The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (TV story)

The Doctor and Ace head for the Psychic Circus on the planet Segonax, where they meet a disparate group of performers and visitors, including a self-centred explorer named Captain Cook, his companion Mags and a biker known as Nord.

The Circus itself is dominated by the sinister Chief Clown and his deadly troupe of robot clowns, who organise a talent contest in which all visitors take part. The audience consists of just a single strange family - mother, father and daughter - seated at the ringside. Although hindered by the treacherous Cook, the Doctor eventually discovers that the Circus hides a terrible secret: the family are in reality the Gods of Ragnarok, powerful creatures with an insatiable craving for entertainment who invariably destroy those who fail to please them.

With Ace's help, the Doctor ends the Gods' influence on Segonax and returns the Circus to the control of its original owners.

Plot

Part 1

Ace and the Seventh Doctor discover that junk mail persists into the far future; a small robot that unexpectedly appears in the TARDIS console room proves to be an advertising drone for the Psychic Circus on the planet Segonax. The Doctor is delighted at the chance to see it and bring his companion. Ace, who is frightened of clowns, does not want to go, but the Doctor insists.

The four adventurers examine the bus.

Flowerchild and Bellboy, circus performers on the run from the Psychic Circus, flee across Segonax's barren wastes. They are tracked by a sinister Chief Clown. The runaways agree to split up and Flowerchild alone reaches an abandoned bus crewed by a deactivated robot. Inside, she finds an odd box, which she pockets--unaware that the robotic bus conductor has re-awakened and seen her. The robot attacks and kills her. One of her earrings falls to the ground...

The TARDIS materialises on Segonax. The only sign of life readily apparent to the travellers is a roadside stand run by a jaded and cynical woman. She warns them off the circus. Ignoring her advice, Ace and the Doctor press on to the circus.

Meanwhile, the Chief Clown has continued the hunt for Bellboy using sinister observational kites. Bellboy's luck runs out -- the clowns have found him. They bundle him into the back of a car to take back to the circus.

As the Doctor and Ace continue down the road, they find other visitors making the trek. A futuristic motorcyclist named Nord impresses Ace, though the feeling is not mutual. Further down the road, Captain Cook and his friend Mags, another pair of interplanetary adventurers, invite the Doctor and Ace for tea at their campsite. Ace and Mags find a deactivated robot nearby; it comes to life and attacks, but Ace defeats it.

Nord arrives at the circus. He seats himself in the audience--near a father, mother and little girl -- and is surprised to find himself selected for the circus' "talent show". He is escorted backstage, where he finds the contestants in the talent show are to wait... in a cage.

The Doctor, Ace, Mags and Captain Cook stumble across the abandoned hulk of a bus. Ace finds and pockets an earring. They are attacked by the same robot that killed Flowerchild -- again, Captain Cook lets the others deal with the threat. Disgusted by Cook, the Doctor and Ace continue without the others.

Mags and Captain Cook arrive at the circus after Nord, before the Doctor and Ace, just in time to see Bellboy dragged into the ring to face punishment for his escape. Mags screams at the sight, but is quickly silenced with an energy weapon. The Captain and she are dragged backstage to the cage with the other talent show contestants.

Part 2

Ace and the Doctor arrive at the circus to find it nearly deserted; neither Nord, nor Mags and Captain Cook seem to be there. The only audience members besides themselves are the mum, dad and little girl.

Despite Ace's forebodings and the ticket seller's veiled hints, the Doctor volunteers for the talent show and is delighted to be selected. As he is escorted backstage, the Chief Clown appears and brusquely asks Ace how she came by Flowerchild's earring. Panicked, Ace dashes into the circus' recesses. In an unused room filled with robot clown parts, she meets the exhausted and battered Bellboy. She barely has time to hide from the Chief Clown, who enters and drags Bellboy away to fix the robots that he apparently created.

Backstage in the cage, the Doctor is reunited with Captain Cook, Mags and Nord. Captain Cook explains their lives are at stake in the talent competition; they must perform to stay alive. He tricks Nord into performing next, to the Doctor's displeasure.

After Nord's performance ends in his failure and death, a young man arrives at the circus. Whizz Kid is a great fan of the circus and of Captain Cook. He has come to enter the talent show. He is escorted backstage by the ringmaster. They find the cage empty except for Captain Cook; the Doctor and Mags, observed by circus janitor Deadbeat, have escaped.

Ace isn't so lucky. She has been recaptured by the Chief Clown. Playing on her phobias, he imprisons her in the room used to repair the robot clowns.

While wandering in some strange stone corridors adjoining the circus tents, the Doctor and Mags come across a deep pit. Peering in, the Doctor is startled to see an enormous alien eye at the bottom. He cannot investigate further, as Captain Cook and clowns have arrived to take him to the circus ring for his performance.

Part 3

Ace, imprisoned and menaced by ill-functioning clowns, faces her fears and defeats the clowns. In doing so, she finds that Bellboy is also in the room. He reminisces sadly on the fate of the Psychic Circus; once a light-hearted and merry band of free spirits roaming the galaxy, their ideals became twisted and corrupted once settled on Segonax. He is now a prisoner of the robot clowns he himself made; Flowerchild made the kites that hunted her to death. He gives Ace a present: a remote control for a large-scale android he built on Segonax.

Whizz Kid takes his turn in the circus ring. Star-struck, he fails to entertain the audience and is promptly killed.

The Doctor, who managed to slip away from his captors when Mags staged a distraction, meets Deadbeat and finds an unexpected spark of sanity in the man. He leads the Doctor through the tangle of tent corridors to where Ace and Bellboy are held. Bellboy, his memory jogged, recognises Deadbeat as Kingpin, the Circus' former leader. In despair, he realises what he and the other circus performers have lost. Bellboy sends away the Doctor, Ace and Kingpin. He orders his robots to kill him as they killed Flowerchild.

Mags is revealed to be a werewolf.

Ace, Kingpin and the Doctor make their way back to the pit with the mysterious eye. There, Kingpin shows them that the eye is connected to a mirrored eye medallion he wears. The medallion is incomplete; its eye sigil lacks an eyeball. The Doctor and Ace realise the missing piece must have been what Flowerchild died trying to retrieve from the abandoned bus. The Doctor sends Ace and Kingpin to fetch it. He stalls for time by taking his turn in the ring, a desperate attempt to placate whatever in the circus is relentlessly demanding entertainment.

In the cage with Mags and Captain Cook, the Doctor suggests that all of them enter the ring together, lengthening their survival if they work together. The Captain agrees, but once in the ring, asks for a crescent-moon-shaped spotlight, and stands by as Mags begins a ferocious transformation, smugly informing the Doctor that he really should have deduced that Mags is a werewolf.

Part 4

The audience is not amused by the spectacle of Mags attacking the Doctor as Captain Cook and other circus performers watch. It claim the lives of all but Mags and the Doctor. Mags re-transforms into a girl. The Doctor briefs her on the plan and sends her to find Ace and Kingpin. Meanwhile, he will prepare for his performance.

Ace and Kingpin reach the abandoned bus. Ace is attacked by the conductor-robot, but Kingpin remembers how to defeat it permanently. They retrieve the missing part of the medallion and head back towards the circus.

Mags meets them on the way. She is being pursued by the Clowns' sinister car. The three realise they must evade or defeat it and Ace hatches a plan.

The audience members' true forms.

The Doctor confronts his adversaries: the three audience members, the Gods of Ragnarok. Extradimensional beings who feed on entertainment, they have brought the Doctor to their home dimension, from which no escape is possible. The Doctor declares he is not afraid of them and begins a series of conjuring tricks.

Ace, Kingpin, and Mags have reached the old robot in the desert, the one Ace and Mags have already defeated. They crouch behind it as the clowns approach, taunting them -- but Ace uses Bellboy's device to control the robot and the clowns are incapacitated. The friends dash to the clowns' car and return to the circus, which they find strangely deserted. They see Captain Cook's body, laid out in state, but can't find the Doctor. Kingpin thinks he may be trapped in the Dark Circus, accessible through the stone labyrinth.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is less than successful in entertaining the Gods of Ragnarok. He is still alive, but the Gods are running out of patience.

The Doctor strolls out of the arena.

Kingpin, Mags, and Ace reach the pit in the stone labyrinth, but Kingpin cannot bring himself to use the medallion. As Mags and Ace try to talk him into it, he is pushed aside by Captain Cook, who was feigning death. Cook claims the medallion, but Ace rushes him and knocks it into the pit... where it re-materialises by the Doctor's feet. The Captain blunders into the pit after it, while the three travellers flee into Segonax's wastes.

The Gods try to kill the Doctor, but he deflects their weapons with the medallion and the arena begins to crumble. He mock-bows to the dying Gods and calmly walks out of the arena, back into the Psychic Circus on Segonax, which disintegrates as he leaves it. He joins his friends to watch the destruction from a safe distance.

Kingpin declares he will re-start the circus and return to its lighthearted roots. Mags joins him; she is initially uncertain that she can control her changes, but the Doctor assures her she can. Kingpin invites the Doctor and Ace to join and explore the galaxy, but they have galaxies of their own to explore...

Cast

Crew

Assistant Floor Managers - David Tilley, Duncan McAlpine
Costumes - Rosalind Ebbutt
Designer - David Laskey
Incidental Music - Mark Ayres
Make-Up - Denise Baron
OB Cameramen - Barry Chaston, Alan Jessop
Producer - John Nathan-Turner
Production Assistant - Alexandra Todd
Production Associate - June Collins
Script Editor - Andrew Cartmel
Special Sounds - Dick Mills
Studio Lighting - Don Babbage, Henry Barber
Studio Sound - Scott Talbott
Theme Arrangement - Keff McCulloch
Title Music - Ron Grainer
Visual Effects - Steve Bowman
Magic Consultant - Geoffrey Durham

References

Mags is a werewolf-like alien.
The Doctor knows the Gods of Ragnarok. He says he has fought them "all through time".
Ace tries on the Fourth Doctor's scarf and Mel's blue and white polka dot jacket.
The Doctor entertains the Gods of Ragnarok with sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks.

Foods and Beverages

Captain Cook serves tea to Mags, the Seventh Doctor and Ace at his campsite and at the circus.

The Doctor's Items

The Doctor produces a variety of items as part of his magic show, including a scarf, a length of rope and an egg.

Planets

Captain Cook spends much time remembering planets he has visited including; Lelex (the natives are Monopods), Dioscuros, Inphitus (where the Galvanic Catastrophods are 'not what they were'), Leophantos, the baleful plains of Grolon, Fagiros (where the Architrave of Batgeld showed Cook his collection of early Ganglion pottery), the Bay of Paranoia on Golobus, the gold mines of Katakiki and Periboea. He also visited Vulpana where he met Mags. He recommends the frozen pits of Overod, says that Boromeo has 'bouncing Upas trees' and Anagonia 'singing squids'. He shares the Doctor's love of tea from the Groz valley on Melogophon.
Various posters state that the Psychic circus has visited Othrys, the Boriatic Wastes, Marpesia and the grand pagoda on Cinethon.

Story notes

An asbestos scare at the BBC studios prompted the idea of a story that could be shot outside the studios, inside a large tent and outdoors.
This story was originally a three-parter but was expanded, at the request of the producers, to four.
Ben Aaronovitch suggested the character that became Captain Cook.
Whizz Kid, the fan character, was a deliberate parody of Doctor Who fans.
Sylvester McCoy was coached in magic by Geoffrey Durham, otherwise known as the Great Soprendo, for the sleight-of-hand and other magic trick scenes.
The rap song heard during the serial was the first original song commissioned for Doctor Who since "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" in DW: The Gunfighters. The next original song for the series would be "Song for Ten" in DW: The Christmas Invasion.
Ian Reddington (the Chief Clown) would later play Nobody No-One in BFA: A Death in the Family.

Ratings

Part 1 - 5.0 million viewers
Part 2 - 5.3 million viewers
Part 3 - 4.8 million viewers
Part 4 - 6.6 million viewers

Filming locations

This story was technically filmed entirely on location, although the main location was the car park of a studio.

Warmwell Quarry, Warmwell, Dorset
The car park of BBC Elstree, Hertfordshire

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

This story was originally intended to be transmitted before The Happiness Patrol. When the broadcast order was changed by the producer, two errors suddenly presented themselves. They weren't, strictly, continuity errors, because nothing else demanded that season 25 be watched in the order of original transmission. Nevertheless, if the season were viewed in transmission order, two things about Ace were incongruous:

Flowerchild's earring could be seen on Ace's jacket in the preceding two serials, Silver Nemesis and The Happiness Patrol, though she only acquired it during this serial.
During part 1, Ace searches for her rucksack, which she blew up during the events of Silver Nemesis.

Continuity

It is revealed in NA: Conundrum and No Future that the Gods of Ragnarok created the Land of Fiction.
Mags is the first werewolf to appear on Doctor Who. The Tenth Doctor dealt with a similar alien race in DW: Tooth and Claw. The Eighth Doctor encountered a strange virus capable of turning humans into werewolves in EDA: Kursaal. Werewolf clans apparently native to Earth have surfaced several times, in BFA: Loups-Garoux and PDA: Wolfsbane.

Timeline

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy occurs after DWM: Seaside Rendezvous
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy occurs before DWY: It's Only a Game

Home video and audio releases

On VHS:
- September 1999 (Australia/New Zealand)
- November 1999 (US/Canada)
- January 2000 (UK)
On DVD:
- 30th July 2012 (UK/Region 2)

Soundtrack

A soundtrack album of Mark Ayres' score was released by Silva Screen Records on FILMCD 114.

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