Today’s episode is the final episode of the season but due
to scheduling problems it is the first episode of 1989 which is the final year
of the original run. Ratings wise, this was watched by 1.7 million more than
had watched the previous episodes on December 28. There is more plot
development in the first couple of minutes of this episode than there has been
in the previous three episodes. The thing that has worked quite well is that
director Alan Wearing has done a relatively good job in keeping me distracted
from the fact that nothing substantial has been happening.
The family finally show us what they are really about. They
are actually the Gods of Ragnarok who are visually very impressive and are made
out of rock (obviously). All they want is to be entertained and the Doctor does
several tricks to try and amuse them and it’s extraordinary that this is
happening in the final episode. One thing I don’t like about this section is
the incredible number of rolling r’s that the Doctor uses. I must say that I am
slightly disappointed with what happened here. After waiting for a long time
for this encounter, it seemed that this was just a bit of padding which again is
odd considering that it’s the final episode.
Captain Cook has been the unexpected star of the episode
because he is just superb from the very beginning. There was always something
fun every time he was on screen. Even when he was being horrible to people
there was something to enjoy about him and T.P. McKenna has been a very good
piece of casting. That’s not to say that Jessica Martin (Mags) and Ian
Reddington (Chief Clown) haven’t been just as good but in this episode I
thought that the Captain was the stronger of this trio.
The performances from the regular have been quite good
although neither have been particularly outstanding. That is probably harsh
bearing in mind that Sylvester McCoy does do his magic trick routine well and
if Britains Got Talent were around in 1988 then he wouldn’t get buzzed by Simon
Cowell.
The explosion that happens as the Doctor leaves the tent is
fantastic and its made even better when you take into consideration that McCoy doesn’t
flinch. It kind of makes up for the disappointment of the Ragnarok/Doctor
encounter. The ending is quite nice because it sees Kingpin and Mags going off
to set up a new circus. All’s well that ends well and I haven’t hated the last
four episodes as much as I was expected. I thought that there were good things
but there is something in it that I find underwhelming. Despite my reservations
it was a good ending to what has been a vastly improved series and I think that
the show in back going in the right direction.
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