Re: Paradise Towers

Bazza told the audient void (and rec.arts.drwho):

"The Face of Po" <gkennington@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Bazza told the audient void (and rec.arts.drwho):

"The Face of Po" <gkennington@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1176070382.10307.0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bazza told the audient void (and rec.arts.drwho):
[Paradise Towers]

Please explain why you like this story?

Could I first draw your attention to the subtle distinction between
"like" and "don't believe to be utter ***"?

It generally
rates poorly on all counts. What about this story appeals to you?

The, um, story. To quote The (poorly punctuated) Word According to
DBurns' Clipboard:

At it's heart, Paradise Towers has a reasonably interesting, if slightly
cliched script.

And there's the setting. You see, I also like "Blake's 7" and "Max
Headroom". The pessimistic glimpse of the future (see also: the
Sunmakers) with some added urban decay shows a little more imagination
than Yet Another Grimy Spaceship. And it means that when the pristine
white robots appear, they're made all the creepier in contrast.

I'm not
taking the mickey I really am curious as I just don't get it???

Don't get me wrong, there's lots you're justified in disliking: Nobody
informed Richard Briers that he was meant to play it straight. Langford
is as squeaky as ever. McCoy is still playing the complete clown at
this stage. The Kangs' dialogue is excruciating. It's all too damned
brightly-coloured. The appalling 80's production mean that its attempts
at cyberpunk look as terrible as any Children's BBC miniseries of the
time.

It's no classic, but underneath all the easy targets to which you
perpetually draw attention, there is a worthy story.

Also...what
was your age when you first viewed it?

I was 7.

Sometimes rose-tinted glasses play a
factor in someone liking a McCoy story plus the fact when they watched it
they didn't know any better having been too young to have watched the first
4 classic Doctors.

I have watched it since, you know. If you want some benchmarks, I've
rewatched it within a month of both Genesis and Inferno (you would call
those two classics, right?), and still think that it is neither a waste
of tape nor an insult to the memory of DW.

Your make a constructive intelligent argument that I find it hard to totally
disagree with. I suppose at the end of the day it comes down to personal
preferences. Certainly I would count Genesis as a classic..if not THE
classic all time story. Inferno too is very good. Bearing all of the points
you listed in mind - even the casting of Bryers - would you have preferred
this story had the lead part been played by Tom Baker? Or would it have made
no difference to you?

The bits that I really like about it aren't the cast at all, but the
ideas. Given the same script and supporting cast, Tom would no doubt
have been a scene stealer, but it's difficult for me just to imagine
Tom's Doctor superimposed onto it, given all the other changes that had
affected the show in the intervening years.

Concerning rose tinted glasses - it was interesting that you were seven at
the time you first saw this episode. I thought almost all of the Pertwee
stories as brilliant - and was shocked some years ago when I sat down to
watch The Mutants just how terribly bad it was. I was probably about seven
when that was first broadcast. Perhaps a lot of this has to do with the fact
that McCoy was YOUR Doctor...

I suppose that Colin was "my" Doctor, as the earliest three scenes I can
remember come from Revelation, Mark and Attack, and I started watching
it on a semi-regular basis during Trial. But Trial was so damned
confusing (for a 6-year old watching on a semi-regular basis) that S24
was when I first started grasping the stories rather than watching a
sequence of scenes.

the one you grew up with and ultimately the one
who got you interested in Doctor Who in the first place. I suppose it would
be hard to hate him and slam all of his stories if you enjoyed them as a
child. I guess that would go for anyone irrespective of which Doctor they
first remember.

It might be more accurate to say that I'm a child of the novelizations
(and the New Adventures - which feature the 7th Doctor & Ace but are
worlds apart from the episodes featuring same). I'd been aware that the
Doctor could change his face before I'd really latched onto any
particular Doctor. The opening titles of the McCoy era are the ones
that give me the greatest nostalgia buzz, but I think that's as far as
any special feeling for those seasons goes.

You will never feel as I do about McCoy because your viewpoint will always
be different. I had to watch the decline of the show where as you actually
didn't know any different. The McCoy era WAS Doctor Who for you. You could
only have been pleasantly surprised when you discovered that the older
material was better than the stuff you were used to.

The BBC did a series of repeats in 1991 - while I liked the black and
white ones then, I still didn't get what was so great about, eg. The
Daemons in comparison to The Sea Devils. Even Genesis seemed a bit of a
chore when it took 6 weeks to air. (The 7th Doctor story they chose
was, inexplicably, Battlefield, which I recalled being disappointing
even the first time round, so there were no rose-tinted glasses keeping
that one in the running.)

Throughout the 90's, I'd occasionally get one of the VHS releases that
the second-hand shop would have for £5 each, such as Day of the Daleks
or Pyramids of Mars, end up feeling oddly disappointed by them and go
back to the novelizations.

But I do understand
your views and it's very possible had I been 7 years old during the McCoy
era I would agree with you totally.

In the case of PT, I didn't think it so great first time around (I liked
the cleaners but not much else). A common criticism of that era is that
it was aimed at kids too much, and the runaround action of Delta,
derided by all but Solar Penguin (and the Discontinuity Guide), pleased
this kid more than the more serious elements. I liked Silver Nemesis
first time round (more than Happiness Patrol or Greatest Show) too, but
looking back I think it really could be the worst of the lot.

I decided that I liked PT more after reading all those novelizations, a
few years later. Once I was able to borrow the recorded shows off
people with UK Gold, I prepared myself for the smashing of a childhood
memory, and found that it wasn't as bad as all that. (I recently met
somebody that had read the novelization of Happiness Patrol, and refused
to watch the story itself due to a similar fear.)

--
The Glyn of Kennington - remove caps when replying

"it's" - abbrevation for "it is"
"its" - belonging to it, cf. "his", "hers"
.