I know this will shock and astonish you, but when I was a teenager I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. There are a couple other role playing games I remember fondly - one also made by TSR called Gamma World, which was basically just D&D in a postapocalyptic future with mutants instead of goblins, and another called Paranoia which was set in a dystopian future where everything is run by an insane computer. Great stuff. So anyway, in one of those games a friend of mine had a character named Ped Xing, thus named by his parents after a holy artifact they had found from the before times.

What made me think of that today? Well, today's story featured characters named Bin Liner and Fire Escape. In the Target novelization one of the other characters is named Drinking Fountain. Great stuff. So let's talk about that.

Paradise Towers - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

I have to say, the bar has now been set very high for the Seventh Doctor. Second story in, and I will be astonished if this doesn't become my favorite of his overall by the time I am finished. (OH, and I do hope I end up astonished, that would be delightful.)

The back half of the story continues on in the same vein, with the mysterious thing in the basement turning out to be the Great Architect slowly hatching a plan to kill every living thing in the building. He had been imprisoned there and supposedly killed, but lived on in his machinery. Ultimately he uses corpoelectroscopy to transfer his consciousness into the body of the Chief Caretaker, so that the big final showdown has the Great Zombie Architect leading his army of robotic cleaners to purge Paradise Towers of all organics.

Mel spends a lot of time screaming.

The Doctor manages to get all of the different groups in the building to come together: the Red Kangs and Blue Kangs, the Rezzies (residents), the Caretakers, and even poor Pex the Cowardly Hero joins in the fight. Although it is not the least bit surprising, it is still very satisfying when Pex finally lives up to his role as hero and sacrifices himself in order to kill the Great Zombie Architect and "puts the world of Paradise Towers to rights".

This is just such a great story that works on every level. Sylvester McCoy is on solid footing, having found his dramatic core instead of being lost in the clowning.

Mel almost dies at least three times, but is never given enough time in any given scene to become overly annoying. Which, I know is damning with faint praise, but I'll take what I can get from her. Six more episodes and she'll be thankfully gone.

Most importantly, this story shows that even on a very tight budget Doctor Who can still shine. God, I hope the rest of the Seventh Doctor era lives up to this standard.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Seventh
Companion(s): Mel
Episode(s): Paradise Towers - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,393 today, 2,399,107 total
Distance Walked: 4.13 miles today, 1,241.83 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 8 today, 29 total
Weight: 246.26 lbs (five day moving average), net change -61.04 lbs