N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

At almost no point does the incidental music complement the action in Paradise Towers. Indeed, some of it sounds as though it has been flown in from an entirely different show by mistake.^* And yet I have to bear a grudging respect for the way Keff McCulloch has boldly attempted to redefine Doctor Who‘s soundtrack.

Bits of it, as music, I quite like. Lots of it, though, is the stabby synth kind of music I wasn’t enamoured with in Time and The Rani and of which I remain resolutely unfond. But as I say, no matter how incongruous the music seems at times, I feel the effort to be different is due my appreciation, if not exactly my esteem.

“It displays exactly what everyone says is your usual failure as an architect. Not making allowances for people.”

The Doctor, Paradise Towers: Part Four

There are lots of good ideas in Paradise Towers. True, a lot of them have been cribbed from Ballard, Burgess and Brazil, but that’s not to say they aren’t worth bringing into Doctor Who. Street gangs with a distinct argot, the slavish adherence to bureaucratic rules, and the dehumanising effect of certain types of architecture would all make (and all have made) good backdrops to serious science-fiction.

In Paradise Towers, not all of those aspects are taken seriously, with the sinister Rezzies and the jobs-worth Caretakers played more for laughs. That said, for me Richard Briers’ performance works best in his cod-Fascist Blakey guise of the Chief Caretaker than as the metallic bluff Monty Python general of Kroagnon. It’s perhaps the more seriously-played Kangs with their wall-scrawl, descriptions of the dead as un-alive and mantra of ‘Build High for Happiness’ that are the most convincingly portrayed.

“I’d hate to have to live my life by some boring old rulebook like you do”

The Doctor, Paradise Towers: Part Two

Sylvester McCoy gets his first great scene here, quoting the rule book to escape the Caretakers, and for me is instantly more assured than in his debut. The takedown of an autocratic hierarchy in a day is the kind of classic Seventh Doctor shenanigans I grew to love reading in the New Adventures.

In Paradise Towers, not only has McCoy perfected his pensive scowl, but he also gets to do a bit of gurning, with nary an Auton in sight.

This isn’t the first, and won’t be the last time, a Doctor Who serial has a tone that’s all over the place, but leaving this aside, there’s more to like than dislike in Paradise Towers.

* This, of course, could be because the incidental music’s composition was apparently all very last minute.