Thursday, 18 December 2025

What's Wrong With... Paradise Towers


A lot of the blame for problems this story might have can be laid at the door of one man - guest star Richard Briers. We know he was a very good actor, though much of his career was based in situation comedy. In later life he was "adopted" by Kenneth Branagh and appeared in several of his cinematic Shakespeare productions.
In Paradise Towers his performance as the Chief Caretaker is just too broad, as though he is hamming it up for the kids. Things get worse once he is possessed by Kroagnon. He's a caricature, in a story very much built along comic book lines (Andrew Cartmel being a huge fan of 2000 AD etc) where what it really needed was some verisimilitude. We can never believe that the Towers is a real place, inhabited by real people. Being studio-bound, with little or no budget for extras, doesn't help. 
Apparently the producer encouraged the performance by Briers, so he has to take some of the blame.

Most of the background to the story collapses under scrutiny. 
Kroagnon was turned against by the occupants of the Towers and confined as a bodiless entity in the basement. Why not just kill him?
If he's just a brain (or a lifeforce - it's never made clear which) how could he create the technology to hijack the Cleaners? They kill people and bring the bodies to the basement, but for what purpose? He's not using them to build a body for himself as he has the technology to transfer himself into another person and possess them. Again, how can a disembodied being achieve any of this?
Did the residents provide any of this and, if so, why?
Remember that the Time Lords were prepared to resort to assassination to prevent mind transference technology in Mindwarp, so why not intervene here as well?
The Chief Caretaker believes the Doctor to be the Great Architect - yet he's in constant communication with Kroagnon and is actively aiding and abetting his schemes.

The timescale is all wrong. There are young male Caretakers and we have the Kangs, so the war during which all the young men left can't have been all that long ago - unless these are very long-lived humanoid aliens. People ought to remember what happened. 
What sort of conflict was it that every single male failed to return, but no-one seems bothered about why?
If there are teenage female Kangs, then where are all the teenage boys who were too young to go off to war? Where are the men who were too old to fight?
There ought to be a wider age spread for both males and, especially, females here.
The Kangs would have worked far better had they been feral children, but they're obviously in their 20's, and there appears to be a drama school somewhere in the Towers.

Tabby and Tilda resort to eating animals (and people if they get the chance), but how does everyone else survive here?
The Caretakers have a rule book which numbers thousands of rules, most with sub-sections big enough to need paragraphs - yet it's the size of a pocket notebook.
The Towers are clearly dilapidated, yet Tabby and Tilda get a new front door in no time at all.
If they are somehow getting preferential treatment from the Chief Caretaker, why doesn't this include food?
The script had to be changed to avoid showing Mel being threatened by a knife, due to then current rules around violence. But showing her being threatened with a huge toasting fork is more acceptable?
The plan to get rid of Kroagnon is overly complicated. The Kangs have crossbows - so why not simply shoot him? And what sort of "pests" does the Towers have that requires the Caretakers to keep a supply of dynamite?
Mel tells the Kangs that she doesn't have a colour - said whilst wearing a bright blue top...

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