The air tastes of metal, burnt plastic and standard-issue lemon floor polish.
Caretaker 345/12 subsection 3 races down Section 301 of Paradise Towers, his steps echoing off the concrete walls. He’s sweating under his heavy uniform, and his arm aches from holding his too-big cap against his head. Caretakers can walk miles in a single shift, but none are accustomed to running far, especially towards the sounds of shouting and breaking glass. The din almost drowns out the orders droning through his LCDE. The Chief Caretaker is keen to halt this skirmish before it can escalate, and he has called in every Caretaker in the area to do so.
It would not do to disappoint the Chief.
345’s thundering heart begs him to turn back, but he has his orders, and he intends to obey them. In times of uncertainty, nothing is more important than protocol. He runs a little faster, gasping for breath. The rulebook states that Caretakers should only run in emergency circumstances. He hopes the situation qualifies; he’s never broken a single rule.
The distant shouts ahead resolve into sing-song taunting. His steps falter. As the youngest of the Caretakers, 345’s duties mostly involve checking on the Residents and chasing the occasional escaped pet. He knows Wallscrawlers only by what they leave behind: disruption, destruction… and paperwork. He would much rather do the paperwork.
If you’re familiar with Classic era Doctor Who, you may remember a 1987 Sylvester McCoy episode called Paradise Towers. The Doctor and Mel (played by Bonnie Langford) find themselves in a 22nd-century high-rise apartment building which has long since fallen into disrepair. Its closed ecosystem of inhabitants include teenage gangs of Kangs (Red, Blue and Yellow factions), rulebook-tapping Caretakers and elderly cannibal Rezzies. Every character has their own role to play in the Towers, but what happens when the Doctor isn’t there?
Ice Hot is the latest anthology from Obverse Books, and the second to feature stories set in Paradise Towers. The book was edited by Kara Dennison, and it also includes an introduction and a short story by Stephen Wyatt, author of Paradise Towers (and Greatest Show in the Galaxy, another cracking McCoy episode). There’s a fantastic mix of stories in here, including Kangs of new colours, grumpy Rezzies and new back stories for Pex, the self-proclaimed protector of the Towers.
It’s a rare opportunity to write for a Doctor Who anthology, and I am thrilled to have a story included in this one. I’m particularly fond of 80s era Who, and previously wrote a McCoy story called Unexpected Item in Bagging Area about a time bubble in a supermarket. For this anthology, I chose to go a little darker in The Caretaker…
There are plenty of Caretakers in Paradise Towers, but this one doesn’t survive the first episode. Caretaker 345/12 Subsection 3 is young and cowardly, following the Chief’s orders blindly into danger, and is soon killed by a robot cleaner. Why was he chosen to die? Did he know something the other Caretakers didn’t? Or perhaps, he’d started to question the rules that they all lived by…
There are three gangs of Kangs in Paradise Towers, but only one Yellow Kang is left. She has no lines – not even a name – and she faces the same fate as 345 just minutes before him. Neither of them get to meet the Doctor, or see the Towers’ inhabitants make amends. But what would happen if they met? They are each alone in their own way, but such a friendship may cause them both to question how their worlds might be if only everyone trusted each other.
(I named her Safety Glass. Until very late in the drafting stage, she was called Ceiling Fan.)
It’s a credit to the original story that there are so many tales to tell of Paradise Towers, from the silly to the serious. I enjoyed exploring the dim, wallscrawled corridors and their many hiding places – and then viewing the Towers through the eyes of the other writers included in this book. When I first watched the episode at around 14 years old, I could never have imagined writing a story about it almost another lifetime later.
Once you find Doctor Who, it stays with you. 37 years after the original broadcast, we’re still telling stories about the Towers and the strange, wonderful characters who live there. If that’s not ice hot, I don’t know what is.
Ice Hot is available now from Obverse Books.
Thoughts?