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Post by Cyggy on Mar 5, 2022 5:29:03 GMT
Please rate and discuss this story here.....
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Post by Cyggy on Mar 7, 2022 5:01:06 GMT
I think the concept behind this is a really good one. A horrendous Tower Block with nightmares inside it.
Had never heard of the J.G. Ballard novel "High Rise" when this came out.
It also reminded me of the use of tower blocks in the Judge Dredd comic/2000AD.
I don't even mind Richard Briars' performance as a zombie in episode 4.
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Post by Black Orchid on Mar 13, 2022 14:40:16 GMT
There are many, many things wrong with this story but it is a guilty pleasure.
I never intend to read High Rise by JG Ballard so this will have to do.
Icehot!
7/10
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Post by Cyggy on Jul 6, 2022 13:21:26 GMT
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Post by Future-Diver on Nov 13, 2022 11:13:42 GMT
I think the concept behind this is a really good one. A horrendous Tower Block with nightmares inside it. Had never heard of the J.G. Ballard novel "High Rise" when this came out. It also reminded me of the use of tower blocks in the Judge Dredd comic/2000AD. I don't even mind Richard Briars' performance as a zombie in episode 4. "It also reminded me of the use of tower blocks in the Judge Dredd comic/2000AD".The term 'wallscrawl' in Paradise Towers was originally used to describe graffiti and graffiti artists ( 'wallscrawlers') in Judge Dredd's Mega City 1 (see Chopper/Marlon Shakespeare).
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Post by Cyggy on Apr 20, 2023 19:51:11 GMT
For anyone who might be interested....
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Post by profh0011 on Nov 1, 2023 12:29:08 GMT
With notable exceptions, the writing had gotten terrible for 6 consecutive seasons.
For a long time now, I've considered THIS as the exact moment when the show "got good" again.
I think the funniest moment is when he checks his watch.
Once again, maddenningly, I initially walked into this story HALFWAY through. WTF was going on back then? When I later got to see it from the beginning, I was delighted and it became an instant favorite of mine. It feels a lot like a 2nd-season episode of BATMAN with Adam West.
I later found out Clive Merrision had been in "Tomb of The Cybermen". WOW. He also became-- apparently-- the ONLY actor to ever do adaptations of EVERY SINGLE Arthur Conan Doyle SHERLOCK HOLMES story, on the radio.
Awhile back, I saw Richard Briers in FATHOM (1968), an intensely-silly spy film that starred Raquel Welch. She deserved better. I couldn't believe it was the same guy!
Anyway, these days, I only like 2 stories from this season-- and this is one of them.
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Post by Future-Diver on Nov 17, 2023 10:17:57 GMT
"Ice Hot, Doctor!"
Paradise Towers is mad and silly but I love it - like a Kid's TV version of High Rise, mixed with a bit of Brazil and some of the kookier elements of 2000AD. For me, this is McCoy's first proper outing - he's less the prat-falling clown (see Time And The Rani). I adore the Red Kangs, who are supposed to be a wild, scary girl-gang (like female Droogs), but are really quite sweet and charming. Meanwhile, Richard Briars as the Chief Caretaker is in full pantomime mode but I really like the big white cleaning robots - gloriously daft.
7/10
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Post by WildcatMatt on Nov 24, 2023 3:46:17 GMT
It's unfortunate because this story has really good bones. I get the angle of Pex being miscast and maybe the original idea would have been more effective but I think it still kind of works because he reminds me of the ads in old comic books where the skinny kid gets sand kicked in his face by some beefcake.
For me though it rapidly unravels once the thread about Kroagnon's disembodied will is brought in. Up to that point, well, it was OTT but it had a style and logic about it and I liked all the little things it had to say in terms of society, cliques, belonging, (loss of) purpose, the homefront during/after war. But once the Chief Caretaker gets possessed it stops working for me (although the epilogue was good).
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Post by WildcatMatt on Dec 30, 2023 4:43:50 GMT
It's unfortunate because this story has really good bones. But once the Chief Caretaker gets possessed it stops working for me (although the epilogue was good). I rewatched this story with my kids over the last few days and it pretty much confirmed what I remembered. There really is a lot about this story that's good. The Kangs are, in fact, great. It was written before the Doctor was cast so most of the personality bits are ad-libs by Sylvester so none of them are overly indulgent. On the whole, Pex works and is more complex than if he'd stayed a Rambo clone. The Deputy Chief Caretaker is pitch-perfect. The set design is almost entirely excellent, and the lighting is quite good most of the time and reasonably atmospheric. Why they had to give the rezzy apartments such flat sitcom lighting is a mystery because it makes that set look so fake. Keff's score is better than I remembered it. Some of the stuff veers a little too close to bombastic (maybe toning down the cleaner's theme a little in the mix would have helped) but I really like how he works in phrases from the theme now and then when the Doctor is in action. I could listen to the piece where he's talking his way into escaping from the DCC for hours. The two things that really let it down though are the cleaner robots, and Kroagnon. The cleaners are too big, too lumbering, too awkward, and don't make any sense as implemented. They're billed as cleaners but don't have any design cues to suggest they're capable of doing much real cleaning -- claws and augers and saws but no brushes or water sprayers, and at a scale that makes them bulky but still incapable of useful maintenance work. Which is a shame because the stark black-and-white tapered pyramid design fits the Great Architect ethos. Of course, the cleaners not really fitting right is because they were shoehorned in by JN-T so there was a monster. The sad thing is, if they'd made the attachments less stupid and focused on them hauling around bodies, in that role they were perfect (if slow). Especially given that the pool monster was much more effective. I was going to write that the other problem was the Chief Caretaker, but the more I think about that the more I think it isn't really true. A little OTT maybe, but it's only when he starts interacting with the thing in the basement that the flip to sniveling starts to pull it apart and the performance as being possessed by the Great Architect is misjudged. It's a good performance in isolation but very not what the show needs from the character. To be fair to the actor though, the (terrible) makeup does support his interpretation so there's a lot of blame to go around on that point. And more generally, Kroagnon is a hot mess. He hates having people come along and sully his work by living in it. So far so good. And he has a track record of not letting people move in when the building is finished and/or killing them. Weird flex, but okay. And the race that commissioned him to build Paradise Towers thought they'd head him off at the pass by taking the building before it was completed. Clever idea, I guess. This was executed by extracting his mind and putting it in some kind of computer in the basement with neon lights for eyes and letting him stew about it for a decade. Wait, what?Why is it hungry? Why does it need to eat? What does it do with the bodies? What happened to Kroagnon's old body? Why didn't they just kill him, that seems more humane than imprisoning his mind in the basement where it would only cause trouble later? And once he's killed off everyone else, now he has to clean up after all of them to get back to his ideal state; how is he going to do that all by himself? Really, there is absolutely no part of this plot thread that makes any sense at all. And of course there's poor hapless Mel, the Dodo Chaplet of the '80s. So what we have is this very flawed thing that almost works but ultimately doesn't, largely because of the mismatch between JN-T's light entertainment aspirations and Andrew Cartmel's desire to do something darker and more interesting. So close, and yet so far...
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 2, 2024 0:17:12 GMT
If you watch this back-to-back with "Time And The Rani", it makes about 100 times more sense and is WAY more fun, and less repetitive. (I'd swear "Time..." was a 2-parter PAINFULLY-stretched to 4. I didn't notice that first time around as I walked in halfway through, but on repeat viewings, it really drags.)
I totally agree about which parts make sense and which DON'T. Many fans over the years have continued to insist the writing during this era was GREAT but let down by McCoy's acting. I've been saying since the late 80s that I thought Sylvester's acting was terrific but he was too often let down by some "basic" writing and technical issues that should never have been allowed in a "professional" production.
To me, there's no excuse for things like stories being "over-written" and then making no sense because they were cut to pieces to fit the time-slots... or, for that matter, music so loud you CAN'T HEAR the dialogue being spoken.
And don't get me started on "Dragonfire", every bit of which feels like a first-time amateur fresh-out-of-school hack FANBOY writing attempt. (The sad thing is, the SAME writer, though improved, was still making similar mistakes in "The Curse Of Fenric", claimed to be by too many the "best" of the era.) There's such a thing as trying to cram TOO MANY ideas into a short story and none of them being fleshed out enough to make sense.
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jan 2, 2024 3:24:39 GMT
Many fans over the years have continued to insist the writing during this era was GREAT but let down by McCoy's his acting. I've been saying since the late 80s that I thought Sylvester's acting was terrific but he was too often let down by some "basic" writing and technical issues that should never have been allowed in a "professional" production. I'm a bit in the middle when it comes to Sylvester's acting. When he's on, he's electric. When he's off, it's terrible. A lot of that I lay at the feet of the directors. And all of this can be in turn laid at the feet of John Nathan-Turner for the frequent turnover in the writing and directing stables, often bringing in people who were either inexperienced generally or inexperienced in sci-fi or in TV production. This wouldn't be a problem if he had a stable, experienced core to rely on and then brought in, say, one new director and one new writer each year that could be supported by the existing staff. But especially once Saward left it was the blind leading the blind with only JN-T himself as continuity. This was a recipe for success only by accident. This is not to say there weren't good people, just that the production office was in no position to operate a farm system. Andrew Cartmel admits in the making-of for PT that many of the problems with the story stemmed from either lack of experience and not knowing any better, or else knowing better but not being confident enough to make their concerns stick during production.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 2, 2024 20:07:47 GMT
Very much agree with this assessment!
2 things in my mind are certain.
1 - We should have had 26 episodes a year, not 14.
2 - Sylvester deserved about 5 or 7 seasons of 26 episodes.
Regarding the technical stuff... I recall how some scenes in "The Happiness Patrol", to this day, there's chunks of dialogue I've never been able to hear under the loud music. This is BASIC, beginner stuff for TV production!
I guess that really CAN be laid at the feet of JNT... HMMM?
Oh yeah...
3 - the TWO executives at the BBC in charge at the time should BOTH have been FIRED out of the corporation for deliberately spending years working to SINK their biggest money-maker worldwide. (Ya'll know who I mean.)
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Post by WildcatMatt on Jan 4, 2024 3:20:38 GMT
Very much agree with this assessment!
1 - We should have had 26 episodes a year, not 14.
2 - Sylvester deserved about 5 or 7 seasons of 26 episodes.
3 - the TWO executives at the BBC in charge at the time should BOTH have been FIRED out of the corporation for deliberately spending years working to SINK their biggest money-maker worldwide. (Ya'll know who I mean.)
Regarding the technical stuff... I recall how some scenes in "The Happiness Patrol", to this day, there's chunks of dialogue I've never been able to hear under the loud music. This is BASIC, beginner stuff for TV production! I can make an argument for fewer than 26 episodes in a season. In fact, I really think beginning with S19 the BBC should have let them do 24 episode seasons so you had nice, clean 6 x 4 episode runs, but obviously let the show keep the budget and spread it out over the season. But after the cancellation, I can see management coming in and saying "Look, what you're doing isn't working so we're going to give you a shorter season to show you can focus on making a smaller number of better-quality stories and then grow it back." I've never heard the episode reduction described as being pitched this way so if it actually was I'd love the pointer to a source. I've never really understood how they arrived at 14 to begin with. It isn't a multiple of 4 and it isn't a divisor of 52. Although I guess as the show was getting some two-episodes-per-week seasons having 14 would give you 7 full weeks. But it shows how much management didn't care by giving them a number that didn't play nice with the existing show structure in any way. So yeah, something more pragmatic would have been one season with 16 episodes and then up to 20, but with a proper budget. As far as Michael Grade, Jonathan Powell, and Peter Cregeen... I feel like a family sci-fi show was certainly well within the remit of the BBC and that they never developed any kind of replacement (plus the amount of money Powell basically set on fire with Eldorado) shows their vision for the BBC was much closer to an American ratings-at-all-costs network rather than a catering to a broader nation. I have a lot of criticisms of JN-T but Powell clearly had a vendetta against him and given what's actually in the record I can only imagine what was said off the record. Not a shining example of professionalism, that. Ultimately I don't know enough about the financial structure of the BBC either then or now, but DW doesn't appear to have been generated a lot revenue-wise within the domestic market. Lionheart however had to be making money hand over fist during the 80s with all the PBS contracts and I'd be interested in understanding how that did or did not fit into the decision-making process. Presumably the Controller of BBC1 was isolated from Enterprises/Lionheart and would think it beneath him to make content decisions based on indirect American dollars, except that decision had real repercussions in other areas of the Corporation.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 4, 2024 5:15:09 GMT
Whichever of the A-HOLES it was who said it, I read it was said that "They could only consider the domestic market". I saw this is nothing more than an EXCUSE to ignore that there was TONS of money coming in from overseas sales for a show they wanted OFF the air, simply because THEY, PERSONALLY, didn't like it!
One of them actually ADMITTED it a few years after he left the BBC.
I heard how they came up with 14.
Season 22 was run as 13 50-minute episodes (the equivalent of 26 25-minute episodes).
After the cancellation, when they were SHAMED by the public into bringing it back (RELUCTANTLY, GRUDGINGLY), they were heard to say, "We'll giving you a longer season this time." So instead of 13, it was 14.
You just wanna go back in time and THROTTLE those guys!!
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