What exactly does Kroagnon do with the corpses the Cleaners bring him? I don't believe he has a mouth to eat them, and if he's been looking for an ideal body to inhabit, then a string of dead people is never going to suffice is it?

The cliffhanger is a bit rubbish. It probably read well on the page - "The Doctor is pinned to the wall as a Cleaner grabs him by the neck and begins to strangle him" - but thanks to McCoy's gurning expressions, it becomes comical. Jon Pertwee had a tendency to pull faces like this too.

First broadcast: October 19th, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The interrogation scene between McCoy and Briers as the roles are reversed.
The Bad: The very visible line of string when Tilda throws the knife at Pex.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 0

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Paradise Towers is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Paradise-Towers-DVD/dp/B004VRO84M