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andraste... or, alternately: 'the one where Ace kills an evil clown with a laser death robot and nobody really comments.' (I mean, the clown richly deserves it. But I feel like it says something about the tone of this story that everyone who survived the circus has a body count at the end of it. Except technically Kingpin, I guess, but the whole thing is his fault and he should feel bad.)
Anyway, Stephen Wyatt only wrote two stories for Doctor Who: Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. While they have quite a lot in common in some ways, in others they couldn't be more different. I always find the two a fascinating contrast in how much production can make a script look better or worse. I have a huge soft spot for Paradise Towers and will argue forever that it's a GREAT script, but one of the most interesting things about it is that just about everything that could have gone wrong with it did. While there are a couple of great performances (from the delightful cannabalistic rezzies) the casting in general went awry from the beginning. The Kangs are too old, the guards are too young (they were meant to be Dad's Army types to explain why they weren't away at the war) and the usually excellent Richard Briers made some, er, eccentric choices when it came to portraying the Chief Caretaker. Meanwhile, the robot monsters were terrible, the lighting was worse and the less said about the awful score the better.
With The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, things couldn't have been more different. Even the stuff that went wrong behind the scenes made what showed up on the screen better. There's no way it would have looked this good if they'd shot it in a studio as planned, instead of in an actual tent in a studio parking lot. (There was asbestos removal going on at the BBC television centre time, hence the abrupt shift to a far more convincing venue.) And while I'm sorry the effects department nearly blew up Sylvester McCoy, the over-enthusiastic explosion gave us what may be the best shot of the Seventh Doctor ever.
It's one of those delightfully juicy Seventh Doctor stories where there are layers of things going on, in both the text and the subtext. I once saw it summarised as 'we hate our jobs, we hate our audience, we hate our fans, we hate ourselves' and there's certainly some biting commentary about Doctor Who itself going on here. I admit it, Whizzkid's lines about the posters and 'I know it's not as good as it used to be, but I'm still terribly interested!' crack me up every time. All of that ends up working even better in hindsight in light of the show's imminent cancellation. And then even better again twenty-two years later now that it's turned out the Doctor survived that experience, too.
But of course that's not the only way of reading this - there's a lot of musing about hippie ideals and selling out and it's no accident that the Gods of Ragnarok choose to look the way they do or that Captain Cook wanders around a lot of places saying disparaging things about foreigners and wearing a pith helmet. Semiotic thickness indeed!
This is my favourite performance from McCoy in the role. (Well, maybe my second favourite if you could the BBV audio Punchline. But he is officially playing some completely different character that travels though time and space in a police box in that one, so maybe it doesn't count.) While he had to be taught the actual tricks, his career as a stage performer gives him the perfect background to pull off those scenes in Episode Four. And of course Ace is great as always, on another adventure where the Doctor takes her somewhere she hates and makes her confront her fears. "This thing better work or I'll kick it's head in!" in is a definitive Ace line.
It's also lovely revisiting this after listening to some of the recent Big Finish adventures where the Doctor meets up with Mags again - she always felt like one of those characters that could have been a companion if things had gone a bit differently, and I'm glad that the audio people were finally able to make it so after all these years. (Which reminds me that I still have a few of her audio adventures to catch up on ...)
And if for nothing else, I would love this story for the best bit of background business in Doctor Who: the robot clown that puts its hand over its mouth in shock when the Doctor calls Cook a crushing bore.
Anyway, Stephen Wyatt only wrote two stories for Doctor Who: Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. While they have quite a lot in common in some ways, in others they couldn't be more different. I always find the two a fascinating contrast in how much production can make a script look better or worse. I have a huge soft spot for Paradise Towers and will argue forever that it's a GREAT script, but one of the most interesting things about it is that just about everything that could have gone wrong with it did. While there are a couple of great performances (from the delightful cannabalistic rezzies) the casting in general went awry from the beginning. The Kangs are too old, the guards are too young (they were meant to be Dad's Army types to explain why they weren't away at the war) and the usually excellent Richard Briers made some, er, eccentric choices when it came to portraying the Chief Caretaker. Meanwhile, the robot monsters were terrible, the lighting was worse and the less said about the awful score the better.
With The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, things couldn't have been more different. Even the stuff that went wrong behind the scenes made what showed up on the screen better. There's no way it would have looked this good if they'd shot it in a studio as planned, instead of in an actual tent in a studio parking lot. (There was asbestos removal going on at the BBC television centre time, hence the abrupt shift to a far more convincing venue.) And while I'm sorry the effects department nearly blew up Sylvester McCoy, the over-enthusiastic explosion gave us what may be the best shot of the Seventh Doctor ever.
It's one of those delightfully juicy Seventh Doctor stories where there are layers of things going on, in both the text and the subtext. I once saw it summarised as 'we hate our jobs, we hate our audience, we hate our fans, we hate ourselves' and there's certainly some biting commentary about Doctor Who itself going on here. I admit it, Whizzkid's lines about the posters and 'I know it's not as good as it used to be, but I'm still terribly interested!' crack me up every time. All of that ends up working even better in hindsight in light of the show's imminent cancellation. And then even better again twenty-two years later now that it's turned out the Doctor survived that experience, too.
But of course that's not the only way of reading this - there's a lot of musing about hippie ideals and selling out and it's no accident that the Gods of Ragnarok choose to look the way they do or that Captain Cook wanders around a lot of places saying disparaging things about foreigners and wearing a pith helmet. Semiotic thickness indeed!
This is my favourite performance from McCoy in the role. (Well, maybe my second favourite if you could the BBV audio Punchline. But he is officially playing some completely different character that travels though time and space in a police box in that one, so maybe it doesn't count.) While he had to be taught the actual tricks, his career as a stage performer gives him the perfect background to pull off those scenes in Episode Four. And of course Ace is great as always, on another adventure where the Doctor takes her somewhere she hates and makes her confront her fears. "This thing better work or I'll kick it's head in!" in is a definitive Ace line.
It's also lovely revisiting this after listening to some of the recent Big Finish adventures where the Doctor meets up with Mags again - she always felt like one of those characters that could have been a companion if things had gone a bit differently, and I'm glad that the audio people were finally able to make it so after all these years. (Which reminds me that I still have a few of her audio adventures to catch up on ...)
And if for nothing else, I would love this story for the best bit of background business in Doctor Who: the robot clown that puts its hand over its mouth in shock when the Doctor calls Cook a crushing bore.