“They took everything that was bright and beautiful about what we had, and they buried it where it will never be found again.”
Story
The “Psychic Circus” once toured the galaxy, wildly popular and successful. But times have changed. They’ve stopped touring, and settled in one place on the desolate planet Segonax, where anyone who wants to see the show has to come to them via a teleport platform a few miles away from the circus tent. Their reputation still lingers, enough to draw a series of would-be performers hoping to audition during their annual “Festival.” The Doctor and Ace get an invitation when a robot materializes inside the TARDIS— the Doctor’s surprised until it turns out to be junk mail delivering a sales pitch for the circus (“Junk mail can get in anywhere,” he says— the term spam not having caught on yet when this story aired). The Doctor decides to go, despite Ace’s reluctance— she at first claims circuses are just for kids, then admits she’s scared of clowns.
But far more is wrong at the Psychic Circus than just declining fame. We meet two of the original circus troupe, Bellboy and Flowerchild, apparently trying to escape, until they’re hunted down by the Chief Clown and his robot henchmen. Everyone who shows up at the circus, whether they want to audition or just watch the show, gets tricked into a cage and forced to perform, one after another, for the only three people in the audience— a deeply creepy family with mom, dad and little girl who all demand to be entertained constantly. The unfortunates forced to perform survive only so long as the family find them interesting— once they get bored, the performers are vaporized. The original circus performers are engaged in a desperate struggle to stay alive by tricking other people into the ring in their place.
The ring itself is built into an ancient stone circle, and hidden under the big top are stone ruins and a deep pit, at the bottom of which seems to be a huge, unblinking eye. Years ago, the Psychic Circus made the mistake of settling down in the home of an ancient evil, which now has its eye on the Doctor.
Review
Fan Conventional Wisdom (FCW) on this story is that the whole thing is an allegory of the declining fortunes of Dr Who itself. The idea developed from one character, who was certainly intended as a “take that” to complaining fans: one of the ill-fated visitors to the circus is a nerdy teenager, never named on screen but called “Whizzkid” in the script, who proclaims himself the Psychic Circus’ greatest fan, and says things like “Of course I never saw the early performances, but I know it’s not as good as it used to be.” When FCW looks elsewhere for hidden messages, the next thing it settles on is some sort of metaphor for late 60’s hippie culture “selling out” and going commercial— an easy assumption, since all the members of the original circus troupe are, in names, costumes and decorating styles, lifted directly from the late 60s.
However, apart from the character of Whizzkid, writer Stephen Wyatt and script editor Andrew Cartmel don’t appear to have had any actual allegories or messages in mind. JN-T asked for a story to use the title “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy,” so when Cartmel commissioned Wyatt to write the script for the season 25 finale, the idea of a circus came obviously to mind— and the hippie style just developed out of the idea to create a cast full of “circus folk.”
Wyatt wrote last season’s Paradise Towers, and this is a far better story than that one. It also reflects a major change in the overall style and mythos of Dr Who, a further step in Andrew Cartmel’s vision for reinventing the program. First off, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is quite simply fantasy/horror, not science fiction. Years back, when The Daemons introduced black magic to the Dr Who universe, the Doctor carefully insisted it was all about an alien technology to manipulate psychic energy— as my review of that episode noted, it was nothing but a handwave, but one that kept Dr Who defined as science fiction. Here, no such handwave is provided. The ancient evil behind events is eventually revealed to be “the Gods of Ragnarok,” with no further explanation given— and the Doctor defeats them with a magic talisman, again without even the briefest attempt at a sci-fi gloss. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy simply, and without comment, introduces the supernatural into Dr Who.
In keeping with the “real” nature of the story, there’s no effort whatsoever to build a fictional world for the supposedly space-faring civilization which once allowed the Psychic Circus to tour the Galaxy rather than just the world. Apart from the clowns and a couple of other robots, there’s no futuristic technology to be seen— one visitor to the circus arrives on a motorcycle, Whizzkid on a bicycle, another pair in a jeep. The circus has a present-day 18-wheeler parked near its big top and a broken down hippie bus nearby. As noted before, the characters are all Earthly, late-60s hippies, and even the visitors to the circus represent present day Earthly types. None of this is a failure of sci-fi worldbuilding: it’s exactly as it should be for what this story really is, one about a present-day, rather run-down circus accidentally getting caught by an ancient supernatural evil. The “Galaxy” part is purely nominal. This story wouldn’t be out of place, set on present-day Earth, among the works of HP Lovecraft, or Richard Matheson, or Steven King.
Some fans promptly objected to this at the time: “Dr Who is science fiction, not fantasy! Heresy!” But unless you’re really bothered by genre-slipping, it’s a very effective and creepy horror story. If anything, I’d say it would have been improved by actually forgetting the Galaxy part altogether and having the Doctor and Ace come across this circus in present-day England, sitting on one of the actual stone circles they have have dotted around the landscape over there.
The second big change that comes in with this story is the overall style or tone of it. No explanation even in fantasy or mythical terms is given for the “Gods of Ragnarok” and how they came to be sitting beneath an ancient stone circle acting like a pitcher plant to draw in and kill people. The story is more interested in the mood than in the explanation: “Who cares how or why this happens?” it seems to ask, “Let’s just be creepy and spooky.” This will be the dominant tone of the series in the next season, and it’s one the new series has been no stranger to under Steven Moffat’s control. As we approach the end of the Classic series, we’ll see some episodes do this better than others— The Greatest Show in the Galaxy does it quite well.
We also get a few hints of the “Cartmel Masterplan” mysterious Doctor, though more subtly and debatably than in Remembrance of the Daleks. Although it appears that the Doctor gets drawn into events just because of the junk mail robot and his whimsical curiosity to see the circus, there are a few moments when we suspect that just maybe he knew something was up sooner than it appeared. “Things are getting out of control quicker than I anticipated,” he remarks to himself at one point. Later, facing the Gods of Ragnarok, he recognizes them and asserts that he’s been fighting them all across time and space. Finally, at the end of the story, Ace says, “It was really your show all along, wasn’t it, Doctor?” and he just gives her a cryptic smile, without answering.
The story would benefit from some background extras among the cast, but by this time Dr Who’s budget just wouldn’t run even to that minimal expense. The relatively few members of the main cast are the only ones who show up to perform in the deadly circus ring— when the circus troupe start to panic when they begin to run out, you have to worry about how they kept it going this long. A stream on non-speaking parts heading off to an unseen fate would have increased both the plausibility and the fear factor of the story. Likewise, we’re told about the native inhabitants of the planet but all we see is a single old woman who runs a roadside fruit stand and dislikes the “weirdos” who pass down the road on the way to the circus. A local village with some background inhabitants— and maybe a reference or two to local legends about the spot where the circus pitched its tent— would also have improved the setting (especially since we eventually learn that the circus came there because its original leader hoped to tap into the power buried there— so it would be nice if the story told us where he heard about it).
Behind the Scenes
Greatest Show in the Galaxy almost joined Shada on the never-got-finished stack. After they’d done the location shooting for the episode, the BBC studios were unexpected closed down due to an asbestos issue, and with the tight scheduling for sharing studio space that BBC programs of the time had to deal with, it looked for a while as if the serial would simply have to be scrapped. JN-T asked the set designer if, since the sets (which had already been built) were meant to look like the inside of a circus tent, could they actually shoot outdoors? Unfortunately they weren’t weatherproof, and they didn’t have tops (since they were designed for studio lighting). Then JN-T managed to gain access to a large, temporary pavilion that had been set up in the parking lot of the Elstree Studios. The circus ring set was moved to the inside of an actual, very large tent, and tent-shaped corridors for running up and down in also became available thanks to the move. The story probably ended up benefiting from a crisis that very nearly prevented it from being made, looking much more like it took place in an actual circus than it would have otherwise.
Next Week:
“Battlefield,” 4 episodes. The season 26 premiere— which would turn out to be Classic’s final season.
