Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 688: Paradise Towers, Episode Three
Dear diary,
There’s something I’ve never understood about Paradise Towers… where is it set? In my mind, it’s always been a single tower block just out in the middle of… well, the middle of nowhere if I’m honest. In my head, there’s a void, and the tower block, and that’s it. Somehow it’s never felt right to have it just somewhere on Earth, and even being a part of a city feels wrong - if people can get out and nip down to the shops or to the local park, then it really lessens the tension of the whole thing.
The implication from the video the Doctor watched in this episode (on DVD, no less! Forward thinking, there…) is that it’s on some other planet, and he comments that as ‘space is a big place’, the Great Architect could always move on and find work elsewhere. I’m not quite sure what to decide, I’d say that it can’t be far from Earth - it won awards in the 21st century, and we’re still in ‘Solar System colonising’ mode by the timeline established with the Second Doctor…
While I’m on that subject, I’m not sure if I like the image of the towers that we see at the start of each episode. It feels wrong that this world - so run-down and grimy on the inside - should be so beautiful and gleaming outside, with fresh flowers growing. It’s a concept that can work, and rather well, I think, but because we only ever see this ‘veneer’ of the building in a single establishing shot, and it’s not brought into the story at all, it seems out of place.
That said, I’ve found myself enjoying the interior of the place more and more today. The interior of the flat is still a weak point, as is the swimming pool (it just looks too ‘generic’), but the actual walkways and corridors are lovely. In the making of documentary to this story, writer Stephen Wyatt makes a point of saying that each floor of the building has its own streets and squares, and I’m rather taken with that idea, I think!
On the whole, I think I’ve been more amenable to this episode than either of the previous two. Paradise Towers still isn’t grabbing me in quite the way that I’d like it to, but I’m finding lots more to enjoy, and I think it’s a bit like Time and the Rani, in that I can see lots of brilliant ideas all bubbling under the surface, crying out to be done slightly better. The story is still hampered by that ‘kids show’ vibe that we’ve had since the Seventh Doctor arrived, but there’s so many dark and sinister ideas in here that the jolly tone almost works - helping to make them even more sinister!
I think I’ve just got a sort of general apathy towards Season Twenty-Four, because this simply isn’t grabbing me at all, despite numerous things which by rights should be. I’ve spent so long thinking of this season as one I’d hopefully champion, that I’m somewhat crushed by the fact that it’s not connecting - and I think that’s even leading to harsher scores on episodes which might otherwise fare a little better…
