The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Chapter the 255th, where we discover much evidence of coulrophobia and lycanthropy, and the Doctor displays his legerdemain.

Plot:

The Doctor and Ace receive an aggressive junk mail bot in the TARDIS advertising a talent show run by the Psychic Circus on the planet Segonax. Despite her fear of clowns, Ace agrees to go with the Doctor. On the planet, they meet colourful characters all bound for the circus tent to take part in the talent show: aggressive biker Nord, insufferably pompous adventurer Captain Cook and his mysterious young companion Mags, and Whizz Kid, the number one fan of the Psychic Circus. The place is a bit run down now, and only appears to have one family (a Dad, Mum, and child) in the audience; plus, the Chief Clown, Ringmaster and fortune-teller Morgana seem to be in thrall of some force. This is perhaps connected with the mysterious stones in the circus ring area - the tent has been put up around the ruins of a temple to an ancient power. The Captain plays other people against each other, getting them to be the next ones to perform in the ring, and Nord and Whizz Kid are killed there when they can no longer entertain.

Escaping, the Doctor and Ace separately and together piece together the backstory. In the past, Kingpin, the then leader of the Circus, believed he could harness the powers on Segonax and used a special medallion to do this. Unfortunately, the power was too strong and seemed to burn out Kingpin's mind, though he can be restored if the medallion is ever made whole again. The jewelled eye from the centre of the medallion was hidden, and the remaining members served the ancient power, the Gods of Ragnarok (who appear in the Circus's time-space in the form of the family of three). Some of the Circus folk tried to escape and find the eye, but were killed. With no acts left to go in the ring, the Captain, Doctor and Mags appear together. With a moon-shaped lighting effect, the Captain instigates Mags's transformation into a werewolf; he plans to take control of the Circus's power himself. The Doctor manages to entreat Mag's inner self, and she turns instead on the Captain and kills him, then returns to normal. The Doctor faces off against the Gods of Ragnarok, who have by now killed almost everyone else, while Ace, Mags and Kingpin find the jewelled eye and bring the Doctor the full medallion. With its power, he destroys the Gods of Ragnarok and the Circus.

Context:

This story completes another full season blogged, making season 25 the eighth one completed (following seasons 3, 8, 14, 17, 23, and new series 6 and 13); it was watched across two weekends in January and February 2023, two episodes a week, from the DVD (this is - at the time of writing - the most recently broadcast Doctor Who television story not yet available on Blu-ray, and I wondered when watching it how it might scrub up when released on that medium in future). I was accompanied both times by all three children (boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10). It didn't quite hold everyone's attention to the very end, though the youngest was very impressed by the conjuring tricks the Doctor does in episode four. Everyone was critical - excessively, to my mind - of the effects sequence of the juggling club falling into the mysterious well. I find this interesting in regards to different levels of suspension of disbelief: they didn't doubt the depiction of a cosmic, chasmic well with an eye looking up from bottom, just an object falling a bit awkwardly into it. 

First Time Round:

Season 25 was scheduled to start only after the completion of the BBC's coverage of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, so its finale The Greatest Show in the Galaxy aired later in the year than usual. Doctor Who's seasons at the time were usually done and dusted early in December, but this one snuck into the Yuletide schedules, with two episodes in the run up to the big day and two within the 12 days of Christmas. This meant that I saw The Talons of Weng-Chiang for the first time slap-bang in the middle of the story (having received the video as a Christmas present on the 25th December 1988 - see the First Time Round section of this blog post for more details). The final episode did not air until 1989, on January 4th. For the previous one on 28th December, my Mum dragged my sister and me, both of us somewhat unwilling, to her friend's house down the road, as we'd been invited for a meal during the festive season. Trying to get out of going, I'd said that I really wanted to watch that evening's episode of Doctor Who as it went out live; that was no problem, I was told, as the friend's kids wanted to watch it anyway. So it came to pass that the 16-year old me crammed himself onto the sofa with a seven- and a five-year old to watch Sylvester McCoy battle against robot clowns. I was already slightly embarrassed, but it got worse when every adult in attendance guffawed their way through the sequence at the end of the episode where Mags transforms into a werewolf. They laughed and laughed, thinking it hilarious. I tried to disappear into the sofa, but that isn't easy when you're going crimson and radiating heat. In those days, when every episode clashed with the much more popular Coronation Street, viewing Doctor Who was almost always a solitary activity; I only appreciated the advantages of that once I'd watched Greatest Show part three with other people.

Reaction:

The end of that third episode of the story is excellently realised, whatever some of the people I first watched it with (see First Time Round section) thought. Even better is the continuation of the sequence in the final part. It starts in the dark comic vein of previous characters' appearances in the ring, turns to well handled family-friendly Doctor Who horror as Mags transforms into an 80s post-punk werewolf, then moves into a full-on choreographed action sequence where the Captain cracks a whip, lion tamer style, using Mags as a weapon against the Doctor who's desperately trying to escape. Within this energetic sequence, the plot still moves forward - the Captain monologues his plan to take over the power of the Circus, the alien nature of the spectating family of three is revealed - and there's some nice moments like the cutaways to the family raising their scorecards, each giving the spectacle before them a 9, or to the lamp in the lighting rig spinning madly as Mags turns on and savages the Captain. It works for me, but I can see how it might not for another viewer because, well, it has an 80s post-punk werewolf and a bloke in a pith helmet cracking a whip, surrounded by circus performers. A key strength of the story is the incongruity of the imagery, with playful but eerie juxtapositions like a silent hearse driven through a barren landscape by a clown in an undertaker's outfit. The characters are all larger than life and their looks emblematic rather than realistic (there's no Martin Smith from Croydon here, it's all Nord The Vandal and Whizz Kid and the like).

As a teenager watching the opening of part one, I felt a bit of trepidation. The story was called "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" rather than something more traditional, and the opening scene is Ricco Ross's Ringmaster doing a rap. In 1988, a UK show featuring anyone rapping was generally to be avoided as a near-certain embarrassment. (It turned out alright though; Mark Ayres' music underpinning all the Ringmaster's raps is rather good, as is his work throughout the serial, and Ross's close-up look to camera at the end nicely sinister.) If even a long-term fan like me needed a bit of time to acclimatise to this story world, perhaps it wasn't a surprise that non-fans coming into it cold at episode three might struggle with the overload of seemingly silly visual elements. This was perhaps the start of a different style of Doctor Who for a video-recording audience, where there's significantly more service given to those watching every episode than those just casually dropping in here and there (this approach would be furthered in 1989's season 26). Countering that theory, though, is the surprising fact that episode four got the biggest audience of Sylvester's three years as the Doctor, with almost a million more people than usual tuning in, forgoing Coronation Street on the other side. It wasn't to do with Christmas scheduling either - the third part had one of the lowest ratings for story and season, lost in the festive noise. But the final episode, appearing at the start of a new year, proved to be a draw.

Those tuning in that week would have seen perhaps the best sequence of this era, and a defining moment for Sylvester as the Doctor: his stroll out of the chaos of the collapsing circus that then explodes behind him, walking away without reacting or breaking stride. It's just one of a number of great character moments for the regulars. Sophie Aldred as Ace is perhaps a little less well served by the script than Sylv - it errs a little too much on telling us that she doesn't like clowns rather than showing us - but it's a minor quibble. The script is giving the companion material with more emotion and depth than had been done for a while before this story, something again that would be developed in future. The two lead characters look to be at the height of their powers here, though again it just kept getting better the following year. It's hard to believe this is only their third story together (it was produced second in the run but shown fourth). The guest cast are uniformly good too. Jessica Martin as Mags is a good would-be companion, Dee Sadler makes a big impression as the doomed Flowerchild even though her character is gone early on in episode one, Christopher Guard plays Bellboy with sensitivity, and gets one of this era's greatest death scenes, committing suicide by turning his own robot creations on himself. Best of all is Ian Reddington as the Chief Clown. There's not much to the character on the page, but he perfects every little gesture, expression and changes in tone of voice to make a memorable and effective villain.

Stories in Sylvester McCoy's tenure tend to love ensembles, but - even with a great group of actors as there is here - a cast is only as good as the material they are given. Greatest Show has fun adventure, an intriguing mystery, and engaging world building. What lifts it up to an even higher level of quality is its underlying theme. There is an interesting subtext about the decline and death of western counter-cultural movements from their emergence in the 1960s (as represented by the nomadic and commune-like existence of the Psychic Circus before arriving on Segonax) to the point in the late 1980s when the story was made and when everyone seemed to be selling out to unfettered capitalism (as represented by settling on Segonax and keeping the demanding audience of the Gods of Ragnarok entertained). It's an original theme for Doctor Who, and an interesting slant on subject matter the show at this time came back to again and again, critiquing the heartlessness of the Thatcherite era in the UK. The only issue is that no money ever changes hands in the Psychic Circus (the enterprising stallholder and Segonax native played by Peggy Mount, of whom Margaret Thatcher would no doubt have been proud, is the only person seen to expect payment). Even the closest reading is likely therefore to connote that its the consumers that are the problem, not the capitalists, that the antagonism is coming from an insatiable audience, rather than an evil commissioning director or studio bigwig trying to make a buck. Though any writer would empathise with the story's author Stephen Wyatt if he despaired at having to continually feed the hungry story consumption machine, I think this is inadvertent. It's just a shame that a story that found an audience also seemed to be taking pot shots at it.

Connectivity:

Both this story and the last one blogged feature posters (the wartime Dalek 'Victory' poster in Victory of the Daleks, and the many examples advertising the tours of the Psychic Circus in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy); they each also feature antagonists made of metal, one of a pair of lovers coming to a tragic end leaving the other one sad, and a reference to someone with the rank of Captain.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Fan in Fiction. The character of Whizz Kid in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy caused some eyebrows to be raised in the audience, as he was clearly a fictional representation of a science fiction fan of the sort that might obsess over Doctor Who. He was there as an in-jokey dig at those watching who might take the programme a bit too seriously. Even though I saw myself being sent up, I still found this fun; others, though, were probably more annoyed. What all of us probably missed was that the character was notable in another way: I've wracked my brains and I can't think of an earlier depiction of such a fan on UK television. It might well be a first. Beatlemania and Dalekmania both exploded in the UK in the mid 1960s, and England won the men's football world cup in 1966. In the period from then through the 1970s and into the 1980s, characters who were pop music fans and football fans were not uncommon in comedies or dramas, but sci-fi or telefantasy enthusiasts, not at all. Part of this may be that stories have to attempt to be interesting, and screen stories attempt to express this interest visually. Pop music and football fans get out of the house and go places to indulge their fandom; there's not much for a writer to mine from someone just happily watching TV.  For fans to be fictionalised, there needed to be Fandom (with a capital 'F'), and this was slow getting going. The first Star Trek convention, getting fans out of the house and away from their television sets, was early in the 1970s (1972, to be exact), but the first for Doctor Who was much nearer the end of the decade (1977). After that, it would take another decade for this subcultural activity to be known and acknowledged enough for writer and audience in order for a fictional Doctor Who fan to appear on screen.

Early in the 1980s, Gian Sammarco portrayed Adrian Mole on UK television, in an adaptation of Sue Townsend's books. His casting as Whizz Kid was a meta-textual hint at the similarities of the characters; Mole, though, is much more the embodiment of an older tradition of lovelorn teenager and wannabe poet. This same character type was satirised by Rik Mayall around the same time as the 'People's Poet' in The Young Ones, and is still going strong today with Matthew Baynton as Thomas in Ghosts representing. For a character who is perhaps less interested in girls and poetry but who definitely knows Yeoman Rand's cabin number, the first significant depiction I can find is the infamous 'Get a Life' sketch from US TV's Saturday Night Live in 1986. William Shatner guest stars delivering some home truths to a group of nerds at a Star Trek convention. It's more about the cult TV star than the fans though; the latter are very crudely drawn and act as a mass of antagonism demanding detailed answers from the Shat about an acting job he did two decades earlier. It's not very nice to or for anyone involved (I've always thought Shatner's line to the assembled fans of "Look at the way you're dressed" was a bit rich seeing as he appears to be wearing an outfit made of a fake polyester bear rug in the skit). The Whizz Kid's treatment is affectionate by comparison. A UK TV descendent of the sketch is 2003's Cruise of the Gods, a TV movie written by Tim Firth starring Rob Brydon. He plays the former lead of a fictional Sci-Fi TV show, The Children of Castor, again beset by crudely drawn fans wanting something from him that he can't give.

The fans in such stories are not characters in their own right, but devices, stereotypes. Possibly too, they are not even realistic ones. Glimpses of The Children of Castor shown in Cruise of the Gods demonstrate - for the purposes of exaggerated comedy - that it's not a show anyone would want to watch, let alone remember. This damages the reality of its story world a bit. It's therefore preferable to feature a real show if you can, so any adoration, even if potentially misplaced, can at least seem credible. (Aside: would selected clips from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy taken out of context look as naff as the bits of Castor seen in Cruise of the Gods? Let's not dwell on that.)  As the 1990s progressed, fictional fans of real programmes and films became more and more common. A prestigious series like Alan Bleasdale's GBH contained scenes where a character is surrounded by the chaos of a Doctor Who convention, attended by many cosplayers, happening in the hotel in which he's staying. In Queer as Folk, Russell T Davies combines the lovelorn archetype with a Doctor Who fan in the character of Vince, drawing on his own detailed fan knowledge for specifics to add verisimilitude. Then there was Spaced, The IT Crowd, The Big Bang Theory, Community (which used a fictionalised version of what was obviously Doctor Who in its show within a show, Inspector Spacetime), and Galaxy Quest on the big screen (which used a fictionalised version of what was obviously Star Trek, presumably so they didn't get sued).

The other thing that's required to make a story interesting, of course, is conflict. What's heartening is that after a few decades, the conflict in the lives of sci-fi fan characters is rarely between them and their favourite show: it's not a barrier to them engaging with and enjoying other parts of life (don't get me wrong, the characters usually do have barriers stopping them from enjoying other parts of life, but the fact that they like shows featuring aliens is incidental). What is intriguing about Whizz Kid is that there's only one place from where conflict arises. He's a generally very happy and positive person, admits a tiny misgiving "Although I never got to see the early days, I know it's not as good as it used to be but I'm still terribly interested" (which is a dig against Doctor Who fans that relied too much on received wisdom, but shows the character to be relatively thoughtful and open). Then, the show that he likes and the people involved in its production destroy him. Morgana, working the circus's front of house, tries to dissuade others from going in, knowing their eventual fate. After a few minutes in Whizz Kid's company, though, she ushers him in gladly. I can't find anything on record about whose idea the character was; I suspect Stephen Wyatt might have been prompted to include him by either script editor Andrew Cartmel or producer John Nathan-Turner, who both had more experience of organised Doctor Who fandom. Even if I'm wrong, both those gentlemen would have signed off on the final scripts. Did they think about what this was saying? In a story that already had a subtext hinting that the mass viewership were monsters that had to be constantly fed, there's also a giant middle finger given to the minority fan audience: the makers hate them and wish they were dead. Justice for Whizz Kid!

In Summary:

An enjoyable, well-made and successful Doctor Who story whose subtext is (inadvertently?) telling its audience to get stuffed.