By 1987, Doctor Who had been ridiculed by BBC Big Boy Michael Grade, seen a slump in ratings, put on hiatus for 18 months and rescheduled during the week (as opposed to Saturday) opposite the then most popular show on TV. Despite this, an increasingly isolated JNT strove to make the show the best way he could, and new Script Editor Andrew Cartmel represented a vital shot of new blood it needed. No more over-reliance on past monsters and past glories, Cartmel brought with him a new gang of instinctive writers and a whole new direction for the show - and after initial concerns, the producer was content to let him go his own way.

We had new music composers, a new computer-generated title sequence and a bizarre new Doctor. Sylvester McCoy's first story was a chaotic runaround commissioned before the script editor's arrival. His second, Paradise Towers, saw the Cartmel Masterplan reach fruition.

Firstly - what a cast! Richard Briers, Clive Merrison, Judy Cornwell, Elizabeth Spriggs and Brenda Bruce join a slew of new faces Howard Cooke, Catherine Cusack (Mark Strickson's wife at the time) and my personal favourite, the exotic Annabel Yuresha. That they all decided, or were directed, to give heightened performances elevated this darkly curious drama into a kind of comic strip territory that not all viewers took to. Me? I loved it then and love it now. Doctor Who is a fantasy, and if occasionally the characters become caricatures of that, then that's fine with me. The biggest 'culprit' is Briers, a real name at the time, who refused to tone down his 'possessed' acting. It's too much, of course, but could have been made decidedly spooky if he was given some cadaverous make-up, or perhaps his voice had been synthetically treated to give it a disembodied quality instead of relying entirely on Brier's admittedly broad performance.

The script is, I think, very clever. Paradise Towers could have been terrifying, with the Rezzies screeching old hags, and the caretakers genuinely psychotic, ungovernable thugs - but that's not what Doctor Who was about in 1987. And so, the darker elements of the story were given 'family-friendly' production values, and the comedy of the characters was brought to the fore. Richard Snell, the original composer had his music jettisoned for being too gloomy, with new regular Keff McCulloch brought in at the eleventh hour. The result is a pleasing mix of surreality and gruesome body horror - although naturally, we don't see anything remotely bloody.

Little touches, like Sylvester's improvised raising of his hat to a stationary piece of architecture book-ending the action, and the scrawling of 'Pex Lives' on the wall behind the dematerialising TARDIS at the end reminds us of the charming attention to detail that Doctor Who still boasted, even at a time when viewers and fans appeared to take against it.

My only problem involves the character of Pex, played so straight by Howard Cooke. A coward by nature eager to prove his worthiness, he's encouraged by all to ultimately confront the enigmatic villain Kroagnon. He does so, and is killed as a result. The message seems to be that the only way 'cowardly cutlet' can prove he's not a coward is by sacrificing himself. Even lovely Mel looks on proudly as Pex returns to the climactic action and subsequently, his death. They all mourn him at the end, but they all encouraged him in the first place! A bit of tweaking of the script to alter those final moments would have helped, I think.

Other than that, I love Paradise Towers. After 24 years, Doctor Who was building itself up once again, but in a manner that hadn't been seen before. The Cartmel Masterplan would return in Series 25 with stories that had even the most ardent complainers admitting that perhaps ... just perhaps ... this new version of their favourite show was actually still pretty good.

My score is 4 out of 5.