Doctor Who Reactions: "Paradise Towers" (SPOILERS)

Part One:

1)There's some interesting use of language in this.

 

2)Ah, another in along line of lame Doctor Who robots. Vaguely reminiscent of a War Machine.

 

3)"What are boys?"

 

4)"Is she fat?" Uh-oh.

 

5)"We're the Rezzies." I...uh...no.

 

6)I'm a little sketchy as to the Chief Caretaker as acting as though he thinks the Doctor is the Great Architect.

 

7)Cliffhanger #1: "What should we do with him now, Chief?" "Kill him."

 

Part Two:

8)"Rules should always make sense."

 

9)"Hungry!"

 

10)Cliffhanger #2: The Rezzies want to eat Mel!

 

Part Three:

11)The Creature from the Waste Disposal Unit!

 

12)"...But, then, I'm not a power-crazed psychopath."

 

13)The pool robot is also lame.

 

14)Cliffhanger #3: The Cleaners attack the Doctor!

 

Part Four:

15)Briers' "possessed" act is somewhat goofy.

 

16)"All the nasty human beings!"

 

17)"Did Mel make the creature unalive for you?"

 

18)Why did none of these people ever leave Paradise Towers? Are they all locked in? Or are things even worse outside?

 

Overall:  I found this quite enjoyable. I like a nice random adventure that you don't have to worry about how it ties into a larger storyline.

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  • Watched all these again not that long ago.  NOT having Eric Saward on the show anymore apparently allowed for a whole new feeling to come across. I loved Sylvester McCoy from the very first, although I must admit his debut story is not that well-written. Someone online pointed out that McCoy got even better in PARADISE TOWERS, and I'd have to agree.  I also love the observation that, it's SO sick, SO nasty, that it's a good thing it was done as a COMEDY (it almost reminds me of the Adam West BATMAN in spots), otherwise, it might have received more complaints than THE DEADLY ASSASSIN did. Apparently you can get away with a lot if something's funny enough.

     

    This is one of those "insane" sci-fi concepts that takes an idea to absurd "what if?" extremes.  Kinda like THE HAPPINESS PATROL, or that David Tennant story about the underground superhighway traffic jam.

     

    I love the bit where The Doctor outwits the guards using the rule book.

     

    It crossed my mind, the scene where the Kangs say they like The Doctor's outfit, that's it's really cool, would have been a lot funnier if Colin Baker had still been around.

  • Actually, from what they were saying in the extras, this was the first story that McCoy filmed.
  • Could be. They often filmed stories out of order in order to schedule location filming during GOOD WEATHER months. (London is not Hollywood-- heh.) I was rather surprised to learn that Pip & Jane Baker's TIME AND THE RANI was actually written for Colin Baker, and that he was supposed to DIE at the end of it. But he refused to come back, after having been screwed over the way he was.

     

    In Philly, we had 2 different PBS stations running WHO at the time-- Channel 12 in Philly, and Channel 23 / NJN around Trenton (I think).  One of those stations (23, I think), actually ran McCoy's 2nd & 3rd season in production order.  (Idiots)  Then again, Channel 12 years earlier had run Tom Baker's last 2 seasons in production order.  This same station, back in 1979-80, had run Baker's 1st 4 seasons in RANDOM order.  Each story would be complete, but no 2 consecutive stories were run back-to-back. One result of this was seeing Leela before Sarah left the show, and then later, seeing Leela's introduction.  (Like I said-- IDIOTS) In early 1980, I actually mailed Channel 12 a list of Baker's stories so they could get it right, and about 2 months later, they started doing so (once they switched to running complete stories on Saturday afternoons).

     

     

    Last year, I wrote a story in which I "cast" both Sylvester McCoy & Bonnie Langford as characters.  It had nothing to do with DOCTOR WHO, but it did involve time-travel... and a piano in an old-west saloon. One of my favorite bits was when McCoy was confronted by a gang of bank-robbers. When he referred to them as "Gentlemen", they objected strongly.  "WHUT did yew CALL us??"

  • I first saw the show on Channel 2, WGBH in Boston - they ran the Pertwee and Tom Bakers stories - in order, as far as I recall - one episode per weeknight. I remember that 'GBH ran the Baker episodes with those ghastly voice-overs by Benjamin Franklin that tended to kill the cliffhangers by giving away plot points for the next episode. Later, when we got cable, our cable package - for some unguessable reason - included a PBS station out of New Hamster that ran the stories in "movie" format on Saturdays - that was where I first saw the later Doctors, and the surviving Hartnell and Teroughton stories.
  • Howard Da Silva-- AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!
  • Philly's Channel 17 ran the 2 Peter Cushing films.  Later, they ran Jon Pertwee.  Many years later, I read his first 3 seasons had been put into syndication as a package, but that's NOT what 17 ran.  They started with THE SILURIANS and stopped with DAY OF THE DALEKS.  So in effect, they ran 2 seasons' worth... sort of. NO proper introduction to the series, and they stopped just when Pertwee's character was starting to become likeable!  Until DAY..., The Master was more charming than the hero.

     

    This was one episode per night at 7:30 pm, EDITED to make time for commercials.  So, no intro for "Bessie", either (had to wait until the 80's to see that scene). Except for DAY OF THE DALEKS, Part Four, which they announced would run at 10 PM that Friday, 2 hours after Part Three.  The show had apparently gotten bad ratings, and they were pulling the plug.

     

    A year or so later, by accident, I ran across reruns on 17, this time, they were running one episode PER WEEK, on Saturdays at 11: 30 AM.  Unfortunately, by the time I noticed, they were midway into THE CLAWS OF AXOS.  I never saw THE SILURIANS and THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH in their entirety until the 80's, by which point they were in B&W instead of color as originally.

     

    The show was inspirational for me, though... when I "cast" Roger Delgado as a HERO.  (A very NASTY, scary hero, but the hero all the same.)

     

     

    I'm reminded that when PBS first got Tom Baker, his episodes were edited, too. It wasn't until they started ruinning the "movie" versions that I suddenly was able to see them UNCUT (sort of). Later, they re-ran the individual episodes, but this time, UNCUT.  They went all the way from ROBOT to TERMINUS, and for some reason, stopped there, and only ran movie versions afterwards.

  • ...Bonnie Langford - to translate it into US terms , she appears to have been something of a combination between Marie Osmond and Bernadette Peters ?????

      A former lil'-gurl pop singer/idol - Or , performer , since I guess she was more a " traditional showbiz/theater " performer as a child , not a " rock'n'roll/pop music " one - now a working musical-comedy performer as an adult , with " lil' baby doll " looks and shape ?????

  • From photos I've seen, Bonnie Langford appears to have gotten BETTER-LOOKING as she reached middle-age!

     

    I saw her perform onstage at a convention "cabaret show". Like Jon Pertwee at another such show, she got the entire 2nd half of the show all to herself, and just about blew the roof off the building.  I've been crazy about her ever since.

  • They started with THE SILURIANS and stopped with DAY OF THE DALEKS

     

    I wonder if that's what 'GBH did, too - I seem to recall seeing Liz Shaw and Jo Grant stories, then early Tom Baker, and only seeing the Pertwee stories with Sarah Jane several years later.

  • I think it was in late 1983, when PBS finally ran Jon Pertwee here.  They had an incomplete set-- only the color stories.   Any where only B&W existed, they skipped.  So his PBS run began with INFERNO.

     

    Now, SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE was in color-- but that was the only story shot entirely on film, not video.  Not sure why it was excluded. A year-- or two-- later, they ran ALL the Pertwees, starting with SPEARHEAD, THE SILURIANS (B&W), AMBASSADORS (B&W).  But, stupidly, one episode each of PLANET OF THE DALEKS and INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS, which only existed in B&W, they skipped, only running the 5 episodes they had in color.  IDIOTS.  To this day, I have still never seen those 2 individual episodes.

     

    It was July or August 1983 that Jon Pertwee & Lis Sladen came to Philly to promote both THE FIVE DOCTORS and Perwee's episodes, which would appear on PBS sometime after the anniversary special.  Or was it after the entirety of Peter Davison's 3rd season?  Hmm...

     

    If I recall rightly, the Hartnells, Trougtons, and all the remaining Pertwees made their PBS debut at the same time as Colin Baker's 1st season.  Probably the last really big hurrah for the show on PBS.  After that, it was fewer and fewer "new" episodes.

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