I don't understand why it the landing gear was deployed and then retracted - was that to slow the plane down?
The gear is an extremely effective speed brake (way more so than the actual speed brakes). If they had taken the gear at about 15 miles, and left it down, we wouldn't be reading any of this.
My guess is that at 1,700' the pilot flying actually forgot that he already had the gear down, and so asked for it to be extended. The support pilot, instead of reminding him of the actual status, knew that he had to do 'something' with the gear, so he retracted it. If the gear had remained down, they would have arrived at the runway, hot, but probably not outlandishly so.
The report continues with them selecting reverse thrust on the ground. You've got to wonder if the view looked a tad wrong. The manuals are all very explicit too, about NEVER going around once reverse is selected. BTW, the engines wouldn't have actually gone into reverse, as there was no weight on the wheels.
The shots of them during the last seconds of flight shows the gear to be down again. As they missed the airfield by about 1,300 metres, you have to wonder if they might have made it past all of the built up areas if they hadn't extended the gear after the engine failures.
Neither of these people could actually fly.