The Utter Mundanity of Life (Paradise Towers)

21st Century living at its finest.

Before The Doctor came around, the story of Paradise Towers was that of the youth being corrupted and consumed by the old. The young boys who grew up in the Towers were hauled away by the Caretaker and taught to follow the rules. They grew up to be Caretakers and their mission was solely to care for the walls of the Towers, for the residents could care for themselves. The girls were left with the Rezzies, who tried to eat them once the food ran out (they could go outside the Towers, but why? The Towers provide them with everything they need). The ones fortunate enough to escape created a new society in the margins of the old (they didn’t think to escape the Towers, for what was outside them save a war torn hellscape?). It didn’t start out as a new society; rather it was a game the girls played with one another wherein they had to get into the other girls bases to be determined as “best.” They cared for one another (certainly more so than the Rezzies), be they red, blue, or yellow, they were all nonetheless Kangs.

The Towers contained secrets, things that the Caretakers repressed, the Kangs expressed, and the Rezzies ignored. There were a few of the Rezzies who didn’t consume the young, but who still wouldn’t do a thing when they heard the screams. They didn’t want to cause a bother. There was Pex, a deserter of the War between us and them; the War that consumed the boys who were old enough to enter it; the War that never ended and was always ongoing; the War that defines Paradise Towers, though it be long forgotten. But Pex’s desertion was not out of protest of the war, but of fear. Pex was always a coward but dreamed of being a hero. Had The Doctor not come to Paradise Towers, he would have been neither.

And then there was the thing in the boiler room. When the Kangs were little girls (before the food ran out), the Rezzies (and the Caretaker, for that matter) would lie about what it was, claiming that it was just the furnace and nothing more. Had the food not run out, the little girls would still have become Kangs precisely because of this lie. The truth of the matter was that the man who created the Towers lived in that furnace. The Rezzies and the Caretaker slew the Architect and stuffed his remains in the furnace. The reasoning behind this was self-defense. For the Architect was a jealous God who despised people interpreting his art incorrectly. One of the ways people did this was by living in the houses he built. Like many a jealous God, he responded to this incorrect interpretation by killing the people who lived in his houses. And so the Old Ones of Paradise Towers killed the Architect before he could kill them (they didn’t tell their children because they didn’t want them thinking they could go around killing their architects).

But, unbeknownst to the Rezzies, the Architect was not dead. For when the Caretaker took the architect to the furnace to dispose of the remains, he found that the Architect was still alive, albeit barely. Rather than deal the killing blow, the Caretaker decided to instead keep the Architect as a pet. Like many a good pet owner, he fed it the right foods and supplements, primarily meats from the lads who wouldn’t follow orders and wouldn’t make for good Caretakers, Rezzies who were too noticeable in their cannibalism, and the occasional Kang. And he worshiped his pet as though it were a God. His was a cult of one.

But the Architect did not wish to be someone’s pet, let alone their God (to be a God to anyone is to be under their interpretation). And so, he hatched a scheme to escape from his prison and remove the messy, incorrect interpretation from the Towers. He would cultivate a new body, one less damaged and capable of moving. It would take time and energy to do so. He would need this Caretaker to feed him for now, to gain enough energy to escape from his cage. But when the Architect was free, he would cleanse the Towers of mess once and for all, without humanity mucking up the art. (And had the Doctor not come, he most likely would have succeeded.) But he would need a body. Fortunately, the sustenance the Caretaker provided were exactly what he needed.

Of course, the disappearances did not go unnoticed in the Towers. The Kangs, who were already marginalized, knew of the terror that lurked in the boiler room and tried to warn their fellow Kangs. For while they were at war with one another over who is the best, they didn’t believe in wipe outs or making others unalive. (The Rezzies also knew, but ignored it like all their other problems, especially when they could get something better for not causing a panic). The Kangs opted to tell stories scrawled upon the walls of the Towers of Kangs being consumed by the monster in the basement, of mechanical “Cleaners” cleaning up the rowdy messiness of Kangs, their remains fed to the architect, of a great pool in the sky that is at once material and unobtainable. Though they didn’t believe at the time, the Caretakers knew these stories and feared the implications (Pex also knew, but then he was always afraid). When they asked the first Caretaker what they should do, he responded, “Clean this wallscrawl up!” And so, they repressed this history and made it occult, as they did with the histories that didn’t fit within the way things are.

But deep down, the Caretakers knew something was amiss in the Towers. There was chaos and horror and mess dominating the people of the Towers. The Rules they were raised under taught them that order, above all else, must reign supreme. Something had to be done about this mess we call humanity. Someone had to come to solve what was wrong with the Towers. The Caretakers considered the history of the Towers, and asked themselves “Who built this place?” And so, they created a hero of their own: The Great Architect. He, who brought Paradise Towers to life; the visionary, who dreamed up its pools and lifts and squares; He, who would one day return to his creation and make all those dilapidated lifts rise and fall as they have never done before. When he returns, they say, all signs of wallscrawl shall disappear from the walls. The floors will gleam, the windows will shine, and all will be made as new.

When the Chief Caretaker, first of the Caretakers, heard of this tale, he paid it no mind. All those who live need a story to live by, and what a better story than that of The Great Architect, who desired order and obeying the rules. And should someone enter the Towers unawares, the Chief will simply tell the Caretakers that he is The Great Architect. He will then make up a rule that says The Great Architect ought to be killed, and the Caretakers will follow it. For a story’s great and all, but the rules are the rules. Unfortunately for the Chief and all the other monsters of Paradse Towers, the stranger who entered the Towers was not a soldier or a cop or even an Enemy, but rather}KRRRRRRSSSSSH{

THAT DOES IT… HE’S A FRICK’N NERD! HEHEHEHE    

DO YOU KNOW? THE JOKE AT THE HEART OF ALL THIS BULLSHIT? NONE OF THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED… WHEN HE SAID IT DID. THE COMIC HE SAYS HAPPENED IN OCTOBER OR NOVEMBER OF 1987 HAPPENED EARLIER. IN JUNE OR JULY OF THAT YEAR. HE GOT HIS INFO WRONG. HE WENT OFF THE COVER DATE AS OPPOSED TO THE RELEASE DATE.

HE GOT OTHER THINGS WRONG TO. HE SAID KOKABEIL AND URIEL… KEI AND YURI SAVED THE CHILD OF OMELAS… MISSINIE WHEN VENOM WAS BORN AND KILLED. THEY ONLY WANDERED THE RUINS… LEFT BEHIND BY CHILDE VENOM A YEAR LATER. THEY COULDN’T AVENGE ANYONE FROM HIS DESTRUCTION. THE VICTIMS HAD TO SAVE THEMSELVES AND HEAL. HE'S NOT EVEN THAT CLOSE TO HIS NONNA! AND DIRK GENTLY ONLY CAME OUT IN 1987.

I ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE CIRCLE HE DREW, BUT THEN… NO ONE KNOWS WHO I AM. I LIKE IT LIKE THAT. I LIKE BEING A MYSTERY. YOU NEED MYSTERY, OR THERE WOULD BE NO POINT IN GROWING UP. KNOWING THE TRUTH FROM THE BEGINNING KEEPS US PLACENT. WE’RE TOLD THAT’S CALLED PEACE BY THOSE WHO WISH FOR ETERNAL WARFARE, BUT IT’S COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE. WE MUST SEEK OUR TRUTH, NOT BE TOLD IT.

DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT LUCAS HART?

COMICS AREN’T GOING TO STOP YOUR PARENTS FROM FIGHTING… DOCTOR WHO ISN’T EITHER. STORIES CAN’T SAVE YOU FROM THE CRUELTY OF LIFE, MADE MUNDANE BY THOSE WITH POWER.

WHAT A VAGUE STATEMEMNT THAT IS: “WITH GREAT POWER, THERE MUST ALSO COME—GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.” WHO ARE THE POWERFUL RESPONSIBLE TO? HOW MUCH POWER DO YOU NEED BEFORE YOU HAVE TO BE RESPONSIBLE? DOESN’T THAT APPLY TO EVERYONE? IT’S VAGUE, IS WHAT I’M SAYING.

THEN AGAIN, WHAT BELIEF ISN’T VAGUE? A SPECIFIC BELIEF WOULD BE STUCK ADHERING TO IDEAS OF THE PAST. VAGUE BELIEFS CAN CHANGE WITH THE TIMES INTO STORIES THAT HELP THE PRESENT. THE ONLY THING THAT PREVENTS SOLID STORIES FROM CHANGING IS THE CHAINS OF CANON.

TIME IS FLUID. MEMORY DOUBLY SO. WE FORGET WHEN THINGS HAPPEN. MISPLACE CAUSE AND EFFECT. THE EVENTS THAT OCCUR ARE REPRESSED IN FAVOR OF LESS PAINFUL MEMORIES.

DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT LUCAS HART?

HE’S USING ME AS AN EXCUSE TO RAMBLE ABOUT NOTHING. HE DOESN’T HAVE AN ENDGOAL. HE NEVER DID. HE’S AS LOST AND CONFUSED AS THE REST OF YOU. HE KNOWS THE WHERE BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW (I do actually. At least, I think I do. I tell myself that I don’t have a clue, but I think I’m getting there. Plans change, but that’s life I suppose. We can’t control every aspect of it, now can we? I suppose I ought to give my thoughts on Paradise Towers: it’s pretty damn good. Not the best episode of Doctor Who, let alone the McCoy era, but still pretty good. It has some issues [for all that its end goal is the roof, it sure does keep going down into the Tower’s depths, and the casting decisions should have gone slightly older for Pex {like middle age} to make the time scale of when the events of Paradise Towers happened in regards to the narrative of Paradise Towers] but these are minor nitpicks in a story that can be described as “High-Rise as children’s panto.” Langford works surprisingly well as a co-lead given her reputation amongst many Doctor Who fans, though not great. And McCoy brings the perfect balance between his comedic stylings and the “seriousness” that Whovians think solely defines him [in many regards, a more accurate description of McCoy’s Doctor would be “what if Spider-Man decided to be a master manipulator and was inexplicably good at it?”]. Again, it’s not my favorite episode of Doctor Who [that would be The War Games {or The Curse of the Fatal Death}] or even my favorite McCoy story [Human Nature], but it’s still an underrated piece of television that more people ought to watch.) FUCKER JUST HIJACKED MY BROADCAST! WHAT KIND OF SICK FUCK DOES THAT?
}KRRRRRRSSSSSH{was dead. A funeral was held for the cowardly and reluctant Pex, where those who lived in the Towers deemed him worthy: the Kangs named him an honorary Kang and the remaining Rezzies and Caretaker bowed their heads in respect. The Doctor and The Stranger who entered Paradise Towers left the Towers for the world beyond. Mayhaps one day they shall come back. Mayhaps not. Regardless, their presence changed the Towers. For the better, I believe. For the stories of the Doctor and those who walk with them tend to end with the worlds they walk away from better for it.

The Doctor brings change shaped by mess and humanity rather than cruelty and hatred, for they are a being of wallscrawl and margins. But more than that, is The Doctor’s secret: anyone can be The Doctor. They’re just a story being told throughout the universe about those who defend the marginalized and othered from those with power. To be The Doctor, all you have to do is say you’re The Doctor. Now, who wants to tell the next story?

(Next Time: Mawwage!)

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[Photo: High-Rise Directed by Ben Wheatley Script by Amy Jump]