The Real McCoy: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is McCoy’s biggest success in my eyes. The man is a born performer and so being given the chance to do what he does best works a treat. He’s charming and funny and silly and all those things that the Doctor can be when he isn’t taking himself too seriously. The Psychic Circus is something quite different, however. All of that sharpness and humour has dropped away and he’s pretty much rendered useless for most of the story’s running time. The Doctor is only needed at the climax of this adventure to wrap things up and so he has sent on a wild goose chase on the sidelines of the story, waiting to finally crop up and save the day. Cue McCoy talking to a robot for an episode and a side trip to Paradise Towers. Instead of this being a riveting battle of wits between the Doctor and the Master, they don’t actually meet until part three and even then it is only for two minutes before he heads to perform his obligatory act in front of the Gods of Ragnarok. Listen to McCoy screaming his head off at the beginning of part three – this really isn’t a script that is playing to his strengths. He sings and juggles endlessly. Each time I shook my head in despair. He should be an ingenious jester, a maverick clown. Not a goon. The one moment where I saw the seventh Doctor with steel in his heart was when he tried to take down the Chief Clown in the last episode. It only lasts a few minutes, but that is the level he should have been pitched throughout.
The Master: I’m sure it comes as no great surprise that the Master appears in this story, given that his face is on the cover and that his voice appears in the trailer. I gather there has been a certain amount of controversy around Dreyfus’ appearance in his story after his controversial opinions were plastered all over his twitter account. For the record, I don’t share Drayfus’ opinion in any way, shape or form (my biggest belief is that people should always be left to be themselves, whoever that is, without judgement) but I also refuse to not listen or watch something because somebody involved had a worldview that I simply cannot understand. If I did then I would be cutting out a huge body of work (Hartnell was infamously racist and there are also stories of JNT preying on the young gay male fans of his era, for example, and if I stopped watching because I am appalled by both of these I would be cutting myself off from almost half of classic Who) that is in the ether for me to enjoy. Can I separate the work of a person from the ideals of those creating it? Yes, I can. Does that mean everybody should? Oh, definitely not. Drayfus stars in The Psychic Circus and so I will review this story as I would any other. I have not had any exposure to this version of the Master before but I have heard he has gone down extremely well in The First Doctor Adventures. He is clearly a silky menace but far too underwritten here. The Master has to have a certain sense of relish but for two episode he is just a disembodied voice pushing the story on rather than an active participant. He’s playing the seventh Doctor’s usual role, the guy behind the scenes pulling the strings and behaving in a manipulative and menacing way. There’s just no reason that this has to be the Master. It could be any despot in this vacant role. He's very easily defeated as well. It feels like Terror of the Autons all over again. He goes from ‘aha Doctor I have you now’ to ‘no please, help me!’ in about four seconds. We never learn what his motive was here, either. It’s one of the Master’s least impressive appearances because it’s unnecessary and ill-explained.
Standout Performance: Sylvester McCoy spends most of episode three trying to put on an entertaining show but all that sharpness of character that he displayed in Greatest Show has dissipated and instead you are just listening to a man gurning and clowning. It’s really quite embarrassing.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘History repeats. And it hasn’t even happened yet.’
‘Nobody liked me as a child. Everybody loves me now.’ The Chief Clown is the best character in both Greatest Show and The Psychic Circus.
Great Ideas: Seeing the Psychic Circus team being assembled is the entire point of this story. Bellboy, the Chief Clown, Juniper Berry, Morgana. That’s not a terrible premise for a story but perhaps it would have been better suited to a Short Trips tale just featuring these characters. Take out the Doctor and the Master, don’t make it a Doctor Who story, reduce the length by two thirds and make it a nice little character tale about four souls finding each other. Oh wait, that’s Love and Monsters. The Circus troupe had imagination, energy and talent but needed the Master to help build themselves into something immensely powerful; the Psychic Circus at the behest of the Gods of Ragnarok.
Isn’t it Odd: It was fun the first time around but having junk mail appear in the TARDIS again to drag the Doctor to the Psychic Circus a second time feels unimaginative…and I cannot imagine why the Doctor would want to go for a repeat experience after his ordeal last time. ‘There’s something vaguely familiar about this…’ says the Doctor. 15 minutes in to part one and nothing has happened at all, plot wise. Two hippies arrive on a planet and the Doctor chats up junk mail. That’s about it. There’s an assumption made by the writer that we are invested in Kingpin because he featured in the original story and so there is no real attempt to acquaint him to a new audience. Truthfully, it is the writer that is enamoured with his creation but it feels like his mere inclusion is suppose to be enough to keep our interest piqued. Why do Kingpin, Juniper Berry and PanPipe all talk in such clichéd hippy: ‘The voice, man. That’s how we know everything.’ I think we are supposed to be excited about the diversion to Paradise Towers but to me this makes this feel even more like bad fanfic than a prequel to The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. It’s piling on the continuity and the excuse being that Wyatt is writing this script and so why not include elements of both of his own screen stories? Because they don’t belong together in the same story, that’s why. They might share similar ideals of a happy environment gone sour but together they are a bizarre fusion of tones that don’t juxtapose well. It feels like an excuse to keep the Doctor out of the main action (although action might be stretching it a bit). Remember that weird diversion in episode three of Image of the Fendhal when the Doctor and Leela head off in the TARDIS for what feels like no reason at all? That’s what this feels like. Deterring the climax. Given the cliff-hanger to episode two is the Master reveal, perhaps it would have been better to have failed to include him on the cover, in the trailer and on the cast list. Towards the end of episode three Juniper Berry heads to the bus and meets the conductor. Beat for beat this is copying out scenes from The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. In the last episode the Psychic Circus’ greatest fan turns up to see the talent show for herself. Are you kidding me? Doesn’t adding the Master to the creation of the Psychic Circus (‘The Psychic Circus belongs to him!’) and bringing them to Segonax take away the original intentions of this friendly hippie circus? I thought the idea was that they came to this planet with the best of intentions and then were ensnared by the Gods of Ragnarok. Does adding the Master into that mix complicate things needlessly? And wouldn’t he have been mentioned in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy? Because the story doesn’t really have a structure, there isn’t a climax to speak of. Revenge of the Sith lead into A New Hope but was a well plotted film in its own right. The Psychic Circus leads into The Greatest Show in the Galaxy but that’s all it does. It just sort of stops where Greatest Show begins.
Standout Scene: The Psychic Circus won’t be remembered for much but it does hold claim to feature one of the most lunatic cliff-hangers in Big Finish’s repertoire. The Doctor is out to bring down an oppressive government again…but this time with juggling! The end of episode three is even worse. That’s the point where the Doctor joins the story and lands on Segonax! The Colin Baker era (which famously deferred his entrance into stories) has nothing on this!
Result: Prequels. I’ve just been watching the Star Wars films in order for the first time and found myself thoroughly enjoying what the prequels did this time in context to the whole story rather than watching them as movies in their own right. It’s dangerous territory, prequels because you are trying to add detail to the original story by setting the prequel before but also attempting to highlight why that first story was such a success. The Phantom Menace hardly matches up to Star Wars and yet watched as a trilogy, the prequels are a remarkably dramatic piece of work that genuinely add layers of depth and pathos to the original Star Wars trilogy. Personally, Sith is my favourite film of the nine. It explains so much about the originals but is an operatic drama in its own right. Star Trek: Enterprise shows you what happens when you attempt a prequel but its very placing guts you of dramatic opportunities. The big question about The Psychic Circus is whether it is a pale retread of the original story or a worthy successor that gives the ideas more life? Does this story add layers to Greatest Show and segue into it seamlessly, or is it just a pointless interlude that detracts from the original? I absolutely adore the original with a passion, of the McCoy era it is the one story where I can truly see the series’ lust for imagination, silliness and wonder starting to emerge again after a long absence in the 80s. And the McCoy Big Finish stories of late have been decidedly lacklustre and so to say there was a lot riding on this story is something of any understatement. Can Wyatt pull it off again? No, seems to be the unfortunate answer. Greatest Show was a smartly plotted tale with terrific dialogue and characters and great imagery. The Psychic Circus is trying to match it by stealing its best ideas but assembling them in a story that has very little plot to speak of and characters that feel defined by labels like ‘hippy’ and ‘villain’ and ‘fan’. Wyatt is honestly better than this. This is a rehash rather than a prequel. Perhaps a sequel (in narrative terms) would have been the better approach? Long stretches go by with little happening, nothing substantial seems to be being discussed, music plugs gaps in narrative and the performances struggle to give any colour to the piece. That’s particularly galling because this is an excellent cast. You could remove both the Doctor and the Master for the most part and it would have no impact on the story whatsoever and you should never be able to say that about a story featuring the two of them. The Doctor is especially useless, much like he was in the previous release, and if I had to listen to McCoy juggling one more time I was ready to do some serious damage. A prequel/sequel to The Greatest Show in the Galaxy featuring a trip to Paradise Towers and the Master? Can you think of anything that sounds more like really bad fanfic? The only real joy I took from this release was Ian Reddington’s Chief Clown and how he starts to take over the Psychic Circus in the last episode and the fact that Samuel Clements’ direction has clearly stepped up a notch since his previous trilogy but since I wanted to cut my ears off after the Mags trilogy that was perhaps inevitable: 4/10
Sadly, I have to agree on this one, it was one the great disappointments of recent times.
ReplyDeleteOne also wonders, if they had Chris Jury, might he have been better placed in the Mags trilogy, hopefully resulting in a better set of stories?
I will be interested to hear what you have to say about Subterfuge, though. It may not be saying much, but it's by far the best of these three releases.
Despite your overwhelmingly negative outlook on the shows you review, I've tried my best to listen to your criticisms, and remind myself that some people have harsher judgement than others. But after seeing you actually give praise to as large an abomination in the film industry as the Star Wars Prequels, I cannot look at you as a credible source. It's one thing calling out shite Doctor Who stories (let's be honest, they quite often are), but praising heaps of rubbish like the Prequel, films which any intelligible viewer can take apart and criticise each element of, is unforgiveable.
ReplyDeleteI listened to it before finishing McCoy's run in full yet, not really realizing that this is a tie in. All the other Master stories were stand-alone, so I figured I give it a try, considering I liked this Master in the First Doctor Adventures. Since then, I have finished watching everything, and have started making my way through the Main Range from the beginning. But at the time of listening to it...
ReplyDeleteOh, boy.
There are some audio stories that are easy to follow, where they have a proper amount of description for a clear cohesive narrative. The story can be convoluted, with many twists and turns, and changes, but I am finding that for audio stories, there are a few things that are imperative: a) Don't have too large of a cast - sometimes voices may sound similar to one another, so every character needs to have a clear introduction and a clear outlined role in driving the story. b) Don't have too many locations, lest moving between them wrecks continuity and muddles what all the characters are doing at any given moment. Obviously, the specifics of what "too large" or "too many" varies from story to story, and for the most part Big Finish manages to get it just right.
Here, though, I couldn't follow a damn thing. It was just 2 hours of grasping at straws. Obviously, lack of familiarity with the episode it was based on didn't help the matters, but I don't feel like it would have helped all that much either. And, yeah, there was no reason why a Master (let alone this particular one) had to be in this story. I am always a sucker for characters meeting in the wrong order, but this story did not satisfy that craving, not even a little bit.
If you want someone gurning and clowning, you have Jodie Whittaker doing her bad impersonation of the character of the Doctor
ReplyDelete