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 | Reviews for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy |
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There are 3 reviews so far. To add a review of your own for this item, visit the voting page.
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| The Greatest show in the --------galaxy! |
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Oh, this episode was a solid one in every sense of the word. I loved the reality of what was going on and the emotions used to demonstrate what it all summed up to and eventually became, a great piece of drama and the book picks up on this really well. The Doctor became a mystique i believed when i read and watched/viewed this episode and was one of the very best episodes of the MCcoy era.
The Gods of Ragnarock are ofcourse something highly orriginal and new and make for a good arcyh enermy even though as much as you do not suspect them in the circus top apart from there occasional squirms made by the younger of the three, they are very powereful and manipulative and terrifying and fit in the story well.
Also, i found the clowns rather creepy! The Doctor and Ace were both thier usual selves and as a Dr Who fan, you must buy both the book and the video, its not to be missed!
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| Very strong read actually... |
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| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 4 October 2011 |
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| Rating: |   9 |
As per usual, one has to put up with the severely limited page count in this story, but for once this story lacks nothing much at all from its screen counterpart, a clear credit to Stephen Wyatt's writing style.
I love the TV version, it is one of my all time favourite slices of Doctor Who. It is a story with a high amount of humour but also some very disturbing horror thrown in to upset the brew somewhat. It boasts all the staples for a brilliant show: creepy clowns, especially the unsettling Chief Clown, and the obnoxious and pious Captain Cook, played to perfection by TP McKenna in the TV version. Stephen's written Captain is very much the same as his TV counterpart, which is excellent. The character is one of those usual brilliant Doctor Who nasties..
I love the character of Mags, and her treatment by the Captain is disgusting and yet not unbelievable, its a male chauvinistic idiotic who has control of an apparaently weaker female alien from the planet Vulpana. In the book of course her transformation is going to be very hard to live up to the viewable screen, but actually Stephen does it again here, and I could see that frankly brilliant make up in the cliffhanger to part three all over again.
The other characters here too are well written and match up almost seamlessly to their TV personas, which as Ive said is not bad in such a short novel. And the story itself is eerie and something just a little different for a change, this story was the highlight of its TV season and it is a well written, ripely characeterised novel too. Well done Stephen, I cant wait til I get Paradise Towers, Im hoping that is of the same quality as this novel is. One of the best of the Target range so far.
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| So Much Promise Falls Flat |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 24 April 2021 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
Stephen Wyatt's previous Doctor Who, "Paradise Towers," shares much in common with this one. Both start from very interesting premises. Both incorporate strange resettings of character tropes. Both build a mystery through an intriguing two thirds of the story. And both fail when the big reveal finally happens. Here, Doctor 7 and Ace get visited by an advertising satellite, space junk mail, promoting the Psychic Circus, the "Greatest Show in the Galaxy." Of course, nothing is as it seems. Beings from around the Galaxy are invited to perform in the circus to compete from some unnamed great prize. This leads to a number of bizarre types of people heading to the circus. The circus, though, is turned into some kind of weird killing enterprise to appease some unknown power. The problematic ending drags this story down for me. It's a rabbit-out-of-hat sort of ending in which the Doctor just seems to "know" what is going on and how to fix without much preparation for the reader on how he knows. Also, the reveal does not make much sense. Wyatt has tried in his novelization to correct some of this, with many broad hints about how the Doctor is seeing clues that others miss and that maybe he had an idea about it all from the moment the junk mailer entered the TARDIS. These touches really do not fix enough of the problems to make the ending any more sensible or satisfying than it originally was.
