The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Aug. 18th, 2013 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI have fond memories of most of the McCoy era of Doctor Who, but I've tended to approach rewatching it with caution suspecting that it is not as clever as it thinks it is, and that the production values let it down.
So I was pleased that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy appeared to have stood the joint tests of time and memory pretty well. It possibly helps that, much as I enjoyed it when it was first aired, I was old enough to be aware of many of the flaws of the Cartmel era. Namely, a tendency to over-estimate the audience's patience/ability to put together the plot from hints and clues and a nasty tendency to fall apart on the end and rely on some kind of deus ex machina or macguffin to resolve matters.
In the event the Greatest Show opts for a macguffin. Kingpin's amulet and its missing eye magically resolve everything in a, frankly, rather poorly explained fashion.
That said, there remains a lot to like in the McCoy era stories and the Greatest Show is no exception. Although I mention above that I think the era over-relies on the audience to put the pieces together, I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that all the necessary information was there in the story - the history of the circus, its relationship to the local inhabitants and the Gods of Ragnarok, and the motivations of all the characters were present and correct and, in fact, not nearly as opaque as I recalled them being. The story has a playful energy and enthusiasm that, I personally think, was missing from the stories under previous script editor Eric Saward's tenure and it is also inventive and atmospheric. It suffers, like much of 80s Who, from overly bright sets, but has the advantage of being filmed in a tent in the BBC car park, because of asbestos in television centre, which actually works extremely well with the circus setting.
The only sour note is the "whizz kid", intended as a fan everyman character, who meets a sticky end fairly early in the story. I really have no idea what the powers that be thought they were doing including such a character in the story. He fails to work as any kind of satire of fandom, and leaves the impression behind of a kind of petty dislike. Love and Monsters under Russell T. Davies (though widely disliked) manages to discuss and portray the show's fandom, and fandom in general, in a much more nuanced fashion which smacks a lot less of "why won't these horrible idiots just go away and leave us alone".
I was horribly afraid that rewatching a McCoy era story, even one of the better regarded ones, would reveal an era with a bad case of earnest appreciation of its own cleverness while surrounded by Who's frequent bug bears of sub-standard acting and clumsy production. I was relieved to discover that, while not on par in production terms with (for instance) the Hinchcliffe era, the story nevertheless has stood the test of time remarkably well and remains interesting, fun and most-importantly watchable.
So I was pleased that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy appeared to have stood the joint tests of time and memory pretty well. It possibly helps that, much as I enjoyed it when it was first aired, I was old enough to be aware of many of the flaws of the Cartmel era. Namely, a tendency to over-estimate the audience's patience/ability to put together the plot from hints and clues and a nasty tendency to fall apart on the end and rely on some kind of deus ex machina or macguffin to resolve matters.
In the event the Greatest Show opts for a macguffin. Kingpin's amulet and its missing eye magically resolve everything in a, frankly, rather poorly explained fashion.
That said, there remains a lot to like in the McCoy era stories and the Greatest Show is no exception. Although I mention above that I think the era over-relies on the audience to put the pieces together, I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover that all the necessary information was there in the story - the history of the circus, its relationship to the local inhabitants and the Gods of Ragnarok, and the motivations of all the characters were present and correct and, in fact, not nearly as opaque as I recalled them being. The story has a playful energy and enthusiasm that, I personally think, was missing from the stories under previous script editor Eric Saward's tenure and it is also inventive and atmospheric. It suffers, like much of 80s Who, from overly bright sets, but has the advantage of being filmed in a tent in the BBC car park, because of asbestos in television centre, which actually works extremely well with the circus setting.
The only sour note is the "whizz kid", intended as a fan everyman character, who meets a sticky end fairly early in the story. I really have no idea what the powers that be thought they were doing including such a character in the story. He fails to work as any kind of satire of fandom, and leaves the impression behind of a kind of petty dislike. Love and Monsters under Russell T. Davies (though widely disliked) manages to discuss and portray the show's fandom, and fandom in general, in a much more nuanced fashion which smacks a lot less of "why won't these horrible idiots just go away and leave us alone".
I was horribly afraid that rewatching a McCoy era story, even one of the better regarded ones, would reveal an era with a bad case of earnest appreciation of its own cleverness while surrounded by Who's frequent bug bears of sub-standard acting and clumsy production. I was relieved to discover that, while not on par in production terms with (for instance) the Hinchcliffe era, the story nevertheless has stood the test of time remarkably well and remains interesting, fun and most-importantly watchable.