Day 681: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy Part 4

It's towards the conclusion of this story that the cracks begin to show within the narrative. There's a lot of things that happen that require the audience to make assumptions as to how their meaning, because they're never adequately explained, at least in my opinion.

For instance, there's the character of Captain Cook. He gets killed within the first five or so minutes if Part 4, and is left to his eternal rest in some corner of the circus tent. However, towards the climax of the adventure, he comes back as a zombie, in order to prevent Ace, Mags and one of the circus performers known as Kingpin from getting a medallion to the Doctor. It's never really explained why Cook comes back though, instead we're left to assume that he's been brought back by the villains, the Gods of Ragnarok, even if they didn't give any indication that they did such a thing.

There's also the entire premise of the Gods of Ragnarok. They're actually fairly well explained in the story, we know that they wish to be entertained for all eternity, and as such they kidnap performers to perform for them throughout the story. However, there are still some sore points with regards to their story, such as their downfall, which involves the Doctor pulling a sword out of nowhere and using it in conjunction with the medallion to reflect their power back at them. Apparently, this causes the circus to begin to collapse in on itself, which whilst an arresting image, doesn't really feel completely explained to me, the viewer.

But, I'm willing to give this story a free pass, because it's actually incredibly engaging in terms of atmosphere and character, and one gets the sense that there was all of this information in some edit of the script, but it had to be left out for reasons of time or the like. It means that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is left being an imperfect story, but then again, nothing's perfect.