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The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
daveyboy7472
Posts: 16,418 Forum Member
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Out of all the ‘oddball’ stories there were in Seasons 24 and 25, this was the least cringe-worthy for me. I like the story but there are a couple of elements I feel it could have done without.
For a start, the character of Nord was just plain annoying and the over-enthusiastic fan, who legend has us believe is a caricature of Doctor Who fans, was also an unnecessary addition to the story. (He was so much better as Adrian Mole). I also wasn’t that keen on the Robot Bus Conductor who adds some cringe to the story that is lacking elsewhere.
Aside from those grumbles, though, it is yet another likeable story from this Season. With it’s creepy clowns and underlying menace, I actually feel this is the sort of story Steven Moffat would write now for the show if it hadn’t been made already. It really does appeal to the base instincts of people like Ace, who don’t like clowns and find them creepy.
Chief amongst these clowns is Ian Reddington( more known as Tricky Dicky from EastEnders) who gives a marvelously sinister performance. The other characters are great as well, including Captain Cook, who delightfully bores the pants of everyone while manipulating everybody around him to get in the ring to avoid his own demise. Then there was Mags, played with some conviction by Jessica Martin, though I wasn’t so keen on the wolf scenes as much. Also there was Deadbeat(known later as Eric from Lovejoy) who holds the key to the whole story. Even Peggy Mount was good as the obstinate battleaxe who ran the stall!
The whole eye thing was also well presented and the mystery of it added to the story as well.
Sylvester McCoy really got the chance to show of his own performance skills here and he didn’t disappoint. I loved the way he kept rolling his ‘RRRR’s’ as he said Ragnorak! Those last scenes were quite entertaining and the GOR themselves were suitably menacing despite their immobility.
What’s also a shame was this was the last story to feature the TARDIS Console for real. It was a treat to have a scene inside it at the beginning as they were so rare during this Era.
So all in all not a bad end to an improving Season. It still wasn’t ideal but you could see efforts were being made to improve the show which would go further the following year. For me, this story was the last of the really weird stories of the era with every story in Season 26 having some degree of normality attached to it. However, this story is not a bad one, it could have been better, no doubt but at least it wasn’t any worse.
For a start, the character of Nord was just plain annoying and the over-enthusiastic fan, who legend has us believe is a caricature of Doctor Who fans, was also an unnecessary addition to the story. (He was so much better as Adrian Mole). I also wasn’t that keen on the Robot Bus Conductor who adds some cringe to the story that is lacking elsewhere.
Aside from those grumbles, though, it is yet another likeable story from this Season. With it’s creepy clowns and underlying menace, I actually feel this is the sort of story Steven Moffat would write now for the show if it hadn’t been made already. It really does appeal to the base instincts of people like Ace, who don’t like clowns and find them creepy.
Chief amongst these clowns is Ian Reddington( more known as Tricky Dicky from EastEnders) who gives a marvelously sinister performance. The other characters are great as well, including Captain Cook, who delightfully bores the pants of everyone while manipulating everybody around him to get in the ring to avoid his own demise. Then there was Mags, played with some conviction by Jessica Martin, though I wasn’t so keen on the wolf scenes as much. Also there was Deadbeat(known later as Eric from Lovejoy) who holds the key to the whole story. Even Peggy Mount was good as the obstinate battleaxe who ran the stall!
The location filming again gave the story an extra edge and if you didn’t know some of it was filmed in a BBC car park in/outside a large tent you really wouldn’t notice it.
What I find different in this from the other stories of this type is that the menace presented was so much more believable and indeed, executed better onscreen. The Family that were supposed to be the Gods Of Ragnorak were menacing and as creepy as the clowns themselves. I liked the way this was gradually introduced as act after act suffered in the ring.The whole eye thing was also well presented and the mystery of it added to the story as well.
Sylvester McCoy really got the chance to show of his own performance skills here and he didn’t disappoint. I loved the way he kept rolling his ‘RRRR’s’ as he said Ragnorak! Those last scenes were quite entertaining and the GOR themselves were suitably menacing despite their immobility.
What’s also a shame was this was the last story to feature the TARDIS Console for real. It was a treat to have a scene inside it at the beginning as they were so rare during this Era.
So all in all not a bad end to an improving Season. It still wasn’t ideal but you could see efforts were being made to improve the show which would go further the following year. For me, this story was the last of the really weird stories of the era with every story in Season 26 having some degree of normality attached to it. However, this story is not a bad one, it could have been better, no doubt but at least it wasn’t any worse.
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Primarily, what exactly was the motivation of the Gods of Rrrrragnarrrok? If I understand it right they feed off the psychic energy generated by the entertainment value of the circus. So why had they killed off most of the actual circus performers in favour of crappy new acts? And these days it's hard not to think of the Gods as little more than Simon Cowell et al, sitting in judgement on increasingly desperate saddos trying to be famous.
However, if you take the show at face value it's rather good fun. It's trippy, spaced out and plain bizarre, and no other programme in 1988, (or since frankly) would have dared make such a story. For that alone it sits comfortably in the Who tradition of stories like The Mind Robber, Warrior's Gate or Kinda in doing things with television that you'd never see elsewhere, and thank goodness that, 25 years into the series, it's still willing to push the boundaries. The difference between this one and, say, Paradise Towers, is that Greatest Show works well as a slice of entertaining telly, whereas PD is an embarrassing muddle.
Still, there are elements which sit oddly with me. Whizzkid for example. This is a slightly dangerous game, biting the hand that feeds you. Whizzkid just about falls on the side of affectionate parody, but very nearly is simply taking the mickey out of the shows keenest supporters, and I wonder if JNT and Cartmel had really thought this one through. When ratings are dropping, do you really want to alienate the hard core fan base?
As with most of the rest of this season, it all looks superb. The billowing tents are effectively spooky, the quarry is parched and suitably alien looking (the scorching weather helped the planet look more barren than usual, though it was hell for the actors), though I'm not sure how that stallholder made any money in such a deserted place... The guest cast are mostly excellent, with TP McKenna giving a wonderful turn as an aged Indiana Jones type figure, boring the pants off everyone with his recollections. The clowns are wonderfully creepy, and I share Ace's dislike of them. McCoy is great, and his confrontation with the Gods is tense but amusing at the same time. Interestingly McCoy had to learn how to juggle for this story - the production team just assumed that with his background Sylvester would surely know to juggle and do magic already and so this was written in to the script without a second thought. But he couldn't do either, and so he quickly learnt to juggle from a book that belonged to one of his sons, and some hasty conjuring lessons with Geoffery Durham (aka the Great Soprendo) were arranged. Because Durham was a member of the Magic Circle, these lessons had to be conducted in strict privacy so as not to give away any secrets!
Ultimately The Greatest Show is a mixed bag for me. I always feel that it ought to have been rather better than it ended up, though I can't quite figure out how, as there's little to actually fault in the story. Just a feeling that it's not quite up to scratch somehow.
Absolutely, that looks really cool. And that explosion was, apparently, rather larger than the one Sylvester had been told was going to happen!
That makes Sylvester's responce extra :cool::cool::cool:
I'm not thin-skinned enough to be personally offended, of course, but I can imagine that it probably upset a lot of people. I can't speak for everyone, but I know that when I was at school Doctor Who wasn't cool. When TGSITG aired I was still in primary school, but by the time I was a bit older, and we were well into the hiatus years, I was bullied mercilessly for liking the show. There's something a bit uncomfortably about the fact that older fans who may have been going through something similar at the time would settle down in the comfort of their own home to watch their favourite show only to find that even the show that they were mocked for liking was mocking them, too.
Don't get me wrong, I've always been well-and-truly amongst the "the worst thing DW could do is listen to its fans" brigade, but don't take the piss out of them.
As I understand it, Sylvester knew that they simply couldn't afford another big top, so if the shot was ruined for any reason, the entire story would have to be scrapped. Hence he didn't react when the explosion went off, even though his clothes were actually left smouldering and had to be put out once they'd got the shot. Now that's what you call a pro!
I think the story has its head firmly up its own a***, but it's really entertaining for all that. And Ian Reddington is wonderfully sinister as the Chief Clown.