I am glad to see more people defend this story, I've been a huge fan of paradise towers for years and love the 80s class themes laced throughout the story and worldbuilding.
Man I am _so happy_ to see somebody not knocking on the Paradise Towers! I personally loved it from the very first time I'd watched it! I agree with like basically everything that you've said: it's a lovely mix of weird, bizzare, unconventional, surreal, looney, yet deadly, tense, with the right amount of claustrophobic, and the world within the Towers felt much larger than what we got to see, which of course made me personally yearn for more. If only it could've been a 6-parter with more character moments.... Ah.... And it's also so cozy! It's got some of the coziest, snuggliest scenes in Doctor Who! It's got such a pleasant vibe in spite of all the crap that goes on in the story! So, once again, Thank you, Stu, for giving this episode a *spectacular* bloody review with _literary parallels!_ I do wonder what I would've felt had I found out about Highrise before watching your video. Would have I instantly made the connection with this episode or would it have taken a bit of time to sink in properly? Also, on the one hand you almost made me wanna check out Highrise, but on the other hand I have a strange feeling that it'll end up being just as depressing and sad as Snowpiercer. And I don't really want that again....
I always thought that it would have made a bit more sense to have Ace introduced here as part of one of the Kang gangs or going Lone wolf inside the complex, instead of Dragonfire
I unironically love Paradise Towers for how legitimately *weird* it is. Also it really shows McCoy's Doctor as more than a funny grandpa but a manipulating bastard :D So: Scuse you, DVD-inlay, this serial is bloody fantastic!
Elizabeth Sandifer of the Tardis Eruditorum blog once described Paradise Towers as 'JG Ballard done as children's Panto', which is probably the most accurate description of the story you're ever going to come across. Paradise Towers used to regularly come in the bottom-10 of the DWM polls, which always felt like something of an injustice. I wouldn't hold it up as an all-conquering classic, but it's a hell of a lot better than its reputation and those DWM polls suggest.
The Kangs style of language is taken and reworked from the Droogs, from A Clockwork Orange. So yeah, there's your third parallel. Now go big up The Happiness Patrol and you will have made someone, that is me, very happy.
You can compare this story to Happiness Patrol which so happens to have been the second story of the season after. You can't compare the story but you can compare how they look. Colourful bright characters alongside a dark set.
@@shortangel333 JNT wanted the second story of each season, from Varos onwards, to be a sort of wildcard, oddball story, keeping audiences guessing and excited.
@@meropetied To be fair JNT thought Season 24 would be his last in the Producing chair. God the Mid to late 80s Doctor Who is so problematic behind the scenes but the stories are some of the best. Timelash is great... if you are completely doped out of your mind. Plus Six and Seven have good stories but the Doctor Who fandom were partly to blame claiming that the show wasn't good anymore. Like they didn't even give it a chance.
@@shortangel333 As a fan at the time, I was certainly pleased with 24 in at least giving us the weirder, wittier tone, and a more interesting Doctor. But it was certainly not terribly promising outside of Paradise Towers and parts of Dragonfire. In time, I certainly came to see it as a season of two parts: total desperation in Time and the Rani and then the beginning of something really great and fresh in PT and after. Except the fans that really mattered at the time apparently were still annoyed that the Doctor wasn't Tom Baker, let alone #5, #6, or #7.
It's not bad, and the reason it's maligned I think is because the direction and production don't really support the satire Steve Lyons was trying to go for. A classic case of the "monster of the week" criteria interfering with something trying to be more daring than the norm. Had this been a season later we'd have had a more polished production. Good ideas and themes, and it's clearly an inspiration on the weird RTD sci fi satires like Gridlock. It's certainly the highlight of Season 24, not that that's saying much.
Paradise Towers has always been one of my favorite, and for a while THE favorite, Doctor Who episode. It's just such an interesting world and I'm surprised we haven't had more expanded media about it.
I've been singing this one's praises for decades now. So glad you are too. These praises get shouted down when people can't see past little things. The punk postmodern 80s madness in it was also the fantastic almost tangible real beginning of the Cartmel era. Ice hot!
"The reason that Paradise Towers ended up being a strange mix of silly 80's light entertainment and dark and gritty nihilism is probably because it's clearly trying to be a kids version of the JG Ballard novel *High Rise* ." Yes! I now have a legitimate highbrow reason to justify my endearment of this episode. Now about *The Happiness Patrol* ...
I actually feel that the ENTIRETY of Season 24 is criminally underrated...even "Time and The Rani". That story alone sets up a unique story arc where we have The Doctor weakened mentally thanks to The Rani drugging him shortly out of regeneration, which helps explain Seven's silliness throughout the season...then it starts to wear off in Season 25 and the chessmaster that we think of when we think of Seven starts to emerge... Watch Part 1 of "Time and The Rani" and just see how quickly Seven figures out WHO he is, WHERE he is and just WHO The Rani is right after he wakes up initially! It's literally IMMEDIATE...and quite obviously waaaaay faster than The Rani had intended, leading her to knock him out AGAIN and drug him to induce the weakened post-regenerative state that she had intended him to be in.... Those effects would certainly NOT go away soon...hence...the silly Seven that we get for Season 24! GENIUS! 😁😁😁😁😁
Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy are my two favourite classic Who stories. They may be my two favourite Doctor who stories period. I can always make room for those stories.
This is one of my guilty pleasures. I love this episode. It's got such a uniqueness to it and style (the same reason why I like Time and the Rani, but this one is defiantly better). Plus, I like the guy's side-plot and felt it was executed very well. It’s hard to like a Sylvester McCoy episode, but the few that he does well in are some of my personal favorites! So glad to see more support for this little gem
5:00 Using comparisons to literature to make something look good? If he mentions Tess of the D'Urbervilles I'll know he's referencing 50 Shades 5:19 Yep!
Paradise Towers always reminds me of Happyness Patrol. It seems ridiculous but has such a heightened sense of reality being done on all sets with weird bright colors in a dark gritty distopia that it feels like it's easier to suspend your disbelief and indulge the story, unlike Delta and the Bannermen. It's so weird you just aren't inclined to nitpick.
Paradise Towers contains one of my favorite Doctor Who tropes: abandoned people who form a new society that awkwardly references where they came from. We see this with Leela's people in "The Face of Evil," and in audios like "The Whispering Forest" and "Spaceport Fear." This is probably also my favorite TV story featuring Mel.
Paradise Towers also got me into J.G. Ballard. I already love the story for that reason alone. The story is the gem of Season 24. There are 5th Doctor stories that are worse.
I haven't seem this serial yet, but from the concept alone it seems to be better than some 4th doctor stories even ((Robots of "y'know I reckon writing a story that goes against every single scrap of advice that that Asimov fellow gave about robot-themed SF could make for decent television" Death))
Agreed - Stephen Wyatt wrote a couple of excellent stories for Doctor Who, and Paradise Towers is by far and away the best and most imaginative of Season 24.
Paradise Towers is definitely underrated. There's some really great ideas here, it did a great job filling in the back story without it feeling like an info dump, and I enjoyed a number of the characters, especially the Red Kangs. Unfortunately it does feel like a rough draft that needed more work, but was rushed into production anyway (which all of season 24 was). Richard Briers' performance was so-o funny, I just couldn't stop laughing whenever he was on screen, but it really did hurt this story.
Me and my best friend watched this over pizza and two MASSIVE bottles of prosecco (from my granfathers funeral but that's a different story) and when we got to Kingston station we were ranting about Evil NooNoos and space Nazis. Such fun.
Paradise Towers is the only reason I saw the film “High Rise” from a few years back, it’s definitely got a good core idea also isn’t it the first dw story Andrew Cartmel worked on ? Therefore it’s GOAT
I've always loved Paradise Towers, and was shocked when I found out that most people seem to really dislike it. I really should get round to reading High Rise at some point
I always thought Paradise Towers got way too much hate. I like it _in spite of_ its silliness and over-the-top visuals and ideas. No, of course it's not genius and yes it's thematically confusing, but doggone it, it's _fun!_ Or should I say... Ice Hot!
For me, Paradise Towers, Greatest Show and Happiness Patrol form a natural grouping of imaginative, thought-provoking stories quite unlike anything else we got in the McCoy era, and possibly the entirety of Classic Who.
one thing you have to also give it credit for (and much of Cartmel's era) is the distinctive look. finally we're away from endless spaceship corridors, in favour of weird high rises, circus tents, holiday camps, ice worlds, haunted houses, etc.
80's kitsch aside, it's proper 'Who'. Taking ideas and issues from other notable sci-fi works then re'imagining and repackaging them for the wider TV audience. I'd watch this over anything from the past two seasons of Nu Who!
I'm now trying to imagine what other grim books Doctor Who could take inspiration from. My first thought was Perdido Street Station: basically a dystopian version of Ankh Morpork from the Discworld books, crossed with Gormenghast. There's also beetle-headed ladies, a gangster made from body parts stiched together from multiple species, and a battle between in an insane interdimensional spider God and some giant soul-eating moths. Tell me that would make an awesome Doctor Who episode!
@I Exist Well kindof, the book is set in the city of New Crobuzon, which like Ankh Morpork is a fantasy version of London with a wide variety of species trying to make a living, forming ghettos and adapting to urban life. Unlike in the discword books though the place is a semi-fascist hell-hole for anyone but the super rich, riven by governemnt corruption, racial prejudice, rampant inequality and exploitation and mass state surveilance.
I picked up a book a while back, where a group of fans review every episode of Doctor Who up to a point and give a brief opinion and a score out of 10. One of the episodes that was highly recommended in said book was the 2007 episode "Gridlock", which the book described as being a higher budget version of "Paradise Towers", and I was intrigued. Naturally, I knew they wouldn't be exactly the same, but it's on that line of "it took a good idea and made it better". Paradise Towers is an interesting comment and actually is similar to Gridlock; a society following a major crisis has been left to fend for itself on auto-pilot, some sections thriving, some barely holding on, and others resorting to monstrous behaviour to survive, with a presence hiding where none dare to tread, but know that eventually they will have to face it, but also surviving purely by the simplest of drives. So going into Paradise Towers, I honestly was expecting something slightly silly, as the series had decided to play up the comedy, and this episode presented itself as being fairly light hearted, but there is a lot of darkness lurking under the surface, kind of like the towers themselves, and it's quite a good story.
Other than time of the rani I love every McCoy story it's so difficult to pick favourites but tgsitg this and the happiness patrol are all up there. Also want more classic he who moans. Do an updated defence of the Web planet
@The Adric I like everything in season 24 other than time and the Rani which isn’t so bad I can’t watch it, it’s just barely boring enough that I’ll only watch it as part of a full season viewing. Paradise is great, delta is fun and dragon fire is average but still a lot of fun.
@The Adric yeah it's not great is it. Watchable at least, not the worst thing put to TV and just for the cast and ridiculousness I'd take it over something like Fear her but that is a low low bar. Still I maintain that season 24 as a whole is a lot of fun albeit dumb fun.
Up until I watched this video, I'd never watched Paradise Towers because my memories of 7's era from the time were so dreadful, and the various bits of it I'd attempted to revisit I'd loathed, but on the basis of this video I decided to venture to Paradise Towers for the first time (I think)... and I'm really enjoying it. Yes, it's ridiculous and silly, and none of the characters are in any way realistic, but you could kind of say the same about much of the Moffat era, and I generally loved that. Parts 3 & 4 I think I'll tackle tomorrow! ETA: casting Richard Briers as Ken Livingston as Adolf Hitler was either utterly preposterous or a masterstroke... probably both, tbh.
I watched Paradise Towers for the first time a few months ago, definitely enjoyed it as a low-budget, kitschy "Mad Max" type of story. I had no idea people thought it was shit! It's probably my favourite Bonnie Langford story in the Whoniverse ...Though I will warn people, Stephen Wyatt wrote a story for Big Finish, "The Psychic Circus" which is a prequel to both Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and I found that audio highly disappointing :/
This was such a cool video to get on my 18th birthday, primarily because for my birthday my parents got me a happy birthday message from the one and only Sylvester McCoy, and that was just amazing
Yep 100% agree with the Felis Sapien comparison, the Great Pool part is very much like the episode Waiting For God where Lister learns about the history of The Cat’s species where they mistake a washing list for co-ordinates to The Promised Land
Coincidentally, I watched it yesterday for the first time and here are my thoughts. It's really good. I thought season 24 was really bad till I watched this story. I was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed it.
I'd love to hear more of your opinions on the Seventh Doctor and stories he stars in. I remember in an old video you did you said he was your favorite incarnation, but we've very rarely gotten to hear more about him from your perspective. Also if the BBC ever hires me to write those pamphlets in the box, I'm just going to leave a definition to the term Buyer's Remorse. That should give the viewer a good first impression.
I always loved the story because I love doctor who when its cheesy, but I never thought of the subtext the story that much. I love your read of it and it just makes me love Paradise Towers more
I agree - I love Paradise Towers. It would probably make my top ten! I was seven or eight when it was first shown and I can remember being absolutely terrified of the yellow crabs.
Season 24 was the first whole season of Classic Who that I watched, and I totally liked it, more then Season 25 even ( though, 25 has better singular stories, like "Rememberance of the Daleks" for example). "Time and the Rani" is kind of weak start but McCoy is convincing from the get-go. Paradise Towers is the strongest story arc in that season and I liked it deeply. It got me absolutely hooked on McCoy. I also enjoyed his and Mels Dynamic and I was kinda sad to see her go in the end of the season, eventhough Ace is definetly the better companion. "Delta and the Bannermen" is absolute trash but it is so freaking entertaining. It is so bad that it is good again. Dragonfire is a story with cool Ideas and a few major weakness but still a nice season final. I can honestly say that there was no storyline from season 24 that I did not enjoy in some way. I had much more problems with Season 19, which is so far the weakest Classic Who Season that I have seen.
Great vid. A real guilty pleasure story Paradise Towers and so underrated. It feels so fresh and vibrant. Richard Briers was really good as Chief Architect in my opinion!
I love the inserts so much. They're really fun to flick through and sometimes offer background information I genuinely didn't know, like how The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, excellent as it is, almost didn't happen
I only recently watched season 24 for the first time, and I loved Paradise Towers. It balances the dark with the fun in a way that is so quintessentially 80s Who. I'd honestly argue it's a forgotten gem, sandwiched between two much worse and far more boring stories.
It's a highly underrated era of Who history; the 'not in your face or preachy' political / social commentary is sublime, Ace is wonderful, the Seventh Doctor is a dark, manipulative bastard, Remembrance is great. Try and watch Ressurection and Revelation before Remembrance though; it helps to connect a few dots. Even have a bash at the, in my opinion too heavily derided Destiny, would give a little more background colour.
@@thejacal2704 Oh, thank you for the recommendations! I'm actually going through all of Classic Who, and posting my reactions on my channel (if anyone's interested; wink wink) Just finished the Pertwee era; Onto Tom Baker! :)
@@carealoo744 Pleasure. I'm a long time nerd fan!! I had a quick look at your channel, yay for the Third Doctor top five, Jon Pertwee is my favourite. I've not watched your vid yet (it's getting a bit late here) but my top five, in no particular order, well, Inferno at no1, Carnival of Monsters at two, maybe, then, in no particular order (ahem) Frontier in Space, Spearhead from Space, and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. I think. Season seven: classic, I love the Quatermass vibes. And Liz Shaw, wow!! Also, you've got a new sub! Edit: If you've not seen any or much of Tom Baker, get ready for a rollercoaster of a ride!! Over the last few days I re-watched for the nth time his first two seasons, great stuff. The Sontaran Experiment is a Gem...
@@thejacal2704 Thank-you! Judging by your picks, it seems we'll get along just fine! :) I am a but nervous going into the 4th Doctor's era, as I haven't seen much of him, but I don't really remember appreciating his arrogance. It wasn't infuriating or anything though. And I'm going to be stuck with him for quite a while, so I might as well get used to it. Looking forward to the mammoth of Classic-Who, and for whatever 80s spiral that follows! :)
A box set bundle called the Shit years genuinely made me laugh out loud. I enjoyed Paradise Towers when I first watched it in 1987. I was about 13 at the time then and TV was very bad in those days 😂
What's your opinion on the next serial, delta and the bannermen, which is basically ken Dodd and genocide. Love both this and paradise towers. They both have dark subjects but are done in an over the top way and just very fun and entertaining
As an adult I loved it for the reasons you mentioned. As a kid I had trouble with it because it was so dang dark and nihilistic. As I kid I could identify this as being a suburban microcosm and didn't like the implication that it was possible for a society I recognized going so deeply out of wack. ... And there's no one to stop it? As an adult, this doesn't bother me because I can recognize the satire - did you notice everyone in paradise towers is a grotesque caricature of some character from urban society? And every one of them is a jerk! It should be called - Doctor who and the tower of bastards. Or Doctor who and the 1980s urban decay.
When I first saw Paradise Towers, I thought to myself "So there are different coloured teams trying to find their way Home and there's a rulebook. Is this a dystopian version of Ludo?"
Literary references be damned! How on Earth did you get from one end of this review to another without a single mention of the well meaning buff chap who is dumb as a Kellogs variety pack of hammers and who relentlessly introduces himself (chest proudly thrust forward) as "Pex!", AKA the best bit!?
Build high for happiness. Pex lives. Though I thought the Richard briers caretaker was Blakey from on the busses and the caretakers were like the school caretakers such those in grange hill.
Right since I saw this video I have now seen this story twice and I have to agree with a lot of the points made here. However, I still find it an overall mixed serial.
I've always had this story as a real guilty pleasure. It's honestly just such a charming, amusing story. As for being insulted by the DVD, the same happened to me back when I bought my first Classic Who story, Warriors of the Deep. To quote: "Compromised by a series of cost-cutting edits, a reduced production schedule and some poorly realised design choices, *Warriors of the Deep* struggles to deliver the dramatic impact it has on paper. Sadly, this is epitomised by the unintentionally absurd appearance of the Myrka, which, despite appearing only briefly on screen, contrives to disproportionately impinge on an otherwise thought provoking tale. There really should have been another way... " Thanks for that, lads, but it might have been better if teen me knew it was shit BEFORE he paid money for it.
If you haven't seen over the garden wall you definitely should, its a gorgeous mini series with a phenomenal script, which is dark and my favourite piece of media ever
A few years back I shared Paradise towers on Facebook and said if it was made today, with a more serious approach, it would be a masterpiece. Props for the Naked Lunch reference lol
Red Kangs are best! As a linguist, I can really appreciate their speech patterns and strange names now. One of my first memories *ever* (not just of Who or TV, but of anything) is being sat on a potty in the living room during what must've been the original broadcast, watching the cleaning robots murder innocent residents in dark corridors. I was transfixed. I therefore can't easily dislike this story or look at it with complete subjectivity, though I will admit that the special effects in the swimming pool scene leave a lot to be desired. I later basically forgot about this story for years - first in favour of other classic Who and later different interests entirely - and only looked up its name, and the other elements I'd forgotten, online circa 2003. Soon after that I must've caught it on UK Gold, and of course I've since picked up the DVD and given it another rewatch. I didn't really feel offended at the description on the insert. It's good that the show doesn't always take itself too seriously. This probably shades it as the best adventure of an unfairly maligned series, but I do have a soft spot for the following story as well. Pex lives...
Paradise Towers is fun. You can also draw from its themes - like social class, or the almost meta commentary - or ignore all that and enjoy robot cleaners hoovering people up and feeding them to a mostly hidden antagonist who takes over a body and is suddenly being showcased through completely over-the-top zombie acting before people try to blow it up with dynamite after watching cannibalistic grannies sucked down a waste disposal chute. Er, yeah. FUN! It's not one I'd recommend to people trying to get into classic who, but I wouldn't dissuade people either. Quite a few people reacting to classic lately have found Paradise Towers / Delta and the Bannermen a fun watch (despite being lauded serials).
One thing I have always wondered about the BBC DVD releases of the Classic Show.. Why don't they number the episodes like they did on the U.S /Canadian DVD Cases? Eh I still like Paradise Towers.
It is weird that paradise towers is the first major attempt at making JG Ballard's High-Rise which was later directed by a Dr who director Ben Weatley using a special FX company called Milk who also worked on Dr Who.
Paradise Towers and Happiness Patrol often get lumped in with "the shit years" as you say, but honestly they're pretty brilliant. Honestly....I LOVE Dragonfire. Maybe something's just wrong with me.
