History Recap / DoctorWhoS25E4TheGreatestShowintheGalaxy

* BondOneLiner: The Doctor, after disabling a homicidal robot bus-conductor: "Just the ticket."

* VillainSong: Christopher Judge and Mark Ayres wrote a Villain Song, "We Are the Psychic Circus", for the Psychic Circus characters, which was rejected for release by the BBC but finally appeared on the DVD issue. It's not as bad as "Doctor in Distress".

* ContinuityNod: While Ace's looking for her rucksack in the TARDIS wardrobe, she throws the Fifth Doctor's coat to the floor and emerges a while later, wearing the Fourth Doctor's scarf. Mel's blue-and-white polka dot blouse from "Paradise Towers" is also visible.

* ContinuityNod: While Ace's looking for her rucksack in the TARDIS wardrobe, she throws the Fifth Doctor's coat to the floor and emerges a while later, wearing the Fourth Doctor's scarf.

* UnexplainedRecovery: [[spoiler: Captain Cook]]

* TheCastShowOff: The "entertainment" and magic tricks that the Doctor performs in episode 4 is assisted by Sylvester [=McCoy=]'s small background in amateur theatre.
* CircusOfFear

* EvilCounterpart: Captain Cook for the Doctor.

* NewAgeRetroHippie: Kingpin, Bellboy, Flower Child, ''et. al.''

The amulet gets destroyed, which takes out the circus in a giant fireball of evil gods and creepy clowns, and Sylvester [=McCoy=] [[UnflinchingWalk walks unflinchingly]] -- both in-character and in real life, and just a little bit on fire because the crew screwed up.

* TakeThat: Whizz Kid is meant as a deeply unsubtle one to the more..obsessed fans of Doctor Who.

* [[WolfMan Wolf Girl]]: As is common in ''Series/DoctorWho''--see, for instance, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E4StateOfDecay its]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E3TheCurseOfFenric many]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E06VampiresOfVenice vampires]]--the specific variety of werewolf seen here has never been seen before and never will be again. Convergent evolution, we guess.

Eventually, Ace and Mags go to dig a [[HumongousMecha medium-sized mecha]] out of the desert, which they use to fend off the extremely creepy head clown. Now they just need to find and destroy the evil amulet controlling the circus, while the Doctor is left to amuse the Evil Gods of Entertainment (the true form of the creepy audience family). He does so by improvising egg tricks, rope tricks, fire tricks, snake tricks and upside-down escapism tricks, and looks like he could have merrily gone on for a few more hours and is having rather a lot more fun than the Gods themselves. Eventually, though, Ace tosses him the evil amulet through a dimensional portal.

The Doctor and Ace head off to a circus that has, inexplicably, set up shop on a desert planet. They poke around a bit--buying gross food from a travelling vendor, chit-chatting with self-important adventurer Captain Cook and his companion Mags, trying to flag down a ride from a ''MadMax'' extra--and utterly fail to notice that this is the sort of circus that people run away ''from''.

In fact, the circus has adopted the innovative cost-saving practice of imprisoning its customers and making ''them'' perform, with a penalty of death if the other customers--in particular, a jaded trio of mother, father, and little girl--are bored. So it is that Ace and the Doctor promptly find themselves backstage, in an unusually well-secured green room with Captain Cook, Mags, the BadassBiker guy, and a starstruck über-fan named [=WhizzKid=].

Eventually, Ace and Mags go to dig a [[HumongousMecha medium-sized mecha]] out of the desert, which they use to fend off the extremely creepy head clown. Now they just need to find and destroy the evil amulet controlling the circus, while the Doctor is left to amuse the Evil Gods of Entertainment.

The amulet gets destroyed, which takes out the circus in a giant fireball of evil gods and creepy clowns, and Sylvester [=McCoy=] [[UnflinchingWalk walks unflinchingly]], both in-character and in real life.

* IGotBetter: [[spoiler: Captain Cook]]

* FanBoy - [=WhizzKid=] was, yes, a sly parody of ''Series/DoctorWho'' fans.

* CoolGuysDontLookAtExplosions

Eventually, Ace and Mags go to dig a [[HumongousMecha medium-sized mecha]] out of the desert, which they use to fend off the extremely creepy head clown. Now they just need to find and destroy the evil amulet controlling the circus, while the Doctor is left to amuse the Evil Gods of Entertainment[[hottip:*:who do not, as far as we know, have any connection to {{Fox}}]] with sleight-of-hand tricks. Which... it's pretty cool (if slightly random) to see Sylvester [=McCoy=] do, but why are the Evil Gods of Entertainment even bothering to watch amateur stage magic?

** Also could be one at the show itself. A show that used to be fun and imaginative that ruined by what is basically EldritchAbomination ExecutiveMeddling could easily be viewed as a self deprecating satire of how Doctor Who was seen to decline because of heavy handed executive meddling during the 80's
* ThemeTuneRap - about which the less said, the better
* UnflinchingWalk: Actually a CrowningMomentOfAwesome for Sylvester [=McCoy=] - the production team only had resources for one take of the circus exploding, so he knew he had to continue no matter what - the pyrotechnics team, however, overdid the explosion. While it looks ''spectacular'', his back actually ''caught fire'' - and yet he continued on!

* UnflinchingWalk: Actually a [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome]] for Sylvester McCoy - the production team only had resources for one take of the circus exploding, so he knew he had to continue no matter what - the pirotechnics team, however, overdid the explosion. While it looks ''spectacular'', his back actually ''caught fire'' - and yet he continued on!

* UnflinchingWalk

* FanBoy - [=WhizzKid=] was, yes, a sly parody of ''DoctorWho'' fans.

* [[WolfMan Wolf Girl]]: As is common in ''DoctorWho''--see, for instance, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E4StateOfDecay its]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E3TheCurseOfFenric many]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E06VampiresOfVenice vampires]]--the specific variety of werewolf seen here has never been seen before and never will be again. Convergent evolution, we guess.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/swordeye_5710.jpg
->''You're just an aging hippie, Professor.''\\
'''--Ace'''

The amulet gets destroyed, which takes out the circus in a giant fireball of evil gods and creepy clowns, and the Seventh Doctor gets a CrowningMomentOfAwesome as he [[UnflinchingWalk calmly walks away.]] Sylvester [=McCoy=] gets one too, as the explosion was rather larger than planned and scorched his back...but knowing that they only had the one take for it, he gritted his teeth and pulled off a RealLife UnflinchingWalk.

* CompleteMonster - Captain Cook.
** Also the Head Clown. The other members of the Cicus have either rebelled against the Gods of Ragnarok or are deeply unhappy about the arrangement and only doing it because they have no other choice. The Head Clown though seems to positively delight in cruelty and murder. Whoever played him would have made one hell of a Joker

* CrowningMomentOfAwesome: The Doctor's(And Sylvester [=McCoy's=]) UnflinchingWalk, obviously.

* LesYay: Ace and Mags, as is common for Ace and pretty much every major female guest star in the series.
* MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler: The death of [=WhizzKid.=]]]

* TakeThat:Whizz Kid is meant as a deeply unsubtle one to the more..obsessed fans of Doctor Who.

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* TakeThat:Whizz Kid is meant as a deeply unsubtle one to the more..obsessed fans of Doctor Who but honestly this Troper considers him a pretty inaccurate one. He fits the "Geek" streotypes but this troper who has atteded many conventions has met very few fans who are like this in real life, and no Doctor Who fans who are