In praise of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

Mccoy's second season of Doctor Who was when things started to slot into place. With ratings still poor, it was a real backs-against-the-wall job and so the show would be brave. As well as nostalgic excursions (it was the 25th season, after all), there was The Happiness Patrol with its barely veiled attack on Thatcherism and, to close the season, The Greatest Show In the Galaxy.
Yeah, not the scariest title but the story itself was a kaleidoscope of fear and wonder.
A travelling circus has set up shop on the desert planet Segonax and said circus is the self-titled "The Greatest Show In The Galaxy"

The clowns are wonderfully creepy. We're treated to some back-story that Ace had a childhood fear of the circus but that's needed. These are proper sinister.
Especially a pre-Corrie Ian Reddington as the Chief Clown. The fear comes from their movements as much as the make-up.
Also there's the audience. The Family sit there for every performance. Their coldness is wonderfully theatrical.Watching. Judging. And sentencing to death acts that bore them.
Yes, to adult eyes, strewn throughout there's meta-commentary on the future of Doctor Who. It's future was uncertain due to low ratings. And a fanboy arrives who is still tragically devoted to the show despite being aware that its best days were behind it.

That is smuggled in amongst a dazzling display of images. Buses in a desert (years before Tennant) policed by a murderous bus conductor. The Gods of Ragnarok. Werewolves. And an utterly desperate gang of characters who can turn at any time on anyone. That last point really struck my nine year-old self. It's not remotely cosy.
Yes, there's pacing problems from time to time.
But it's a real high point of late 80s Who and could have served as a fitting but bittersweet last story (that honour, for almost seven years, fell instead to Survival and its puss-in-boots-i-ness.

In defence of Paradise Towers

It is safe to say that Sylvester McCoy's first season of Doctor Who wasn't the strongest.
The show had been forced into a change of actor from on high whilst still trying to find it's way since the 1985 hiatus imposed because apparently the powers that be thought Colin Baker's first season was too violent.

New script editor Andrew Cartmel would hit his stride in the next two seasons but this first year was a bit of a hodgepodge.

Some folk loathe Paradise Towers but I have always secretly enjoyed it.
For the uninitiated, the Tardis lands in a tower block on an alien world, populated entirely by humanoids and robots. The humans are nearly all retirees or girl gang members, the intervening generations having gone to fight in a war. In the first few minutes, you see a promotion video showing what the place used to be like before it fell to seed.
It is a very J.G. Ballard-ian premise, which I think may have caused expectations to ramp up a lot in 1987.
It is also endearingly camp.

The Kangs, the girl gangs, are split into coloured factions. The story opens with the murder of the last yellow Kang,
Gang members greet each other with half-remembered slogans and doggrel like "Build high for happiness". But, like most teenage culture shown in the McCoy era, it is a very middle class vision. Kind of like later companion Ace in that respect.I find it amusing but can see how it would annoy some.

I was nine when I first saw this and the thing that compelled me was how the Doctor and Mel were going to fix this world in four episodes.
There were lots of great ideas. Fascist caretaker staff (led by Richard Briers of all people). Cannabilistic senior citizens. And Pex. I adored Pex. He was a self-proclaimed war hero and "trained fighting machine", openly mocked by the Kangs and rightly so as he clearly was all talk.
I did kind of hope that he would join the Tardis crew but alas no.

Not the scariest monster ever seen in Doctor Who

A cleaner robot, again not amazingly scary

It's not without its faults. The cleaner robots are Dalek-lite and the pool monster looks rather sweet. And the acting's bizarre at times.
But it's the ideas that transfixed me.