Doctor Who: Series 24, Episodes 5-8 – “Paradise Towers” (1987)

“Build high for happiness!”  This is a crazy one, and I just love it.  It’s honestly probably my favorite Seventh Doctor serial, and I don’t even know why.  It’s just so off-the-wall and hits the right notes for me.  Even as I see and acknowledge the whacked-out silliness, I don’t mind it ‘cause I’m having so much fun.

The Seventh Doctor and Mel find themselves materializing in a luxury high-rise turned dystopian nightmare.  Roving packs of all-girl gangs are targeted by the building’s caretakers, who run it like a police state.  Older “rezzies” (residents) try to lure the girls – called Kangs – into their flats gingerbread-house-style.  There’s a large piece of possibly-intelligent, possible-murderous technology running amuk.  Oh yeah, and there’s mythology surrounding the “great architect” who designed Paradise Towers and will one day return to restore it to its former glory.  Needless to say, the Doctor and Mel have their work cut out for them just staying alive, unarrested, and uneaten, let alone helping out.

Yep.  It’s insane.  I’m so weirdly fond of it, though.  I’m a sucker for dystopian jargon (usually – I thought the stuff in The Maze Runner felt way too forced,) and the slang here reminds me alternately of Alex and his droogs in A Clockwork Orange and Newspeak.  I like that.  It helps cement how vastly different these characters’ experiences are from ours, along with the way their own history has been mythologized and half-forgotten.  In that way, it kind of reminds me of “The Face of Evil.”  The Kangs living in this wreck of a building with amenities they’ve never used because it’s been so long since anyone knew what they were – that sort of thing.  I love it.

I also like what a mishmash of craziness they have going on here, what with the gangs, the creepy residents, the fascist caretakers, the lone young man who runs around declaring himself a “hero” and has made himself more into a character than a person – all of it.  Arguably, it’s probably a little overstuffed and messy, but it works for me.  I don’t mind that some of these different threads hang together pretty loosely.

As for our heroes, the Doctor naturally draws attention wherever he goes.  The Blue Kangs quickly adopt him as one of their own, and he learns their phrases and habits with gusto.  I don’t know why, but there’s just something so winning about these hard-edged, distrustful teenage hooligans taking such a shine to Seven.  Meanwhile, the caretakers are convinced that he’s the prophesied great architect come back at last, and they have more than a few bones to pick with him.

Mel doesn’t come out quite as well, in my opinion (in part just because the Blue Kangs don’t like her and so she’s separated from a lot of that action.)  She gets herself into fairly dumb peril more than once.  I like her more once she meets Pex.  When she has a non-dangerous inhabitant to bounce ideas off of, she gets into a good Excellent Question zone, speculating on how and why the Towers got to be what they are.