Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 689: Paradise Towers, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Somehow, I’ve managed to make it through this entire story without making mention of Richard Briers’ performance as the Chief Caretaker. I think I’m right in saying that Briers once told an interviewer that he’d taken a part in Doctor Who as an excuse to ‘act badly’, and I think you can see that throughout appearance in this episode, because his performance is appalling…

…and completely right for the tone of the story! It works brilliantly, and I can’t help but fall in love with it. It’s so over the top that it’s almost grotesque, and it fits the slightly ‘comic book’ theme of this season particularly well. He’s been playing the part in a particularly bizarre way throughout (though, again, it’s fitted the story), but it’s really once his mind has been taken over that things really work for me.

It means that I’m also wondering if maybe I’ve been approaching Season Twenty-Four from slightly the wrong angle. I’ve spoken in the last week about how disappointed I am with the programme all of a sudden, shifting its tone from being television for children to strictly being ‘kids telly’, but with concepts and ideas that go beyond that area. I wonder if maybe I should have been looking at Time and the Rani and this story with a mind more willing to enjoy them on their own merits, including the ‘comic book’ tone that the programme has currently adopted. In the Last Chance Saloon feature on the Time and the Rani DVD, John Nathan-Turner comments that they were asked again to tone down the violence, and that they replaced it with more humour. I think that’s been very evident so far, and I’m looking forward to them managing to strike that right balance of violence and humour in the programme again.

All that said, I’ve still not really enjoyed this episode. There is - as usual - lots of little bits that I rather like, but they simply don’t add up to a satisfying whole for me. I’m thinking that this may be another story to add to my ‘must watch again’ pile (there’s at least one in every era), because taking a different approach may help. Today’s episode also isn’t helped by the inclusion of something that was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but be put right off by it. The Doctor has brought Mel to Paradise Towers because she’s desperate to go swimming. Fine. Before they make it to the swimming pool, they get caught up in an adventure. Fine. During this adventure, Mel gets set upon by cannibals, and then screams for her life when she thinks she’s stuck in the basement. Fine. Mere minutes later, they arrive at the pool, so she decides to forget the events of the last few hours and take a dip! No! What the hell were they thinking? Does she think that now she’s found the swimming pool, all the dangers have gone? That she can simply abandon the adventure? What on Earth is she doing?

I think this is all part of my continuing dislike of Mel - and that’s not helping the season in my estimations much, either! Bonnie Langford isn’t actually bad in the role, but the problem is that she’s only as good as the material she’s being given. Mel is the absolute stereotype of a Doctor Who companion, screaming and asking questions, and getting in to trouble. She’s not in any way believable for me as a character, and I don’t think it helps that I know Ace is coming up soon; a character I’ve always liked. We’re shifting format to three parters for the next few stories - the format I’ve often claimed in this marathon to be the perfect length for a Who story - so I’m hoping it might help to give me a bit of a shot in the arm, because I really don’t like not enjoying the series!