CREEPY. That’s what Ace considers of clowns. However the Doctor insists on getting into the talent competition in the Psychic Circus, the self-proclaimed Greatest Display in the Galaxy, on earth Segonax. What has reduced Segonax for an arid wasteland? Why possess the happy-go-lucky circus folk stayed here such a long time? And why are they no more happy? Above all, what is the dreadful truth about the ‘skill contests’ run by the sinister Ringmaster and his automatic robot clowns? The Doctor and Ace want all their death-defying abilities in the big top to uncover a brooding, ancient evil which has damaged the spirit from the Circus and demanded the sacrifice of so many lives. Sophie Aldred, who played Ace in Doctor Who, reads Stephen Wyatt’s full and unabridged novelisation, 1st published by Focus on Books in 1989.