Doctor Who: The High Price of Parking

Here, the TARDIS crew land on an artificial planetoid that's used entirely as a landing facility for private spacecraft. The result has a lot in common with Paradise Towers, albeit primarily in terms of the setting rather than the plot. A key similarity, for instance, is that the primary inhabitants of the planet are divided between a tribe of post-apocalyptic looking scavengers and the Wardens - a divide that's reminiscent of the Kangs and the Caretakers, although we've moved from a tower block to a multistory car park.

There's quite a lot of running around, as well as a mystery about the identity of terrorists blowing up some of the spaceships. The latter is more complicated than it first appears, and eventually leads the plot in an unexpected direction - although there is a weakness in that some of the revelations are overly drawn out. (There seemed to be a recurring theme of a villain saying “but isn't it obvious?” to which my reply was consistently “yes, so I don't know why the Doctor hasn't worked it out yet.”)

Good points include a story that plays to Mel's strengths and that allows her to save the day on more than one occasion. Less effective are the tribe of the Lost, where both of the speaking characters have a distractingly flat delivery - given that it's both of them, I'm more inclined to suspect the director's hand in this than the actors'. On the other hand, the villains are well portrayed (and, ironically, they're played by the same actors, doubling up on the roles via the magic of audio) and are given backstories that do a good job of explaining their motivations.

It's not one of the greats, but it manages to do what it's trying to do rather better than Paradise Towers did, so that's a plus, too. In fact, if you're a particular fan of season 24 of the original TV series, you'll probably like this more than I did.