The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Part Four

The one where the Doctor confronts the Gods of Ragnarok...

This final part of both the story and the season aired in January 1989, making it the first of a bumper 15 episodes of Doctor Who broadcast that year. It was watched by a whopping 6.6m people, the highest figure for the McCoy era, and the highest rating since Season 22. Doctor Who was on a role in its silver anniversary year. Season 25 had topped 6m viewers twice, surely a sign that more people were watching, more people were enjoying and more people wanted more? It all felt so encouraging, only for the BBC to renew the show one final time, but decide to bury it for good...

Back to the Psychic Circus, and that gloriously scary cliffhanger in which the Doctor's being menaced by a wolverine Mags. It's a testament to the work of make-up designer Denise Baron that Mags' werewolf look is so convincing, but the make-up has been spot-on throughout the story, particularly for Ian Reddington's Joker-esque Chief Clown. Mags is her masterpiece though (her work on The Curse of Fenric would be great, but not better than this).

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Part Three

The one where the Doctor discovers Mags' secret...

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was transmitted through the festive season, the first time Doctor Who had done this since 1980's The Horns of Nimon - and the last until 2005's The Christmas Invasion. It feels somehow fitting that a story set in a circus, a world of entertainment, should have been shown at Christmastime. Part 2 of the serial was shown straight after a special programme called Terry Wogan in Pantoland, in which the chat show host encountered various fairytale scenarios performed by the likes of Barbara Windsor, Little and Large, Christopher Biggins and Wilfred Mott himself, Bernard Cribbins!

Part 3 was pushed back slightly to 7.40pm due to Wogan's very special interview with Hollywood legend James Stewart, making it one of the latest shown classic series episodes. There are scenes throughout the episode in which the family of three spectators express how bored they are ("Something has to happen soon"), but this third episode is far from dull, exploring the background to the Psychic Circus and what happened when it arrived on Segonax.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Part Two

The one where the Doctor is chosen as an act in the Psychic Circus talent contest...

Part 1 concentrated on establishing the characters, and part 2 cracks on with the story proper as the Doctor and Ace enter the Psychic Circus to the sound of rapturous applause from within. The weird thing is, there's no audience in the amphitheatre, which means the impression of there being paying customers is a fabrication. Where's the audience gone?

The reprise from part 1 adds on the fact Ace spots the Chief Clown in the circus entrance waving her in, which we see her visibly shudder at in part 1, but we don't see the cause until part 2. A niftier bit of editing would have made the part 1 cliffhanger slightly stronger if they'd left in the grinning clown.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Part One

The one where clowns dressed as undertakers use kites to track hippies in the desert...

That introductory line barely scratches the surface of how bizarre and surreal elements of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy are, but this is what Doctor Who was excelling at in its twilight years. It was trying new things, it was far from predictable, and it was going for big, colourful comic book ideas and visuals. Setting Doctor Who in a circus seems such an obvious idea - it was touched upon half-heartedly in Terror of the Autons - and I'm surprised it took 25 years to get around to it properly.

The deluge of wild and wacky images that bombard the viewer as the episode unfolds is almost overwhelming. It might have been filmed on location in a quarry to represent the barren alien world of Segonax, but the characters that populate this arid planet are far from dull and dusty. It all begins with the opening scene of a circus ringmaster performing a rap to an empty amphitheatre (but actually the viewers at home). The ringmaster warns of amazing and scary acts, and plenty of surprises, finishing with: "You ain't seen nothin' yet."