The Doctor takes the TARDIS to Segonax to see the famed Psychic Circus. En route, they meet the pompous explorer Captain Cook and his enigmatic companion, Mags. Together, they discover that the Greatest Show In The Galaxy has become something macabre: its founder, Kingpin, has disappeared; the callous Chief Clown deals violently with anyone who tries to flee; and ticketholders are pressed into service under the big top, where they must entertain a sinister family -- or die. Ace is pursued through the labyrinthine tents by the clowns she dreads, while the Doctor and Mags search for the terrible secret at the heart of the Circus.

Stephen Wyatt's first Doctor Who serial, Paradise Towers, had not even gone before the cameras when he was approached to write another adventure for the Doctor. Producer John Nathan-Turner suggested a carnival setting, with the thought that filming could take place at Longleat House in Wiltshire, the home of a Doctor Who exhibition since 1974; he also proposed the title The Greatest Show In The Galaxy. With this notion as his starting point, Wyatt's original pitch involved a fairground infested with subterranean creatures. However, this seemed unfeasible -- especially when the production team began to eye The Greatest Show In The Galaxy as the three-part, studio-bound serial for Season Twenty-Five.

Instead, Wyatt came up with the idea of a circus where the spectators were forced to perform for a sinister family, only to inevitably fail to entertain them and hence suffer a terrible fate. He took inspiration from his own dislike of clowns, and he and Cartmel had conjured the image of a clown driving a hearse to evoke the kind of surreal narrative they had in mind. This storyline was considered more suitable, and the script for the first episode was commissioned on May 8th, 1987.

Of the Circus personnel, it was originally the Ringmaster who played the most overtly villainous role

Over the following months, The Greatest Show In The Galaxy evolved substantially. Originally, the story began with the Doctor and Melanie Bush arriving at the Psychic Circus, where they were soon thrust into the ring with a punk werewolf, a creature called the Blob, the musclebound Nord -- inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero Thor -- and an empath known as the Non-Entity. Rather than performing solo, the characters competed against each other for the family's entertainment in a series of games and challenges. Of the Circus personnel, it was the Ringmaster who played the most overtly villainous role. The alternative Circus was more high-tech and played a larger role, being occasionally glimpsed by Mel. At the adventure's climax, the Circus was destroyed when the Non-Entity amplified the Doctor's rage at the needless deaths.

In later drafts, the Blob was replaced by a half-human mutant, the Whizzkid, who then developed into a computer genius who was an expert at all of the in-ring games and referred to himself as the Galactic Games King. After his death, this character returned as a ghoulish self-parody, with a robotic brain and a scoreboard body. Mel encountered a friendly animal called the Squonk, who later evolved into a clown creature referred to as a Honk. There was a love triangle between the Ringmaster, the Chief Clown and the gypsy-like Box Office Lady -- a character who had previously been envisaged as a grandmotherly type -- and the Non-Entity destroyed the Circus using the werewolf's fury, rather than the Doctor's.

In September, however, it was decided that The Greatest Show In The Galaxy should be extended to four episodes, with Graeme Curry's The Happiness Patrol taking its place as the studio-only story. Not only did this give Wyatt greater narrative space, but it also meant that he could take advantage of location filming, and therefore expand his scripts beyond the confines of the big top environment. As a result, the new first installment would spend time exploring the planet Segonax on which the Psychic Circus was located, and the story as a whole would focus less on the notion of the performers competing to survive. The final three episodes of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy were commissioned on September 29th.

With Wyatt now in need of additional characters, Ben Aaronovitch -- who was writing the 1988 premiere Remembrance Of The Daleks -- suggested introducing an explorer along the lines of Indiana Jones, the archaeologist hero played by Harrison Ford in 1981's Raiders Of The Lost Ark and its sequel. The result was the addition of Captain Cook, whose demise was intended to provide the cliffhanger for Episode One. However, Wyatt enjoyed the character so much that he instead gave Cook a prominent place throughout the narrative, and even considered having him mysteriously survive the Circus' destruction. The robot buried in the sand, meanwhile, was one of Cartmel's contributions.

Mags originally came from the planet MacVulpine, and spoke with a Glaswegian accent

Also added at this point was the background to the Psychic Circus, which reflected Wyatt's disenchantment with the hippie movement of the Sixties. Elements of the Non-Entity and Honk characters were refashioned as Deadbeat and Bellboy, while Ace replaced Mel. With the change in the plot's emphasis, Whizzkid had become superfluous in his Galactic Games King incarnation, so it was decided to remould him as a parody of the stereotypical Doctor Who fan. The werewolf character, now Cook's associate Mags, originally came from the planet MacVulpine rather than Volpana, and spoke with a Glaswegian accent; Nathan-Turner felt that this was too silly. At one point, the Little Girl was given the name Sandra.

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy was assigned to director Alan Wareing, who had been a production assistant on 1981's The Keeper Of Traken and a production manager on 1985's Timelash. Nathan-Turner and former Doctor Who script editor Eric Saward had helped Wareing with his directorial training, and the producer felt that his keen sense of visuals was perfect for Wyatt's scripts. Cast as Deadbeat was Chris Jury, who had been one of the final candidates for the role of the Seventh Doctor.

Production on The Greatest Show In The Galaxy began normally enough, with location filming taking place from May 14th to 18th, 1988 at Warmwell Quarry in Warmwell, Dorset. The rocky landscape was a departure from Wyatt's description of Segonax as a grassy world. The first two days dealt with scenes on the roads and at the Stallslady's kiosk. On May 16th, a tent was erected to pose as the exterior of the Psychic Circus, with its destruction a key moment in the schedule. Due to an equipment problem, a different and more violent type of explosive was used than had originally been planned. Unfortunately, the crew forgot to inform Sylvester McCoy -- who nonetheless recorded the sequence of the Doctor walking away from the erupting big top without batting an eyelid.

On May 17th, material in and around the hippie bus was filmed; this was the same vehicle which had featured as the tour bus in Delta And The Bannermen the year before. Finally, May 18th was principally concerned with the large robot buried in the sand. It had been conceived as speaking to the characters -- alternately threatening and pleading -- but this element was now dropped. Unfortunately, poor weather meant that some planned shots had to be abandoned, including the destruction of one of the clowns by the large robot's laser blasts. Costume designer Rosalind Ebbutt had crafted the robot clowns as echoes of the Chief Clown by basing their masks on a cast of actor Ian Reddington's face. Meanwhile, Nathan-Turner and Sophie Aldred had patched things up, after going through a rocky stretch during the making of Remembrance Of The Daleks.

Rehearsals then began for the two planned studio blocks at BBC Television Centre in White City, London: one running from May 31st to June 2nd, and a second on June 15th and 16th. For the Doctor's feats of prestidigitation, McCoy worked behind closed doors with professional magician Geoffrey Durham, better known as the Great Soprendo. On May 27th, however, renovations in Television Centre Studio 2 uncovered the presence of asbestos, and traces of the dangerous material -- at one time used as a fire retardant -- were subsequently detected in almost all of the other studios. BBC management was left with little choice but to suspend much of the Television Centre production schedule until asbestos abatement procedures could be completed. This meant that, at a minimum, the first studio block for The Greatest Show In The Galaxy would not be able to proceed in TC6, as planned.

Briefly, Nathan-Turner believed that he had found an alternative in the form of a warehouse facility in Bristol used for the medical drama Casualty. When it was abruptly reallocated to the biographical mini-series Shadow Of The Noose, Nathan-Turner and Wareing instead conceived a plan to erect an actual tent complex on a field off the A40 motorway. It was then learned that the recording had to take place on BBC-owned premises, so designer David Laskey suggested using a car park or similar venue. BBC Elstree in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire -- the home of the popular soap opera EastEnders -- soon agreed to the use of one of its parking lots by the Doctor Who team for a week and a half.

While the construction of the necessary facilities outside BBC Elstree -- subsequently nicknamed “Laskey's Studio” -- meant that work on The Greatest Show In The Galaxy could resume, it was by no means an ideal solution. Since soundproofing was impossible, cast and crew would have to contend with the noise from pedestrian traffic, as well as from airplanes landing at the nearby Elstree Aerodrome. The production came under added pressure on June 3rd, when the second studio block was also lost. BBC Planning was now advocating the cancellation of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, and Nathan-Turner had to assure his superiors that the serial could be completed at BBC Elstree within budget. Fortunately, he was able to arrange for an extension on the length of time that Doctor Who would be permitted to occupy the Elstree car park.

Tempers were short throughout the BBC Elstree shoot, and Alan Wareing had to work very efficiently

It was under these trying circumstances that recording resumed on June 6th. Each of the first five days was largely devoted to a single area of the big top: the vestibule on the 6th, the ring on the 7th and 9th, the backstage area with the cell on the 8th, and the corridors on the 10th. Tempers were short throughout the shoot and, with limited cameras available, Wareing had to work very efficiently. The last three days at BBC Elstree then dealt with those scenes not simply set in the Psychic Circus tent: the stone chamber on June 15th, the workshops and the TARDIS console room on the 16th, and finally the ancient version of the Circus on the 18th. On the last day, Lorna McCulloch replaced Kathryn Ludlow as the Little Girl God due to restrictions on the number of days a juvenile actor could work; Wareing's own modulated voice would provide her dialogue. It was also planned to record a model shot of the ancient Circus collapsing on June 18th but, unfortunately, an issue with the videotape meant that the resulting footage was unusable, and there was no opportunity for a retake.

The planned broadcast order for 1988 positioned The Greatest Show In The Galaxy second, immediately after Remembrance Of The Daleks. However, the expected September 7th premiere date was delayed by four weeks because of BBC coverage of the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Nonetheless, Nathan-Turner still wanted to lead off the year with the star attraction of the Daleks. Furthermore, Silver Nemesis had been planned as the twenty-fifth anniversary story, and so its first installment was effectively locked into a November 23rd broadcast -- the actual date of Doctor Who's silver jubilee. With only three weeks left between the two serials, this meant that The Greatest Show In The Galaxy would have to be postponed until after Silver Nemesis, making it the new season finale. Unfortunately, some inadvertent continuity errors resulted: Ace wore Flowerchild's earring in Silver Nemesis despite not yet having visited Segonax, while the destruction of her rucksack in that story was contradicted by its presence in The Greatest Show In The Galaxy.

There were a number of changes to the BBC1 schedule during the transmission of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy. Rockliffe's Folly, which had been airing after Doctor Who, ended its season following Episode One on December 14th. The Les Dawson Show occupied the timeslot the next week. On December 28th, holiday programming pushed Episode Three back by five minutes to 7.40pm, leading into The Guinness Book Of Records Hall Of Fame. Season Twenty-Five then wrapped up on January 4th, 1989, with Episode Four preceding the twelfth-season launch of the American soap opera Dallas. The retrospective show Best Of British subsequently took over the Doctor Who timeslot.

Although the production office was interested in commissioning a third story from Wyatt, the writer was growing concerned about being pigeonholed as part of the Doctor Who team and declined the invitation. As a result, The Greatest Show In The Galaxy marked his final televised work on the show.

• Doctor Who Magazine #211, “Archive: The Greatest Show In The Galaxy” by Andrew Pixley, Marvel Comics UK Ltd.
• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #10, 13th April 2005, “Doctorin' The Tardis” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Complete History #45, 2015, “Story 151: The Greatest Show In The Galaxy”, edited by Mark Wright, Hachette Partworks Ltd.
• Doctor Who: The Eighties by David J Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker (1996), Virgin Publishing.
• Doctor Who: The Handbook: The Seventh Doctor by David J Howe and Stephen James Walker (1998), Virgin Publishing.
• In·Vision #99, November 2001, “Production” edited by Anthony Brown, Cybermark Services.