Allow me to preface this review by saying that as someone who knows of the Doctor Who franchise largely through the 2005 revamp, I usually find myself thrown off-kilter when watching episodes from the original series. Not to say I don’t enjoy them, but more often than not, it takes me a while to settle in and really get immersed. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I think it could very well be that I’m just not quite used to the multi-part episode format that “Classic Who” built itself upon.
Originally aired in October of 1987 and finally released to DVD on September 1st 2011, Paradise Towers sees the seventh incarnation of The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy – whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person at Melbourne’s recent Armageddon Expo) drawn into this latest adventure when he visits the titular establishment at the insistence of his red-headed companion Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford), who seeks to go for a nice refreshing swim. Unfortunately for them, their expectations are shattered when they arrive to find not the pristine palace the tourist videos described, but instead a dank, graffiti-covered mess of a place. And if that wasn’t bad enough, things gradually worsen for the pair as they run afoul of a triad of primary-color-clad street gangs called the Kangs, as well as the Caretaker militia, whose leader (Richard Brier) keeps watch over the towers.
Just another run-of-the-mill day in the life of the Time Lord.
The quality of acting on show here is a mixed bag. Sylvester McCoy seems to be getting more comfortable in his role as the Doctor, following on from his debut serial Time And The Rani. Bonnie Langford, on the other hand, continues to emphasize the wrong syllable in almost every sentence, gets stuck with a side-plot that’s only mildly interesting (encountering various hiccups in her quest to find the pool), and – in what are sadly her most memorable moments in this entire story – gets a few chances to showcase the ear-splitting scream for which her character is famous among the fandom. However – as tends to be the case with many Classic Who stories, especially from this particular point in time – the supporting cast helps to keep things amusing, though not nessecarily for the best of reasons. The Kangs admittedly carry a certain level of charm to them, due more-so to their hilarious lingo than their tacky outfits, and Richard Brier’s Cheif Caretaker is deliciously hammy on-screen, chewing up so much of the scenery I was surprised there was anything left for the cast to use. That said, the character of Pex (Howard Cooke) – a self-appointed policeman – comes across as a mentally-underdeveloped man-child rather than the sympathetic soul he was clearly written as. Suffice to say, I found myself chuckling quite a lot here.
The soundtrack is synthesized, as one would expect from most 80′s-era productions. Keff McCulloch provides a wonderfully off-beat version of the Doctor Who theme, but his incidental music is lackluster and does little to really set the mood, being more of a distraction for me than anything else. The visual effects are more of a highlight, however. As horribly dated as they may be by today’s standards, they carry a B-movie charm to them that I always love to see in these classic serials. The indoor areas of Paradise Towers also deserve special mention, since – considering the budget – the production crew did a reasonable job of making them look appropriately degraded and disgusting.
Doctor Who: Paradise Towers is – fittingly enough – a real trip back in time to a wildly different era of Doctor Who, when the stories were more about setting the atmosphere and concentrating on the characters. Was there action? Any glitzy and glamorous special effects? Of course! But like a nagging itch that refuses to stop, the budget was a huge restriction on those factors even in Classic Who’s final years. At least now the opening sequence graces us with some computer-generated imagery that – for 1987 – actually looks quite slick.
Any fans who – like me – were introduced via the modern Doctor Who series and are seeking to backtrack, may do well to give this DVD a glance. All four parts of the story have been digitally remastered, the disc itself houses its fair share of special features including isolated music tracks, a making-of featurette, and my personal favourite of the bunch: a trio of former stars – Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan) and Sophie Aldred (Ace) – discussing what it was like to be a “Who Girl” in the 80′s.
