The Seventh Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
Season Twenty Five
THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY
“Now welcome, folks, I’m sure you’d like to know, We’re at the start of one big circus show, There are acts that are cool and acts that amaze, Some acts are scary, some act in a daze, Acts of all kinds and you can count on that, From folks who fly to disappearing acts, There are lots of surprises for the family In the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, So many strange surprises I’m prepared to bet, Whatever you’ve seen before: you ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Thus commences the Ringmaster’s Song, a prologue to The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, a surreal masterpiece of science fiction that remembers all the ingredients which make Dr Who such a compelling show. Instead of resorting to stupid sweet wrapper monsters, Time Lord tomfoolery and daft time travel scenarios which take oodles of explanation to not explain anything, author Stephen Wyatt manufactures a slice of intense, psychological horror, set predominantly in and around a circus ring. What the closing serial of the 25th Season does so well is remind us of the childhood fears we consigned to the dustbin of infancy; it dresses them up appropriately for adults to understand the metaphor and for actual children to visit their own preconceptions, specifically about magic, circuses, clowns and, more noticeably, death…
“Things don’t just vanish,” says the Doctor while Ace searches for her rucksack, throwing past companion’s old clothes into the control room. She appears wrapped in Tom Baker’s scarf. However, it also appears people do just vanish…
The universe famed Psychic Circus, the self-proclaimed Greatest Show in the Galaxy, has taken up residence on Segonax. A troupe of mysterious clowns patrol the perimeter seeking two escapees – Bellboy and Flower Child – members of the Circus. Self-propelling kites guide them to their quarry. The pursuit is conducted in a silent black hearse. One of the hunted, Flower Child, is caught by the robotic Ticket Inspector who rules a psychedelic bus; for her misdemeanours, she disappears…
The Doctor and Ace are offered invitations to the Circus through a junk mail robot, which materialises inside the TARDIS and offers an open challenge to Ace, claiming she is scared of clowns. This becomes a recurring theme in the story which doesn’t quite hit its full stride because the narrative is overtaken by the intense psychological play offs between the characters…
Segonax is a strange almost unoccupied world. The only inhabitant other than the Circus people appears to be a weary Stallholder, tired from the constant flood of tourists seeking the Circus. She seems only too happy to exploit them, however…
I was instantly reminded of the faux hospitality provided by Tilda and Tabby in author Stephen Wyatt’s previous effort Paradise Towers. Peggy Mount’s rather unsightly character seems to suffer similar poor taste in clothes and cloying attitudes. There’s a wonderfully erudite moment when she lists and rues every style and variation of tourist, ending with “…and doctors.” We think she might have been expecting him, but it’s more likely she’s overheard Ace and the Doctor talking and is reinforcing her evident dislike. Sylvester McCoy’s slanted glance certainly suggests so…
The Doctor and Ace encounter the crazy Hell’s Angel motorcyclist Nord, before stopping for afternoon tea with Captain Cook, the famed intergalactic explorer, who has come to witness the miracles of the circus. His young assistant Mags appears to be his slave, although he insists she is his ‘companion.’ The parallels or not with the Doctor and Ace are clear to see. When Mags is attacked by some dormant hardware half-buried in the quarry, Ace and the Doctor spring to her assistance but Cpt Cook merely sips his tea. An old colonialist of the Victorian era, he exhibits a demeanour so calm and superior, he becomes as unreal as Colonel Blimp. The Captain’s only master is his own soul. Mags, an inhabitant of the planet Volpana, hides a secret which later manifests itself with devastating consequences…
When the Doctor and Ace finally reach the Psychic Circus, a faint scream can be heard. Ace wonders whether they should proceed; the Doctor cajoles her into it. The screaming continues…
The Circus is attended by only three people, a family who sit almost motionless and pass judgement on the entertainment. It’s like Britain’s Got Talent, only with disappearance – death – as the reward. The Circus ring and its maze of tents is brilliantly realised. The warren of canvas tunnels leads to a series of time portals, one that reveals a cave inhabited by the hallucination of an eye – the same eye which adorns the ancient stone walls of the circus entrance. Another portal eventually leads to the enemy within…
The Circus is managed by the Ringmaster and Morgana [Rico Ross and Deborah Manship, both excellent]. They in turn are in thrall to the triplicate audience, who will punish them if they fail to produce a constant flow of amusem*nts. The Eye appears in Morgana’s crystal ball, watching the images she conjures. Bellboy has been recaptured, but refuses to cooperate. A janitor, called Deadbeat, watches proceedings with a sly gleam in his eye. Nord is joined by the Captain and Mags to await their turn in the ring…
The Stallholder, Captain Cook, Mags, Bellboy, Flower Child, the Ringmaster, Morgana the Gypsy, Deadbeat and the villainous Chief Clown are familiar in their disparity. It is the fact they seem completely unrelated to each other which makes them corelate, for this is not only a psychic circus, but a psychic dreamlike phenomenon. I was reminded of those black and white adventures The Celestial Toymaker and The Mind Robber, which both took place in an environment of surreal wonder and curiosity, where reality blurred with unreality. In the former story, the inhabitants were trapped in the Toymaker’s world, unable to escape except by playing his fatal games, much how the circus folk here have given themselves over to fantastical unforgiving overlords. The latter story took place in an environment of pure fantasy, where fiction was made real; and here it is the fiction of entertainment, the world of the circus, of dexterity, sleight-of-hand, wizardry and cerebral confusion. These unknowns become an impending horror. This brilliantly blends Dr Who science fiction with the non-sci-fi world of horror films, specifically those set in or around a circus. They provide a rich vein of material…
The Seven Faces of Dr Lao is probably the most surreal of cinema’s forays into the circus, and the idea that the big tent can lead to adventures beyond the real world certainly has standing. It is utilised to good effect here, as the watching audience turn out to be ethereal beings who feed off entertainment. Hammer’s Vampire Circus featured a distinctly creepy carnival; and here the alien Mags transforms into a wolf much how an acrobat became a black panther in the more gory forbear. Carnival of Souls bore a dreamlike, grasping torment; while Stephen King’s It featured as its main antagonist the clown Pennywise, a good reason to be scared of these painted pranksters. Above them all of course is the Todd Browning’s haunting Freaks and while Dr Who doesn’t venture down the obvious avenue, the cruel, vicious nature of the circus itself is brought solidly, believably to the fore by director Alan Wareing. His camera revels in the deep, dark shadows and sudden light, he emphasises the gypsy influence and the craving scuttling nature of the clowns, particularly the black and white Chief Clown, who appears to have taken over the show with reticent speech, minimum effort and maximum reward. Ian Reddington is marvellous in this role, his body movements in particular suggestive of a balletic grace beneath the comic exterior and demonic interior. The reason for the Circus’ slow decline is never quite revealed, but the suggestion is that Morgana’s own skill as a spiritualist summoned the Gods of Ragnarök out of their enchanted arena and into the world of the Psychic Circus…
Ragnarök is a Norse prophesy. Various translations call it the End of Man, the Fate of the Gods or the Fate of Mankind. At the end of time, a huge battle takes place in which all the gods are destroyed and from the ashes of battle, a new lifecycle begins. Here, the Gods of Ragnarök are not so dutifully self-destructive. Their stone-like effigies suggest they’ve existed for time immemorial and will continue to exist. The Doctor, who had no time for circus games when visited by a junk mail robot, realises it is only through the same illusoriness of magic and entertainment that he can thwart their rapacious appetites, allowing his allies to reunite a potent medallion which will banish the Gods back into their realm…
The clowns themselves turn out to be sophisticated androids designed and orchestrated by Bellboy, one of the original escapees. These deadly creepy, completely silent robots are the antithesis of what we would expect of a cheerful clown. Ace, usually unafraid and energetic, becomes withdrawn and at times terrified by the unjocular entertainers. On learning from Bellboy that they are purely mechanical, she gains strength and spirit, and manages to out-clown them. At the same moment Ace is prising the truth from Bellboy, the Doctor is prising the last vestiges of humanity from Deadbeat, who it turns out is Kingpin, the circus founder. Bellboy sacrifices himself in a scene of highly orchestrated terror, enabling the others can escape…
The Captain turns on everyone, thinking it will save his life, but his own confidence is his undoing and Mags at last revolts against her master, although she has to invoke a horrific lycanthropic transformation to do so. This moment of change is handled expertly by the makeup team headed by Denise Brown, who work miracles with little. So too the cameramen and editors, who ensure the werewolf remains just the correct side of scary without ceasing to be family friendly. I’m not sure we’ve had scenes quite this blood curdling since the days of Philip Hinchcliffe. Again, it is a testament to the writer that notions of fairy tale and horror can be inserted with depth and some sympathy; Mags is not a horrific creature even if she looks it and Bellboy’s loss is keenly felt…
The sets are brilliantly spare. Exteriors were filmed in a real quarry in Dorset and the old-fashioned stalls, windbreakers, bivouacs and buses that we see early on serve to disorientate us, but are not forgotten towards the climax, when they too serve a purpose. The show tent is a simple affair, made even better by the canvas tunnels and the CGI infused landscape shot – a huge neighbouring planet blotting the skyline. There really was a sense of wonder and also, as with the quarry scenes, a feeling of disorientation. Remarkably, the sets were constructed in a real tent in the Elstree Studio’s car park; exposed asbestos had been discovered in the studio itself and the premises had been shut down. The ingenuity of designer David Laskey must be applauded. So too Rosalind Ebbutt’s expert costumes. The music, from Mark Ayres, doesn’t shy away from the obvious barrel organ motifs, but he incorporates them vividly into a mystifying mirage of sound which never interferes with the dialogue or the action. The score succeeds in its understatement…
There are a host of excellent performances. Leading from the front is Sylvester McCoy who shakes off the weird stoic facial expressions he exhibited when delivering forbearance during the last few stories. Here, he’s got that cheekiness back. The puns work. The intensity is taken down a notch. This time we are on the discovery with him, not standing back waiting for his explanation. He interacts brilliantly with Sophie Aldred, whose Ace is equally good, and the scene where he coaxes life back into Deadbeat’s eyes was quite joyful, something the slightly sinister Doctor of Silver Nemesis wouldn’t be able to do. T.P. McKenna must get a mention for his pompous Captain Cook. Jessica Martin’s Mags was touted as a possible companion, and rightly so. She is outstanding and interacted brilliantly with Ace and later the Doctor, as well as for and against her master Cpt Cook. While I figured out her secret fairly quickly, it would have been well hidden from most of a younger audience. Perhaps the only duff note is struck by the starry-eyed circus fan called Whizz Kid, played by Gian Sammarco, who had recently been impersonating Adrian Mole. This character really does feel as if it has dropped in from The Celestial Toymaker…
Goodness, this was splendid entertainment.
[Point of Cartmel Masterplan order: during the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Gods of Ragnarök, he says he’s been “fighting you all through time” which comes across as one of those enigmatic statements to be taken whatever way you want. Personally, I prefer to ignore the ‘masterplan’ – at least for this story – as it doesn’t seem appropriate. For instance, when exactly has the Doctor been fighting the ungodly trio? We never saw it before. I expect the he’s speaking metaphorically, about ‘all’ evil entities.
[Mind you, it doesn’t help when Ace makes similar assumptions: “It was your show all along, Professor.” In fact, occasionally throughout the story, Ace is hinting she’s becoming suspicious and / or intrigued by the Doctor’s personality; this springs from her own fear of clowns and an imperfect relationship with circuses, something the Doctor wants to challenge. These trifles sit badly within an otherwise outstanding script.
[Commentators have mentioned how the Doctor appears to display prescience, often citing the fact he is juggling at the start of the adventure; the suggestion being he is preparing for the climatic confrontation. This is over elaborate. Speaking as a writer, it is fairly obvious Stephen Wyatt introduces the juggling scene in episode one so that when the Doctor performs magic tricks in episode four, we are not surprised. There is no foresight here, just very good writing.
[Incidentally, Sylvester McCoy couldn’t juggle and had to practice. His magic show was choregraphed by Geoffrey Durham, a member of the magic circle known as the Great Suprendo.]
After all the disappointments of the first three stories in Dr Who’s Silver Anniversary Season, there finally appears to be redemption. I might be overmarking this story, perhaps because I was so relieved to have something worthwhile to watch, but I genuinely thought this was a fantastic, tantalising piece of science fiction which pits adult characters into a child’s world and watches how they confront the evils lurking behind the infantile frivolity…
Loved it:
5 from 5
