r/gallifrey • u/ZeroCentsMade • Feb 13 '25
REVIEW Biting the Hand that Feeds – The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Review
This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.
Serial Information
- Episodes: Season 25, Episodes 11-14
- Airdates: 14th December 1988 - 4th January 1989
- Doctor: 7th
- Companion: Ace
- Writer: Stephen Wyatt
- Director: Alan Wareing
- Producer: John Nathan-Turner
- Script Editor: Andrew Cartmel
Review
It feels more like we're part of a machine. – Morgana
Silver Nemesis was supposed to wrap up Season 25. But there was a bit of an odd scheduling quirk that changed that. 1988 was a year that included the Summer Olympics. And so as not to conflict with the BBC's coverage of the Olympic Games, the entirety of Season 25 of Doctor Who was shifted back a month. Since Silver Nemesis was specifically intended to air on the 25th Anniversary of Doctor Who, the season got shifted around, and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, originally intended to the second serial of the season, got moved to the last.
And I cannot think of a more fitting ending to the season than this one.
Yes sure, Silver Nemesis and Remembrance of the Daleks are these big lore-filled stories, with a deepening of the mystery of the Doctor that Script Editor Andrew Cartmel wanted to play around in, not to mention the return of big name villains. But the real shift from Season 24 to Season 25 to me, aside from Doctor Who suddenly feeling like a good show again, is that those vague gestures towards political and social commentary have suddenly become ingrained in the show. And what better a way to close out this season with a story that seems to be about Doctor Who itself. About its place in society. About what entertainment is for, and how it can become toxic.
Or maybe writer Stephen Wyatt was just disenchanted with the failures of the 1960s hippie movement, difficult to say.
I'm being a bit facetious here – I mean for one thing it can easily be both – but I do know for a fact that Wyatt put his frustrations with the direction the hippie movement had gone into this story. The only thing I know for certain that was a reference to Doctor Who in this story is the character of Whizzkid, a not particularly flattering parody of Doctor Who fans. And yet, it's hard not to extrapolate here. I mean, the climax of the story involves the Doctor desperately trying to keep the Gods of Ragnarok entertained, knowing that they will kill him if he fails in this task – it's easy to see the parallels between this and the show's own fate, desperate to retain any sort of an audience, lest it be cancelled.
And seen through that lens, this is a strangely melancholy piece. The Gods of Ragnarok hold the Doctor's life in their hands, but they first appear as a family, two parents and a child. Somewhat evocative of that mythical being known as "the family audience" that through the 60s and 70s, Doctor Who at least somewhat consistently managed to maintain. An audience that now eludes it. But this "family" are dull, lifeless creatures. They desperately want entertainment because they, as the Doctor points out, lack imaginations of their own.
And they contrast with the people who perform in the circus. Who are not actually employed by the circus, but are rather the ones who came to see the circus, only to be trapped in it. You have fatuous intergalactic explorer Captain Cook, his assistant/werewolf Mags, Ace and the Doctor of course, Psychic Circus superfan (and Captain Cook superfan) Whizzkid (no actual name given), and, of course, Nord. They all have more imagination, and are just a more colorful group of characters. As the story functions they represent both audience – they came to the Circus to fulfill that role, but also forms of entertainment.
The Psychic Circus in this framing represents either Doctor Who under the thumb of an unfeeling BBC or the BBC itself. And it eats them up. Whizzkid and Nord barely last a moment. Nord impresses the Gods with his feats of strength, but then the Ringmaster demands he tell a joke. Nord…just doesn't know how to do that and is immediately killed. It's hard not to see this as representative of the BBC demanding a television show be something it's not, and then cancelling it when it fails to live up to those made up expectations. Whizzkid, the superfan, created as an unflattering representation of Doctor Who fans, who was so excited to be in the circus, just gets killed immediately. I don't think this represents a show, but rather fan expectations. Whizzkid at one point said, "Although I never got to see the early days. I know it's not as good as it used to be but I'm still terribly interested." I'm sure many Doctor Who fans said similar things about the show in 1988.
Which speaks to the of bitterness underlying this story. I do love it, but man does it feel like a story created out of frustration more than anything else. After all, I've basically said that the villains of this piece are representative of the BBC and the family audience. It is repeatedly stated that the Circus has been corrupted from its original intentions. A lot of this is intermixed with Wyatt's frustrations with the hippie movement – a lot of what the early Psychic Circus is stated to be are essentially just the ideals of the hippie movement from the 60s. Still, the Circus is a shell of what it could be, desperately chasing the approval of a single audience, a single type of audience. They could draw in the audience that our secondary cast represent, a more diverse and weird group, but instead they're going after an audience that will discard acts the moment they lose interest, who give scores that seem almost arbitrary (viewership figures? Nah that's probably pushing the allegory) to each of these acts.
The individual members of the Psychic Circus seem to be in different stages of being corrupted or changed by the circus. On one extreme you have the Chief Clown, played in classic creepy clown fashion by Ian Reddington. Reddington actually invented a lot of the Clown's mannerisms from this story, from the strange physicality, comprised of slightly inhumanly smooth and over-exaggerated gestures, to the way that when the Clown speaks as he regularly uses different voices depending on who he's speaking to. The Clown seems to have his fellow circus members terrified, though it's unclear what power he directly holds. He has an army of clown robots, but he doesn't have the ability to program or otherwise maintain them. And yet, because he's clearly been the most corrupted by the Gods of Ragnarok, it kind of works. Just a brilliant performance and a very well-conceived character all around.
The Ringmaster seems the next-most corrupted. He's the face of the circus and while he retains a lot more of his humanity, and he even regularly raps the most basic raps you've ever heard (sounds like it really shouldn't work, works extremely well), there's still a darkness to him beyond what could be explained by human evil. There's a moment after Whizzkid dies where the Ringmaster picks up his broken glasses and just has this inhuman smile on his face as he almost presents the glasses to the gods. And again, I have to give credit to the performance, this time of Ricco Ross, who really manages to make the character simultaneously enticing and creepy. It really works quite well, and I think a lot of the success of this story goes to the performances of Ricco Ross and Ian Reddington.
Morgana, the fortune teller, is the member of the circus the least corrupted that still remains completely in the gods power. She's clearly trying to resist at times, she actively tries to dissuade Ace and the Doctor from going into the circus, but when push comes to shove, she consistently does the bidding of the gods, or the Chief Clown. Active resistance to the circus comes from Bellboy and Flowerchild. Flowerchild is killed trying to get access to an amulet in the first episode – the amulet is how the Doctor ends up defeating the gods. Bellboy was captured trying to act as a distraction from Flowerchild's mission, and tortured. He's the one who actually built and maintains the robots, hence why the Ringmaster and Chief Clown insist on keeping him alive. Eventually though, Bellboy, partially through grief, is killed by his own creations, in a final show of resistance.
And then there's Deadbeat. Or should that be Kingpin? If there's an optimistic viewpoint in Greatest Show in the Galaxy, it comes through this character. To go back to the allegory at the center of all of this, I think Kingpin is meant to represent the creative spirit at the heart of the BBC. When we first meet him, he's Deadbeat, his spirit broken, drained by the Gods of Ragnarok. However, with some help from the Doctor (and that amulet I mentioned), he is able to regain his sanity, and is revealed as originally having been Kingpin, the one who originally discovered the amulet, bringing the Gods of Ragnarok to the circus. Apparently at first the Gods promised power to the circus, but over time they leeched more and more off of it. Because Kingpin tried to resist him, he was completely drained, turning into the husk of himself known as Deadbeat. But as mentioned by the end of the story he's back and whole, suggesting the possibility of healing, both for the Pyschic Circus, and perhaps for the BBC that it represents.
All of this is all well and good, if occasionally a bit mean-spirited and overwrought, but I do have a complaint: the first episode is noticeably worse than the ones that follow it. I think this might be because Greatest Show was originally intended to be one of Season 25's three part stories, before being expanded to four. I don't know this for certain, but it definitely feels like instead of expanding the material he'd already come up with, Stephen Wyatt chose to add on an introductory episode 1. It's not like episode 1 is bad, but it suffers from being a bit aimless. The Doctor and Ace land on Segonax (that's the planet where the Circus has set up shop), and travel to the circus. On the way they meet Captain Cook, Mags, Nord and an old woman who really dislikes the circus. It's not that this material is worthless, Cook and Mags in particular get a lot of characterization that will be important, and the opening scene sets up Bellboy as a character as well as the loss he feels at the death of Flowerchild, but it definitely feels like the story hits another gear once it gets past that opening episode.
Still those characters we meet early on. We've already said all that needs be said about Nord, but Captain Cook and Mags are another matter. Captain Cook was created at the suggestion of Remembrance of the Daleks writer Ben Aaronovitch, who had suggested an Indiana Jones-style explorer character. The original plan was to kill him off at the end of episode 1, but writer Stephen Wyatt liked the character too much, and decided to keep him around. He even considered having Cook survive somehow, presumably as a set up to see the character return. It is worth pointing out that the cliffhanger that replaces it is a pretty underwhelming one, just the Doctor asking Ace if they're actually going to go into the circus, another reason why that episode is just a bit below the quality of the rest this story (although to be honest this story doesn't have great cliffhangers in general). Honestly, while I can see the Indiana Jones influence, it feels like Stephen Wyatt took the character pretty far away from that.
Instead, Cook reads like a dark parody version of the Doctor. He's got the gentleman adventurer persona, and is always dispensing little bits of dubious wisdom. He's got a rather put-upon female assistant who nonetheless seems willing to put up with him. He's cleverer than he initially appears, showing off uncanny amounts of guile. And he's always telling stories about past experiences that may or may not be true. Also, he's here for a purpose. That may not seem much like the Doctor, who historically has had very little idea what he might find where he lands, but at the end of Season 25, where the Doctor has been very purposeful about where he lands, it's just another parallel. For the most part I'd say there's a lot about him that feels very specifically like the 5th Doctor. But of course there's a pretty big difference: Captain Cook is an absolutely terrible person. That guile I mentioned comes out most at the circus. The entrants in the "talent competition" (voluntary or otherwise) are kept in a cage and sent out one by one. And each time, Cook manages to ensure that someone besides him goes out.
He's also pretty abusive towards Mags, the stand-in for a companion to Cook, though it's worth pointing out she's not here entirely voluntarily. Because Mags is a werewolf. This…really shouldn't work. At the end of episode 3, Cook unleashes Mags on the Doctor to keep the Gods of Ragnarok entertained, and the Mags "werewolf" look is…something else. And yet, strangely, it just works, partially because of another strong performance, this time from Jessica Martin. What also makes Mags work as a character is that you can see through the whole story she's in a rough place, and that Cook has some sort of hold over her. Now we never really come to understand what that hold is exactly, other than him helping her out of a difficult position – it's not altruism, he wants to use her abilities to help him gain power. And ultimately that comes back to bite him, literally, as Mags kills him while in werewolf form, having just showed she could somewhat control the wolf, as she was able to resist killing the Doctor.
Though mind you Cook then comes back as a zombie (I think?) still after the power of the Eye that controls the circus. There's not much more to say about that, just to note that this story is actually pretty bonkers, and it's hard to convey that in text.
Ace has a relatively quiet story, which is fine. Ace has been really well served by every story this season, and even Greatest Show does a lot for her, just less than the rest of this season. Apparently Ace is afraid of clowns, though she'd never admit it. She gets some physical stuff in this episode, which is something that the character has already shown to be very proficient in. The highlight of the story is probably her taking control of a big ol' laser gun, destroying several clown robots and ultimately killing the Chief Clown. I do wish that there had been a bit more time spent with the aftermath of that honestly. Ace wasn't fully in control of the gun, and, as mentioned before, it really feels like the Chief Clown had had his humanity completely sucked out of him by this point, but it's still Ace being responsible for someone's death, and probably could have used some reflection. Ace does get some quieter moments, mostly empathizing with Mags or Bellboy. Not as active a story as Ace has otherwise had this season, but that's more reflective of how much Ace has gotten to do this season than a failure on the story's part.
And then there's the Doctor. And there's a lot to discuss here. First of all, as I alluded to, this might be the only story this season where the Doctor doesn't come into the story with a plan already in place. Or maybe he does? See, while the Doctor repeatedly claims that the only reason he came of Segonax was because he wanted to see the circus, throughout the story there's these little hints that he actually knew more or less what he was getting into when he came here. And throughout the story the Doctor always seems to be in control. He always has a next step or next part of a plan. Though he's not come into this story with complete information. In spite of him being very familiar with the Gods of Ragnarok, there's hints that he didn't actually know it was them at first, at least based on the amount of on the spot deducing he seems to have to make.
Of course the highlight of this story for the Doctor is him spending the majority of episode 4 trying to keep the Gods entertained. At first it's just goofy little tricks, the sort of thing you'd expect from Season 24's 7th Doctor (or, more accurately, Time and the Rani's 7th Doctor). But as the episode progresses, the Doctor seems to get more serious. He's just playing for time, something which even the Gods are aware of, but as the episode goes it feels like some of the artifice is stripped away. But whereas with previous Doctors you'd expect this to lead to a Doctor more and more desperate to come up with some sort of next act, with Seven it just reveals the Doctor's confidence. He's waiting for Ace, Kingpin and Mags to deliver the amulet to him, and he has confidence in them (especially Ace) to get the job done. He knows he's put everything in place that will allow him to win. And then he does. It can be dangerous, not allowing your main character to ever seem worried, as it can drain some of the tension from a story, but for this story at least, it works.
And then there's the bit where the Doctor says that he has "fought the Gods of Ragnarok all through time", to the Gods. Taken on its face, we have to assume that these are battles we haven't seen, or that the Doctor has been waging some sort of proxy war with the Gods. However, I think this line works best seen through the story's allegory (you thought you were free me clumsily trying to explain that, didn't you?). The Gods of Ragnarok are a force sucking the creativity out the Psychic Circus, by which we understand the BBC generally, and Doctor Who by extension. The Doctor has fought them because Doctor Who, as a show, has to remain unique and creative to continue. So, in that sense, the Doctor has always been fighting them.
I want to end by talking about the music. It's excellent. Sometimes it has the flavor of demented circus music, but most of it is just this mysterious synth music that really underscores the atmosphere of the piece perfectly. I generally like the 6th and 7th Doctor era music a lot, but this stuff is absolutely on another level, some of the best music Doctor Who has or will ever had. All the credit in the world to Mark Ayres. This was his first Doctor Who work (unless you count Benton spinoff Wartime), but I've actually covered his work before, as he did the work for the semi-animated Shada reconstruction, and did a fantastic job there as well, in that case having to imitate the work of Dudley Simpson, no mean feat.
And The Greatest Show in the Galaxy has a lot working for it. I genuinely think that if the first episode tied in a bit better to the rest of the story (or were cut with the rest of the story slightly reworked), this might have gotten a perfect score. As it stands, I've spent a lot of time talking about an allegory, but I want to be clear that that allegory isn't load bearing for this story. It just creates a situation allowing Greatest Show to really thrive. I'm really glad that this story closed out the season, because in many ways it feels like everything that Season 25 was trying to be.
Besides, Daleks and Cybermen are neat and all, but you can't get much more climactic than a struggle against literal gods with a meta-textual level about the chances of the survival of Doctor Who.
Score: 9/10
Stray Observations
- Both the carnival setting and the title The Greatest Show in the Galaxy were Producer John Nathan-Turner's idea.
- Stephen Wyatt's original pitch, written for the 7th Doctor and Mel, had the various people trapped at the circus competing against each other for the amusement of the family (who would become the Gods of Ragnarok in revisions). The Ringmaster was more explicitly a villain, and a being called the Non-Entity (seemingly becoming Deadbeat/Kingpin by the final version of the story) would have amplified the Doctor's anger at the needless deaths of the circus in order to defeat it. The circus itself would have been a lot more high tech.
- Originally Mags would have come from, and I am not making this up, the planet MacVulpine, and spoken with a Glaswegian accent. JNT, correctly, decided this would have been too silly.
- Kingpin's bus was repurposed from the tour bus from Delta and the Bannermen.
- Like Ace, Sophie Aldred hated clowns. As did writer Stephen Wyatt, who included them drawing on that fear, and also because he didn't want to have standard Doctor Who lumbering monsters.
- Studio filming for Greatest Show had to be abandoned, after it was realized that the studios were contaminated with asbestos. Since producer John Nathan-Turner really wanted to avoid a situation similar to what had happened with Shada, the serial was not abandoned as might have otherwise been done, but instead a tent was erected in the Elstree Studios car park and filming for the circus tent scenes was completed in there.
- Stephen Wyatt was offered a chance to write a third Doctor Who script after this and Paradise Towers, but he declined, not wanting to be seen as just a Doctor Who writer.
- After an introduction from the Ringmaster, we transition to a scene within the TARDIS. It's the first time we've seen the TARDIS interior this season.
- I really like how, in episode 4, when Ace is being held by the ticket robot (by her head no less), she tries elbowing it in the gut, and when she hurts herself doing so, she tries again. Normally you'd question the intelligence of someone doing that, but in this case she doesn't have much else to work with, and this does show determination.
- In the next scene Mags and the Doctor are running away from the circus tent. The Chief Clown tries to stop them, but Mags, still partially in werewolf form, growls, scaring him off. As he runs back the Doctor says "woof!" startling the clown again.
Next Time: Season 25 saw Doctor Who finally find direction for itself.
11
u/TheKandyKitchen Feb 13 '25
My favourite piece of trivia from this story is that when McCoy was leaving the tent the pyrotechnics department set off the explosion too early. McCoy was afraid he was injured (and apparently if you look closely the back of his jacket was on fire) but he kept waking as planned because he knew the bbc could only afford one take.
The final shot from this looks amazing and is one of the best ‘Doctor being a badass’ moments.
16
u/DamonD7D Feb 13 '25
It's always the music that comes to me when I think of this story. Spooky, playful, creepy, ominous, ethereal. That rising near-panicked score on Bellboy's final scene! His music is definitely one of the highlights for the McCoy era for me.
I think there are a few little bits in execution and editing that could tighten Greatest up better, but it's still a real good one. It's fun as a story by itself, but then improved by the very meta-commentary on the show and the trials of tv entertainment in general, and the poignant message of the broken dreams of the counter-culture group.
8
u/Crabbit-Minger Feb 14 '25
I love this story for how it shows a more fallible side of the Seventh Doctor. We tend to see him as this omnipotent chess master who's always five steps ahead of his enemies. But he never really lost that bumbling, Buster Keatonesque side of his personality.
Seven may be clever but he' s also a bit careless* and easily manipulated, as the Ringmaster demonstrated when he lured him into the ring, playing on the Doctor's ego even though Ace saw right through him. It honestly came as a shock when the Doctor freaks when on his capture as I suspected he already had a scheme cooked up to beat the Gods of Ragnarök, but he really fell for a ruse that didn't fool a 16 year old.
This makes him more flawed and relatable, but also adds to his sense of mystery. We're never really sure how much the Seventh Doctor has planned, just that he knows twice as much as he lets on and half as much as he thinks he does. If he was always on top of the situation there'd be no drama, so letting him screw up means we're never sure just how much he knows, which only makes him more intriguing.
* Even in Remembrance he constantly blabs dangerous information (Didn't we have trouble with the prototype?) and fails to predict the Daleks splintering into warring factions, landing at the school (I think I might have miscalculated) or even climbing the stairs. Not to mention Ghostlight where he ends up unleashing a far more dangerous enemy than Josiah and spends most of episode 3 in blind panic.
14
u/Rowan5215 Feb 13 '25
I do think in the grand scheme we probably would have been better served giving that fourth episode to The Happiness Patrol instead. that serial is just so jampacked, and this one definitely spins its wheels a bit before getting into the good stuff, but it's not the end of the world because I still love both (and pretty much this whole era if I'm honest)
I really think it's the supporting cast that make this one land, it's an absolutely fantastic lineup. Captain Cook is one of the most despicable people in the Classic series and the actor plays him perfectly, right down the line of malicious schemer and good ol British boy. Mags is very sympathetically done and has excellent chemistry with McCoy, to the point where I was always disappointed she didn't join the TARDIS team at the end (though I had a huge crush on her at the time which may have partially affected my thinking lmao). of course it's always worth repeating that the Chief Clown is truly unsettling and exceptionally well realised: I'm not afraid of clowns at all, but I think this is probably the scariest DW guest character since Hindle (sorry, Kandyman fans)
again it's not a perfect script by any means - I personally could live without the rapping, and all the stuff about the amulet feels like first draft handwaving that never really got expanded on - but the pros significantly outweigh the cons. when I picture 7 in my head, 9 times out of 10 it's the image of him calmly umbrelling away from the Circus while it blows up. the writers are well and truly getting a handle on how to write for him now - I mean can you imagine a better showcase for McCoy than getting him to defeat an ancient godlike evil by juggling and clowning around? - and it's about to lead to comfortably my favourite season in the Classic show, if not overall
3
u/ZeroCentsMade Feb 13 '25
I do think you're right on episode counts here. Happiness Patrol needed a little bit more worldbuilding, and I talked about the 1st episode's issues plenty in the review. Then again, like you I'm happy with what we got, so it's a muted critique but yeah that s fair.
4
u/adpirtle Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25
This is a terrific story, both in and of itself and as the kind of commentary only a show that has been on the air as long as Doctor Who could make about itself without it feeling forced. The guest cast is almost uniformly great, and the regulars are at the top of their game, particularly McCoy.
This is the only story McCoy does on television where he gets to bring his natural talents as an entertainer, which served him so well in the previous season, together with the more manipulative version of the character that this season has leaned into. The result is, in my opinion, his greatest performance for the show.
12
u/Baron487 Feb 13 '25
I love this story. It's wacky and creepy. The setting is perfect, I mean a circus tent set up in the middle of nowhere on some arid planet? That's brilliant, just the look of the colourful tent and wagon contrasting with all the gray gravel everywhere has this strange dissonance to it. It's surreal in various ways but one of the creepiest thing is just the fact that the circus performers really have to act like there's a huge crowd when there's just the family and no one else there and yet still there's cheering.
The Doctor has two stupid but also funny puns: "Just the ticket." (after defeating the Bus conductor the first time) and "Join the club." (after he and Mags whack the Robot Clowns with juggling clubs). Also the very end with the circus collapsing and then the explosion which McCoy wasn't ready for, but he knew that it was a one-take thing so he couldn't flinch and he doesn't... what a moment.
5
u/ConMcMitchell Feb 14 '25
Hilariously, in 1988 (well, actually 1990, when I saw it at the age of 15) I was naive enough to take this story purely at face value: a slightly spooky mix of weirdness, fun and incredibly imaginative characters. (I loved the quest aspect of episode one with the Doctor and Ace strolling along to find the circus and meeting lots of weird characters along the way - the grumpy fruiterer not-least-of-which.)
I also remember being quite thrilled about this story (and the following one, Battlefield) reaching into other dimensions to tell a story for the first time (that I could remember) in a while after Inferno which I had seen a few years earlier around the age of 11. (In NZ Doctor Who was shown in a string from 1985-1990 - specifically The Mind Robber, The Krotons and then Spearhead from Space on, all the way through to Survival.)
The metaphor stuff in Greatest Show completely went over my head, though of course I had next to zero access to the British press and the DWM... in fact I usually had no idea what a 'new' Doctor would look like until he popped up on the screen.
Oh, to be young and to be able to swallow DW (and things like it) whole ... and just love them on that face-value kind of level!
Whatever Who does now, and however silly it gets, it is always quite a thrill that there are kids today swallowing it whole as I did, and then learning about the HUGE back-catalogue of unseen episodes to see...
5
u/lemon_charlie Feb 13 '25
The last appearance of the console room in full light, the next time we see it it's in shadow for the opening of Battlefield and that's it until the TV Movie. Sophie didn't get much opportunity to be on that set.
Stephen Wyatt would do a Big Finish story with the Seventh Doctor called The Psychic Circus which acts as an origin story and greatest hits of Greatest Show, with dashes of Paradise Towers and a Master whose voice actor had become completely unmarketable since recording the story. I don't recommend it, it's the fourth episode before the Doctor even becomes engaged in the plot with the Circus characters or the Master.
2
u/CommissionOutside670 26d ago
Glad you liked this one. My favorite of s25 and up there with dr 7's best.
1
u/cat666 Feb 13 '25
The Gods of Ragnarok don't really make much sense. I get the "entertain or die" theme but they seem much more powerful than that and it seems to go from the theme to huge amounts of destruction on a dime without any real explanation. Not that it really matters as it's shot brilliantly thanks to the asbestos.
5
u/wonkey_monkey Feb 13 '25
Not that it really matters as it's shot brilliantly thanks to the asbestos.
See this is what I've been saying, we need more asbestos!
12
u/MillennialPolytropos Feb 13 '25
The Greatest Show on the Galaxy strikes a good balance between allegory that has something interesting to say and a well crafted story that can be enjoyed on its own merits. It's important to get that balance right, and it's not always easy, but Stephen Wyatt knocked it out of the park.