@Dr Theta Sigma To be fair, I used to loathe The Greatest Show in the Galaxy too. My ranking it as the best McCoy story is pretty faint praise. In my book, it has two things going for it. One is that it provides an arena (literally) for McCoy to do what he is best at, which is look like a fool. (That sounds harsher than it is.) The other is that with Ian Reddington's Chief Clown, it is possessing of what I believe is the only effective villain of the McCoy era.
Inside the Spaceship/The Edge of Destruction/ whatever you want to call it, I like because it's so lean. Had it been made a decade later it would have been a dismal four-parter, but it's reasonably effective at forcing the characters together and finally squeezing some friendship out of them. And if the internal story logic leaves much to be desired (why does the Tardis think driving everyone insane and melting clock faces is a better way of telling them what the problem is than just, say, writing it on the scanner?), the clock faces themselves are at least memorable and striking images. And Susan with the scissors too—even if doesn't make any sense, at least it's dramatic.
And I think that's it for me, because my mantra is that there's a place for Bad Who™ if its intentions are good (although I personally don't count this as it for a second), but boring Who is unforgivable.
