By Roy Mathur, on 2025-09-28, at 23:33:30 to 00:33:10 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Notable Cast: Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy, Companion Mel Bush: Bonnie Langford, Chief Caretaker: Richard Briers; prolific, best known as Tom Good in BBC's sitcom The Good Life
Director: Nicholas Mallett; DW The Mysterious Planet, The Curse of Fenric, Blake's 7 production unit manager
Writer: Stephen Wyatt; DW The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: BBC Television Centre, Shepherd's Bush, Elmswell House, Buckinghamshire in 1987
Broadcast: Story 145, serial 2, season 24, following Time and the Rani (pod 591), 4 x c. 25, 5--26 Oct 1987
Media: Target novelization by Stephen Wyatt 1988, audiobook read by Bonnie Langford 2012, VHS 1995, DVD 2011, 2013, Blu-ray 2021, BBC iPlayer since 1 Nov 2023
The UK no. 1 single was one hit wonder Pump Up the Volume by MARRS. It isn't as obnoxious as Rick Astley's one hit wonder Never Gonna give You Up, from Time and the Rani's first broadcast, which as well as corny also sounds like a threat.
As I said last time, back then I was at DIHE studying tourism, so I'm not sure if I've seen this before. I know I wasn't happy there and was coming home some weekends, but Doctor Who's broadcast had moved from Saturday to Monday. The first episode was sandwiched betwixt Wogan and Hi-de-Hi! on Monday at 19:35, so unless I saw this on repeat, this may be my first viewing.
Somewhere dark and urban the last Yellow Kang narrowly escapes the Red Kangs hunting her, but is killed by a robot.
Reluctantly, the Doctor takes Mel, who likes the look of the swimming pool, to luxury arcology, Paradise Towers. When they arrive, they find a slum full of rats and rubbish. The explore and are accosted by Red Kang (a girl gang with dyed red hair). Uniformed Caretakers patrolling the corridors hoping to capture Kangs, instead capture the Doctor.
Mel is taken in by two old biddies (Rezzies), who feed her and explain in their society, men left to fight a war. Pex crashes in through the door and agrees to lead her to the pool.
The Chief Caretaker accuses the Doctor of being Paradise Towers Great Architect Kroagnon and sentences him to death, but he confuses the Caretakers and slips away.
Blue Kangs catch Mel and Pex and mock Pex as a coward who hid instead of joining the military.
Back with the Red Kangs, the Doctor is told of the mysterious disappearances afflicting the remaining population.
Tilda and Tabby take Mel in again. They are eager to fatten her up, tie her down, and eat her. She is rescued by Pex, while the old ladies are consumed by their waste disposal unit.
The Doctor discovers that the architect, Kroagnon, was a homicidal maniac who designed the city to kill its citzens in order to attain perfection. Kroagnon, now a machine, possesses the Chief Caretaker.
Mel and Pex reach the pool where she is attacked by a crab-bot, but escapes by shooting it with Pex's gun, while he looks on helplessly.
The Blue and Red Kangs, Rezzies, and Caretakers allign against the killer robots and Kroagnon. Pex volunteers to bait him into a trap and dies while taking him down an abyss.
The Kangs honour Pex by spray painting "Pex Lives" on a wall.
Why does Mel insist on going to the pool in the midst of all this chaos? Monomania?
The Doctor fools the incredibly dense guards by making up a rule, confusing them enough to leg it. Coupling their intentionally comedic stupidity that beggars belief, with Richard Briars appallingly hammy acting, completely messed up my suspension of disbelief.
Dean Motter's architecture gone wrong Mister X and the dystopic violent chaos of Manhattan Island in John Carpenter's Escape from New York springs to mind. Or would do if so much of this wasn't played for laughs.
Yellow, Red (Bin Liner, Fire Escape, etc.), and Blue Kangs instead of "gangs", Caretakers, Rezzies instead of "residents", "Cowardly Cutlets" instead of "cowardly custards" are all attempts by the writer to portray the breakdown of language, urban decay, and the descent into anarchy, but we're only a few years from the arcology breaking down, not centuries. I liked Kang slang like, "icy hot" for something good, which reminded me of "bad" and "wicked" from my teens, though this would be old hat by 1987.
Twenty year old script editor Andrew Cartmel (pod 591) wanted much wilder stories and this topical societal breakdown should be it, but it is not. The overall comedic camp is lame, the stupid Keystone Cops caretakers reminded me of the Crit Cop in Red Dwarf: Timewave, the teens are too old, the killer robots are rubbish, Sylvester McCoy's rolled Rs grate, Richard Briers hams it up, and 4 episodes is excessive. The cannibal old biddies, right out of Hansel and Gretel, aren't bad; their gruesome deaths are blackly comic and tryhard hero---poor, pathetic Pex---garners an ounce of sympathy. Pex lives.
In Howe, walker, and Stammer's Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy speaking to the legendary Peter Hainning, genre anthology editor and non-fiction author, for Doctor Who---25 Glorious Years, says "There seemed to be so much to learn in the way of words... I was surprised at how well it came across." (Full quote in pod).