Paradise Towers is one of those stories that is often ridiculed by the Whovian fanbase - and it's not hard to see why. But I'll come to that later. The story was the result of a falling out between producer John Nathan Turner and script editor Eric Saward; John Nathan Turner was determined to find a writer who had never worked on the show before. He came across writer Stephen Wyatt at the BBC's script unit and asked him to submit a story for the show. That story was, of course, Paradise Towers.

Paradise Towers starts with the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Mel (Bonnie Langford) planning to visit a luxurious residential complex called Paradise Towers. Mel watches a promotional video for the towers that shows it as a beautiful complex, complete with a massive swimming pool. However when they arrive, they find it in a state of disrepair. The residents have become primitive tribes with no idea what a vending machine is and the place is run by the Caretakers; a group of people who keep surveillance on the towers and worship 'the Great Architect'. Their boss, the Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers) is secretly feeding the population of the Towers to the robotic Cleaners and the 'Great Architect' himself.

The premise of a luxury complex becoming run down to the point where it creates a tribal civilisation is a strong one that unfortunately doesn't follow through. The performances are too over the top to be taken seriously, especially those by the Red Kangs and Blue Kangs. The teenage actors who play the Red and Blue Kangs are annoying and come across as though they are in an amateur theatre production of Doctor Who rather than young professional actors. Many complain about Richard Briers but I actually didn't mind him so much; he at least seems like he belongs in a Doctor Who story. Perhaps he went too far when the 'Great Architect' (otherwise known as 'Kroagnon') possessed the Chief Caretaker's body but in my view if anybody can be accused as too camp the real culprits are Tabby (Elizabeth Spriggs) and Tilda (Brenda Bruce). I found myself rolling my eyes at every one of their scenes; they are too over the top as the stereotypical 'sweet old ladies'. Even when they reveal their real nasty intentions they still continue to ham it up.

The mention of these two ladies brings me onto my next point: Mel is too gullible. She meets Tabby and Tilda once in the story and already she trusts them when they offer to give her tea and cake. Had she never learnt when she was little not to talk to strangers? Even so, you would have thought travelling with the Doctor would have opened her eyes a bit not to be tricked so easily by offerings of food and drink. If I were in an unfamiliar environment and two old ladies randomly invited me round for a cup of tea and cake, flowering me with praise despite it being the first meeting I would be more than a little suspicious of what they were up to. Yet Mel acts as if it's normal.

But it's not only Mel who acts like an idiot in this story: the caretakers are pretty stupid too. The seventh Doctor may be the king of manipulation but it doesn't take him much to manipulate them to let him go when they're holding him prisoner. He literally takes their rule book (basically a book of the law of Paradise Towers) and fabricates rules up that say 'After you have been guarding the condemned prisoner for 30 minutes, you must stand up...move five paces away from the prisoner...close their eyes...put their hands above their head...for a minute and a half'. They don't even bother to snatch the rule book from the Doctor and check it themselves.

This all leads to the story feeling devoid of danger and peril. The caretakers pose no threat to the Doctor precisely because they are bone-dead stupid. Even the cast of The Only Way Is Essex would do a better job of guarding a prisoner for execution than these lot. Even the crab toy that attacks Mel in the swimming pool doesn't pose much of a threat. It just grabs her whilst she frails around in the water screaming. In the time it takes for Pex (Howard Cooke) to chuck her his weapon, it could have ripped her legs off or done something equally as horrifying. But no: instead it just holds her legs.

As for Pex, this character can be summed up in two words: useless and annoying. Pretty much every time he is onscreen they remind you that he's a coward yet when it gets to the pool gathering near the beginning of episode four all of a sudden we are supposed to sympathise with him when the Kangs call him a 'cowardly custard'. Well, sorry Paradise Towers: I may love Doctor Who but you have to earn the right for me to care about a character being called a 'coward'. He quite simply deserves it. Pex makes Mel look brave in comparison and she was never one of the Doctor's bravest companions (even if I personally don't mind her). There's an odd moment in the serial where Mel congratulates him for saving her but he doesn't even do anything. One of the Cleaners takes the old ladies instead. Why not give credit to the Cleaners instead?

The Cleaners are the literal heroes of this otherwise bad story, in the sense that they are the only good thing about it. I like the Cleaners a lot; their design is the kind of satiric look that the story of Paradise Towers should have had. The idea of evil cleaning robots in a tower block that's supposed to be a paradise is nicely ironic by Stephen Wyatt and their scenes are generally better directed by Nicholas Mallett (especially the scene where one of the Cleaner's hands comes through a rubbish chute and pulls one of the old ladies down).

The rest of the direction falls flat, as if Nicholas Mallett didn't know what to do with the story either. The Cleaners are pretty much the only enemies here that feel like they are a danger to the characters of the story. Funnily enough, for robots that don't communicate and are basically just serviceable machines they are probably the most intelligent characters in the story bar the Doctor.

Overall, Paradise Towers is probably Doctor Who's biggest missed opportunity. It has a strong premise that is woefully executed with over the top acting and dumb characters who make Kevin from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie look like a genius in comparison.

The story as a result of the Caretakers' dim behaviour has a lack of danger and peril; only the Cleaners seem remotely menacing in this story. Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford clearly try their hardest to sell this story and neither are to blame for Paradise Towers' failings; both give good performances as the Doctor and Mel but it's not enough to save the story when you have strange scenes that hail cowardly Pex a 'hero' and make Mel come across as way too gullible than she has any right to be. Paradise Towers is definitely a Doctor Who story you should skip, unless you want to deafen yourself with the Kangs' awful shouting.