Paradise Towers


 * You may be looking for the television story of the same name

Paradise Towers was a series of buildings built in the 21st century to house people.

Early history
Paradise Towers was designed by Kroagnon and had won several architectual awards. However, as with many of his previous projects, Kroagnon refused to leave once his work was done, nor let people move in. A number of the residents took him and imprisoned him in the basement beneath Paradise Towers, aware that he would kill everyone in the buildings, should he escape. The cleaners - robots, designed to keep Paradise Towers clean - stayed active.

When war broke out, the young and the old were transported to Paradise Towers, while those in between went off to fight. The Caretakers were seemingly exempt from this and stayed in their jobs. Pex managed to avoid the war by hiding about one of the ships headed for Paradise Towers.

The various groups of Paradise Towers began to diversify. The young girls became known as Kangs and were themselves grouped into Red Kangs, Blue Kangs and Yellow Kangs. The old women became known as Rezzies, - a distortion of the word resident; many of them turned to cannibalism, eating Kangs and Caretakers. The Caretakers themselves tried to control Paradise Towers and keep it clean. The cleaners were feared by all the groups, though the Chief Caretaker secretly used them to feed Kroagnon by killing various people in Paradise Towers and taking the bodies to him.

Defeat of Kroagnon
The Seventh Doctor and Melanie Bush visited Paradise Towers and met the Red Kangs. They took a liking to the Doctor, but were unsure about Mel. An attack by the Caretakers resulted in them getting separated; Mel found herself in the company of two Rezzies, Tilda and Tabby, while the Doctor was taken prisoner by the Caretakers.

The Doctor quickly escaped his captors by tricking them with their own rulebook and Mel decided to head for "the pool in the sky", with Pex for company, as that was where she had agreed to meet the Doctor. The Cleaners decided to re-capture the Doctor and sent a team to break into the Red Kang brainquarters, where he was hiding. They then took him to the Chief who interrogated him as to who he was.

Meanwhile, Mel once again joined Tilda and Tabby, but they took her as a prisoner with the intention to eat her. Before they could do so, a cleaner dragged them both through a waste disposal unit and killed them. From there, Mel and Pex made their way to a lift. They were trapped in it by the cleaners who pressed the buttons up and down the shaft, so that it didn't stop. Eventually, Pex managed to fox the lift and they arrived on Floor 304 - the top floor of Paradise Towers - and settled down to wait for the Doctor. Mel decided to take a swim in the pool and found herself under attack from a water-bound cleaner. She destroyed it with Pex's gun.

The Doctor was rescued by the Red Kangs and they returned to the brainquarters. The Blue Kangs entered and proclaimed victory over the Reds for breaking into their base. The Doctor convinced them to work together against Kroagnon nad they headed for the basement.

Kroagnon was in need of a body into which he could place his mind through the process of corpoelectroscopy. He chose the Chief for this purpose and took control of his body by forcing him into a special chamber in the basement. The Doctor witnessed this and was attacked by a cleaner. He was pulled free by the Kangs and they fled. Kroagnon then had the cleaners gas each floor of Paradise Towers in turn, steadily making their way upwards.

The Doctor took the Kangs to Floor 304 and they allied themselves with Pex and also the Rezzie and Caretakers - who had also been forced upwards. With a combined effort, the Kangs and Rezzies destroyed several cleaners. The Rezzies would trap them with table cloths they had made while the Kangs destroyed them with explosives.

In order to deal with Kroagnon, the Doctor asked Pex to lure him from the Chief Caretaker's office where he had based himself. Pex was then to lead him slowly to a designated area where they would spring a trap on him.

Pex, fearful of Kroagnon, led him to the location too quickly. The Doctor attempted to push Kroagnon down a life shaft but wasn't strong enough. Kroagnon then began throttling the Doctor and smashing him against a wall. Pex took a stick of explosive and jumped into the lift shaft, taking Kroagnon with him. The resulting explosion presumably killed them both.

The united factions of Paradise Towers held a ceremony in his honour and the Kangs gave the Doctor a Red and Blue scarf to denote him as an honourary Kang. As the TARDIS de-materialised a wallscrawl behind it simply said "Pex lives". (DW: Paradise Towers)