Serial: 7J Episode Nos. 686, 687, 688, and 689. Title: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
A junk mail robot advertising satellite entices the Doctor into entering a talent contest at the
Psychic Circus on the planet Segonax, over Ace's objections that circuses are boring and clowns
are too creepy. Ace has good cause for concern, for the Circus' acts are all prisoners of unknown
forces, and anyone that fails to entertain a peculiarly ordinary family of three meets an unknown doom.
starring
Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as
Ace.
Written by Stephen Wyatt, Produced by John Nathan-Turner, and Directed by Alan Wareing.
Originally
transmitted from
DVD Features:
- All 4 episodes of the story, fully restored and digitally remastered.
- Graphical menus, episode and scene selection features.
- Optional commentary track by actors Sophie Aldred, Christopher Guard (Bellboy),
and Jessica Martin (Mags), writer Stephen Wyatt, script editor Andrew Cartmel,
and music composer Mark Ayres. Moderated by Toby Hadoke.
- Choice of a new Dolby 5.1 soundtrack mix or the original 2.0 stereo mix.
- Isolated Music score option. Plays the story with only the incidental music playing.
- "The Show Must Go On" A 30-minute making-of featurette telling the particularly
fraught story of how this story was made, with interviews with Andrew Cartmel,
Sophie Aldred, visual effects designer Mike Tucker, director Alan Wareing,
production designer David Laskey, actor Ian Reddington (Chief Clown), and
parts of an archive interview with producer John Nathan-Turner.
- Deleted and Extended Scenes. An 11-minute package of 33 scenes that were trimmed
or removed entirely.
- Lost in the Darkness. A 2-minute featurette showing the outer space model shots that
were to have appeared at the start of the story but were dropped, with Mike
Tucker explaining why this was.
- The Psychic
Circus. A 4-minute music video for a
song that the cast created for possible
commercial
release at the time of production, restored and remixed. The song was
not
published at the time. The video portion is a new creation, made to look
as if it
could've been a late 1980s music video. Available either with the original
2.0 stereo sound
or a new 5.1 Dolby mix.
- Remembrance "Demo". Two scenes from the story Remembrance of the Daleks with
their music replaced with music aspiring composer Mark Ayres wrote to
demonstrate what he could do, which won him the job making the music for
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Available in either 2.0 stereo or 5.1 Dolby.
4 minutes.
- Tomorrow's Times - The Seventh Doctor. A 14-minute featurette where Anneke Wills
presents the best and worst of the press reaction to the Seventh Doctor's stories
when they first aired.
- Victoria Wood Sketch. A 1-minute comedy sketch made around this time satirizing
Doctor
Who starring
- Photo Gallery. 7 minutes of still photos taken during production of the story.
- Coming Soon. A 1-minute trailer for the forthcoming DVD of Planet of Giants.
- PDF Materials. Place this disc into a computer and you can
have a look at the Radio
Times billing for this story from 1988-89, and also a file containing Mike Tucker's
design drawings for some of the visual effects props.
- 1 Easter Egg. Highlight the blank area of text below to see what it is and how to find it.
Go to the Special Features menu. Highlight Deleted and
Extended Scenes, then press
the right arrow to
make a Doctor Who logo appear. Click
this and you'll see a strange
1-minute video montage of bits of many of the
special features that was reported to
have been part of
some sort of marketing campaign across the BBC's DVD range that
was cancelled after
this disc had already been authored.
