The clown waves at the Doctor and Ace to beckon them into the Circus. He is always waving his hands around, perhaps BRIAN BLESSED told him to do it?
They go inside, and Ace almost walks out again straight away after encountering the terrible gypsy stereotype that is Morgana. It just goes to show that if Li H'sen Chang had turned to out to have been John Bennett in yellowface all along within the confines of the programme then they might have gotten away with it.
It is very dark inside the Circus. There are three mannys in the audience besides the Doctor and Ace, so the sounds as though the Circus is packed full of many mannys clapping must be an illusion. Again this is an illusion inside the show itself, and not just the BBC saving money. This is an important distinction, and it is vital that we note that this is deliberate or else the whole show might look to us like a chronically underfunded TV programme on its last leg.
The Circus show begins with some clowns doing acrobatics and then the Ringmaster comes in and does another rap. He wants the Doctor to perform in the Circus and he starts rhyming in response to whatever the Doctor says. Ace has a bad feeling about this, sensibly enough, as do I - the rhyming quickly gets annoying... but then it is supposed to be annoying within the story, to put the other characters off balance mentally so the Ringmaster can assert dominance over them.
The clown notices that Ace has Flowerchild's earring, but she refuses to tell him where she got it. Ace runs away and the clown sends the other clowns, his robot minions, to chase her.
The Doctor is put in a cage with Captain Cook, Mags and Nord. Outside of the cage is Deadbeat, a manny whose "mind's completely gone" according to the Captain. The clowns come to take Nord away.
While escaping, Ace hears Morgana and the Ringmaster talking. Morgana wants to get away like Bellboy and Flowerchild (well, like them only more successfully) but the Ringmaster and the clown are in charge and she is afraid of them... or of someone or something else that we haven't seen yet.
Nord is killed by some sort of pewpewpew when he fails to entertain in the Circus ring, scoring nil points from the audience jury, but we don't see exactly what happens because this story is still letting its mystery out slowly. We only glimpse what happens from the Doctor's point of view in the cage, and then we see the Ringmaster hold up what is left of Nord.
A new character arrives at the Circus. He is called Whizzkid (according to the credits) and he annoys Morgana because he is a fan of the Circus and is enthusiastic about being in it. The Doctor and Mags escape from the cage by clubbing the robot clown guards using juggling pins, but Captain Cook stays behind.
Ace is still trying to escape from the Circus, which seems to be bigger inside than out just like the TARDIS, so this is harder than it first appears and even cutting through the Circus tent only gets her to another part of the Circus. She is caught by Deadbeat and the clown.
The Doctor and Mags are the ones on the loose inside the Circus now, and they find some stones with carvings on them which add another layer of mystery to whatever is going on here. The stones lead into caves and then to a pit where the Doctor sees an eye, suggesting that we may be in for a Lord of the Rings crossover. Captain Cook and some robot clowns turn up to capture them, confirming that Captain Cook is not just useless, he is actively working for the baddys! This revelation is the end of the episode.
A lot happens in this episode, but because there is so much mystery going on it is quite confusing and not much of it makes sense in isolation - we shall have to wait for the as-yet-unrevealed details of the plot to become revealed to us in the remaining episodes before it will all make sense in the end.
I hope. Mew.
No comments:
Post a Comment