Greatest Show in the Galaxy

During the McCoy seasons, getting the new Radio Times each week was a much anticipated-ritual - especially every fourth week. I'd lost touch with DWM long ago; with hindsight this was probably for the best, since all its spoiler information would have prevented the scenario I'm about to outline. After WHSmiths stopped stocking it, naively I assumed it must have folded, the last copy I remember being one with Sophie Aldred aside a big statue on the cover. So the first time I knew the name of each new Doctor Who story in 1988 was after wrestling the weekly listings magazine from Mum each month and bouncing onto the sofa to leaf towards Wednesday's page.

I must have enjoyed this thrill for many years, because I can recall sitting in exactly the same spot as I deduced that they were obviously doing something very clever with this years episodes and making them into one big story called "Trial of a Time Lord", and announcing to Mum that Doctor Who was "doing a haunted house story" when I read the listing for "Ghost Light" Part 1. "Greatest Show" just made me uncomfortable though. It clearly wasn't a proper Doctor Who story title! It was too long for starters, and it simply didn't feel right.

I got used to it, and "Greatest Show" turned out to be the best non-Earth set story for many years. Today it has a lot to scream class about it; the intense, swamping music, the taught touches of direction and the iconic Doctor Who set-pieces (robot clowns surrounding Ace, monster coming out the sand etc). But there's something about it that I just don't get on with. Something rather important - the Doctor himself.

He just doesn't seem the ticket in this one. At the end of Episode 1, he ignores Ace's protestations about hearing a scream and uses her fear of circuses to force her into danger, like a stubborn and slightly vindictive idiot. I can't believe the Doctor would both ignore such blatant warnings of danger and believe his obviously frightened companion would be making it up just so she didn't appear scared. When he gets into the ring, the Doctor is even worse, blushing and camping around like an embarrassed parent (and again ignoring Ace's pleas for him not to get involved). The 'Dark Doctor' persona really comes a cropper here, as it begins to become an excuse for our hero basically being as stupid as he wants to be.

It's fine, for example, in "Fenric" for the Doctor to be a git to Ace in order to crush her faith in him; it's a masterful bit of storytelling, and works very well. But there's also been a tendency to explain away every mistake he makes with a jaunty "oh well, it was probably all part of his plan!". There is of course a healthy ambiguity in wondering if the Doctor is really making mistakes, or whether they are in fact tactics. But this mustn't extend to allowing the Doctor to slip up moralistically, or simply behave out-of-character for no good reason.

In many ways "Greatest Show" takes the Magician Doctor idea as far as it would go; as well as knowing everything that's going on without being told, he is prone to drawing swords out the air and all manner of other neat tricks. Again, there's a fine line between arming our hero with foreknowledge and simply giving him super powers. It would have been nice to know just why and how it was "his game all along" wouldn't it? Unless this is enough to explain away a multitude of inconsistencies in the name of a sinister back story.

And all these years later, "Greatest Show in the Galaxy" is still a very silly name for a story.