There’s a germ of a good idea in Paradise Towers, and despite the fact that this was commissioned and written before Sylvester McCoy was even cast, the Tour Honchos found upon re-watching for purposes of HD Re-classic-ation a surprisingly good and Doctor-y performance, one much in keeping with our historical memory of his era. That said Paradise Towers is still proto-McCoy, not the shambolic mess that Time and the Rani was but neither a terribly coherent story, with too many disparate elements–including a very large one smack in the middle–to make for an enjoyable romp.
Whatever program Richard Briers thought he was acting in, it certainly wasn’t Doctor Who, but no one could dissuade him from his overtly large performance, and that was before the Chief Caretaker went full-on zombie towards the end. And no amount of color-coded girl gangs or cannibalistic geriatrics could emerge from the ghastly shadow this performance put on the story.
━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━◦○◦━
One peculiar tick which the Tour admits is it’s own concerns the cleaners from Paradise Towers, from outward appearance all we see are the War Machines from the Hartnell story The War Machines. In Paradise Towers the cleaners carried no real menace, whereas a War Machine always struck us a present day (for 1966) proto-Dalek, and were quite effective as a result. They would have scarier in Paradise Towers as well.
New HD-elicious caps for Paradise Towers are now online.
