The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Dear Gary—

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is not that. It’s not even great. It’s OK. It starts out well but then loses its way. The circus setting has potential; I know several people who are afraid of clowns and while I don’t share this particular phobia, the clowns in this are the creepiest, especially the Chief Clown. I do have to say, however, that I’m not the biggest fan of circuses; I find them, along with magicians for that matter, well, boring. While The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is not boring, it just does not live up to its billing.

I guess my main problem with this is motivation. I can’t for the life of me figure out why most of the people in this do what they do. I’ll start with Nord. As the Doctor asks, “how do they expect a hard case like him to be going to the circus anyway?” That was exactly my thought when this guy appeared. He just doesn’t fit. His first appearance is sufficiently menacing and foreboding, but then it turns out that he is simply a stock character of convenience thrown in as fodder.

And what of Whizz Kid? All I keep thinking when I see him is, where are his parents? OK, he snuck away from his parents to run off with the circus, except this dweeby, nerdy Whizz Kid just isn’t the type. I get that this is supposed to represent the Doctor Who hard core fan, and I can see this kid as a fan of Doctor Who—just not of some traveling hippie circus. I don’t see this kid dreaming of wearing tights and walking a tight rope or of tumbling about with clowns or even of juggling hoops of fire. If this was a traveling chess club or a band of roving scientists maybe I could buy him running off to join the fun.  He’s an annoying addition to hit us with the meta angle, but he only succeeds in being meh.

That might be the anchor weighing this serial down—the desire to spin an allegory about the perceived evils of the BBC and critical audiences and network mentality and trying to force this to fit into the given story. And so you can watch the Whizz Kid in this context and have a good laugh—ha ha he’s the misfit boy obsessing over every last detail of every past show, going to every convention, reading every last detail, analyzing and romanticizing the past. But you can’t also watch the Whizz Kid in the context of the plot and be anything but irritated.

The plot is disserved by the parable.

Especially since, watching it today, some 25 years out, I just don’t care about the turmoil within the Doctor Who production ranks of the time. Perhaps as an historian, yes, it is of interest. Watching it purely within that framework it would make for some fascinating study. However viewing it simply as a Doctor Who serial I find myself scratching my head.

The biggest ‘Why’ I ask myself: Why did Kingpin, the Ringmaster, the Chief Clown, and Morgana sell out? And the biggest ‘What’: What is in it for them? “They took everything that was bright and good about what we had and buried it where it will never be found again,” Bellboy says of them; and from what I can see, they got nothing in return.

“Listen,” Ringmaster says, “just as long as they keep on coming, and they will, no doubt of that, we are a success. Don’t you understand? An intergalactic success.” I for one do not understand. This is how they measure success? A few stray stragglers wander in to their empty tent, are forced to put on an act for a creepy and unappreciative family of three, and then killed for their trouble. From what I see, there are no queues lining up waiting to get in. There is no audience to applaud. And their acts are dwindling fast. How is this winning them fame and fortune? Especially since no one survives to go forth into the galaxy to speak of the wonders of their show. And does nobody get suspicious when their friends and loved ones go out one day to the circus and never return?

There is no logical explanation for why Ringmaster and Morgana are complicit in this murderous endeavor. Bellboy and Flowerchild, too, have apparently been going along with this deadly show for some time before they both decided they had enough and tried to put an end to it. The only two I can understand participating are Deadbeat/Kingpin, who has been driven mad, and the Chief Clown, who appears to have his own insane voices he hearkens to.

Morgana does put on a convincing act of being frightened of the eye in her crystal ball, symbol of the powers behind this charade of a circus. However I’m not convinced that these powers can do any harm outside of the center ring. All of the killings that occur away from the tent are carried out by murderous robots that were created and are maintained by Bellboy and that are controlled by the Chief Clown. And the eyes in the sky that hunt down dissenters were created by Flowerchild. Why can’t the lot of them simply walk away?

This brings me to our Ringling Brothers trio, the so called gods of Ragnarok. “I have fought the gods of Ragnarok all through time,” the Doctor says. This is the first I’ve heard of it, but even still I could believe this statement if only this triumvirate wasn’t rooted to their seats in a tiny arena in a concurrent time space to some out of the way and barren planet and holding some pathetic troop of out-of-touch hippies hostage for no greater purpose than to keep them entertained.

That’s it? Make us laugh? What a joke. They don’t want to conquer the planet, the galaxy, anything? They simply sit in one spot waiting for the raggle taggle team they have working for them to recruit contestants in their Gong Show of death? And I have to say, they’re mighty quick on the reject button. No wonder there is so much down time between acts. They complain bitterly about the boredom as they await the next sucker to try his or her luck on stage, but then don’t even give the poor sap a chance. This again is where it works on the metaphorical level but as a Doctor Who story not so much.

About that Doctor Who story, the part that works, the part that you don’t have to think too much about or scratch your head over.

It is set up rather well. A mechanical gizmo suddenly materializes inside the TARDIS promising “the time of your life with the nonstop action” at the Psychic Circus. It is curious that the Doctor shows very little surprise that this space spam found its way into the TARDIS, but then I’m sure the Doctor has rigged it somehow. The Doctor must have been hanging around his intergalactic water cooler again picking up disturbing rumors about the circus and has decided something needs to be done. For whatever reason he doesn’t let Ace in on his plans and he has to convince his reluctant companion to join him.

Ace is pivotal in setting the tone of underlying dread. She dismisses circuses as childish and boring, but fear registers on her face as she thinks of the clowns of her youth. Taunted by the “junk box,” however, Ace puts on a brave face and follows along after the Doctor. Ringmaster’s rap, the creepy Chief Clown and his hearse full of robot clowns, Bellboy’s and Flowerchild’s desperation, and the high flying kites keeping an eye on the proceedings all underscore Ace’s foreboding.

The Stallslady only confirms Ace’s fears. “Every one of them who’s up to no good goes there,” she says. “We locals wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.” However, the locals dismiss the Psychic Circus; it isn’t a danger to them any more than it is a danger to the universe. It is only a danger to those foolish enough to attend, and those are few and far between it would appear. Ace is correct in hanging back from entering the canvas tent.

That’s not to say it isn’t worthy of the Doctor’s attention or shouldn’t be put out of commission; I just wish the show wouldn’t try to make it out to be more than it is. I wish it had treated it on the small scale where it so obviously operates; kept it to the simple machinations of the Chief Clown and perhaps found a more logical explanation for the eerie family in the stands other than some all-powerful gods who are actually rather stagnant and impotent.

Along the way to the circus the Doctor and Ace pick up Captain Cook and his companion Mags. I’m not completely clear on their motivations either, but they are more understandable than most of the others. There is no affection between these two; Cook regards Mags as a “specimen” and treats her with disdain while Mags has little regard for Cook other than I suppose gratitude for having saved her life once and perhaps as a means of transportation.

Mags is going to the circus because that is where Cook is going; Cook presumably is going to the circus to try and wrest control of its power source. This means that Cook has cottoned on to what is really occurring there (perhaps he belongs to the same water cooler club as the Doctor). He doesn’t seem to have anything by way of a plan, however, other than to try to outwit others into going into the ring before him while he contentedly sits by drinking tea in a cage.

Everything under the big top is well done; the horrors awaiting anyone entering center ring work best as they are left to the imagination and this gives the necessary tension to the scenes of waiting in the ‘green room’ of a cage and scheming to stall the inevitable; the family in the stands, stone faced and demanding, are terrifying; and the daunting prospect of entering the glaring spotlight to face your final judgment and having nothing prepared is straight out of a nightmare.

Equally effective are Mags’ transformation scene, the escape by Ace and her meeting up with the crazed Bellboy, the Doctor and Mags plotting their escape and the eventual betrayal by Captain Cook, and the Doctor’s working out of the puzzle when he meets up with Deadbeat/Kingpin. The action heightens with Ace and Deadbeat/Kingpin racing across the sands to find the missing eye to the magical pendant.

Where everything falls apart, however, is when the big top fades and we are left with the pitiful gods who don’t even know enough to stop throwing their deadly lasers around when they are being reflected back at them. I can’t help but feel disappointed. It was a big buildup for a massive let down rendering much of what preceded incomprehensible.

I repeat: circuses are boring; magicians are boring. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy succeeded in investing this Psychic Circus with a sinister air that kept it interesting, but ultimately it couldn’t keep all its balls in the air. It ends with the Doctor trying his best at his magic act that keeps the gods of Ragnarok (glued to their seats) mildly annoyed, but for some reason they don’t hold up their 0 scorecards (I guess if you make it out of the center ring and into the arena you are allowed more time to pitch your case) and instead let out some warning blasts. Then the Doctor mysteriously divines the exact moment when Ace is throwing the restored pendant down to him and voila, lights out, the party’s over.

“It was your show all along, wasn’t it?” Yes, the Doctor engineered and manipulated his way through without letting on. But Ace is beginning to understand this Doctor. This is a Doctor who puts on a clown’s face but has devious depths. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is the Doctor’s show.

I’m hoping, Gary, that this seventh Doctor can keep all his balls in the air long enough . . .