The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (TV story)

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was the fourth and final story of the Doctor Who anniversary Season 25. It showcased many of Sylvester McCoy's own skills as an entertainer, and some new tricks he had been taught to perform for the story.

Synopsis
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.

Part One
In a circus ring, a ringmaster appears and begins a rap, saying, "You ain't seen nothing yet!" In the TARDIS, 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. 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 wearing undertaker's clothing, travelling in a hearse with dark-tinted windows. 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 the hearse to take him 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 the earring Flowerchild lost. 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 by an electronic device held by the Ringmaster. She and the Captain are dragged backstage to the cage with the other talent show contestants.

The Doctor and Ace arrive at the entrance. He asks her to decide whether they are going in, or not...

Part Two
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 veiled hints of the fortune teller, Morgana, 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 boy riding a BMX bike 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 Three
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. Only his melted spectacles are left behind.

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, then orders his robots to kill him as they killed Flowerchild. 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, he asks for an "Old Devil Moon" 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 Four
The audience are amused by the spectacle of Mags attacking the Doctor as Captain Cook and other circus performers watch. Mags then kills the captain and 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 bus conductor robot, but Kingpin remembers how to defeat it permanently. They retrieve the missing part of the medallion and head back towards the circus.

The family, their eyes glowing bright green, speak in reverberating voices, demanding more entertainment. When the ringmaster and Morgana have protest the chief clown and the robot clowns enter the ring and force the pair into two large wicker baskets for a magic disappearing act. When the baskets are opened, both the ringmaster and Morgana have vanished forever; only the ringmaster's shiny red top-hat and whip are left behind. With the family now entertained the Chief and his troupe leave the ring to recapture the others.

Mags meets them on the way. She is being pursued by the clowns' hearse. The three realise they must evade or defeat it and Ace hatches a plan. 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' hearse and return to the circus, which they find strangely deserted. They see Captain Cook's body, laid out in state in the entrance hall, 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. They continue to taunt him, shouting, "We want more! We need more!" 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 had been re-animated by the Gods. 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 them and explore the galaxy, but they have galaxies of their own to explore...

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Captain Cook - T. P. McKenna
 * Mags - Jessica Martin
 * Ringmaster - Ricco Ross
 * Chief Clown - Ian Reddington
 * Stallslady - Peggy Mount
 * Whizz Kid - Gian Sammarco
 * Nord - Daniel Peacock
 * Bellboy - Christopher Guard
 * Morgana - Deborah Manship
 * Deadbeat - Chris Jury
 * Flowerchild - Dee Sadler
 * Bus Conductor - Dean Hollingsworth
 * Dad - David Ashford
 * Mum - Janet Hargreaves
 * Little Girl - Kathryn Ludlow

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

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 two eggs.

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 and 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. This was the first time that a magic consultant had been involved in the production of a Doctor Who story since The Talons of Weng-Chiang in 1977.
 * 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 TV: The Gunfighters (discounting "The King's Song" in TV: The King's Demons). The next original song for the series would be "Song for Ten" in TV: The Christmas Invasion.
 * Part three was originally to have featured a short scene where two of the robot clowns unload the newly-repaired Bus Conductor from the hearse near the bus, and the Bus Conductor then walks back to the vehicle. However, because part three was overrunning, this sequence had to be edited out of the finished programme and was moved forward to part four, which was running slightly under-length. Because of the last-minute nature of this edit, Dean Hollingsworth (Bus Conductor) was still credited on-screen for part three, even though he did not appear.
 * The Radio Times programme listing for part four was accompanied by a black and white publicity shot of the Doctor and the Stallslady with the accompanying caption "The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) discovers mysterious forces at work on Segonax. Will the Stallslady (Peggy Mount) help him? / BBC1, 7.35 p.m. Doctor Who".
 * At six words, this story had the longest title until the seven-word The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe in 2011 and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS in 2013.
 * When filming the explosion of the arena in Part Four, Sylvester McCoy was told that he wouldn't need to walk too far of a distance, as the bulk of the explosion would be supplied by special effects. However, the pyrotechnicians over-rigged the arena: the resulting explosion was much larger than the crew anticipated, catching McCoy in the heat blast and even setting fire to some of his clothes. Yet he continued to walk away unfazed because he knew that there wouldn't be a retake.

Ratings

 * Part one - 5.0 million viewers
 * Part two - 5.3 million viewers
 * Part three - 4.8 million viewers
 * Part four - 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

 * 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 one, Ace searches for her rucksack, which she blew up during the events of Silver Nemesis.

Continuity

 * Ace emerges from the TARDIS hallway at one point wearing the Fourth Doctor's multicolour scarf. (TV: Robot - The Horns of Nimon/Shada)
 * The Gods of Ragnarok created the Land of Fiction. (PROSE: Conundrum, No Future)
 * Mags is the first werewolf to appear on Doctor Who. The Tenth Doctor dealt with a similar alien race in TV: Tooth and Claw. The Eighth Doctor encountered a strange virus capable of turning humans into werewolves in PROSE: Kursaal. Werewolf clans apparently native to Earth have surfaced several times, in AUDIO: Loups-Garoux and PROSE: Wolfsbane.

Video releases

 * September 1999 (Australia/New Zealand)
 * November 1999 (US/Canada)
 * January 2000 (UK)

DVD releases

 * On DVD:
 * 30 July 2012 (UK/Region 2)

DVD Contents:
 * Audio Commentary featuring Toby Hadoke, Sophie Aldred, Christopher Guard, Mark Ayres, Stephen Wyatt, Jessica Martin and Andrew Cartmel
 * The Show Must Go On - Production documentary
 * Deleted and Extended Scenes
 * Lost in the Darkness: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy's Missing Model Shots
 * The Psychic Circus - Music video
 * Remembrance 'Demo'
 * Tomorrow's Times - The Seventh Doctor
 * Victoria Wood Sketch
 * Radio Times Listings
 * Visual Effects Designs and Storyboards (PDF)
 * Isolated Score
 * Photo Gallery
 * Production Subtitles
 * Coming Soon - Planet of Giants (TV story)
 * Easter Egg: Trails and Continuity Announcement. (incomplete VHS quality, with a brief excerpt from The Psychic Circus Music Video and a ident link into part two of Survival) To access this hidden feature, press right at "Deleted and Extended Scenes" on the Special Features menu

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