The Romans (1965)

The Romans marks a change in style for Doctor Who. This is the first story that features more comedy than drama. This is another pure historical story. After the reprise of the TARDIS going over the cliff, the story moves on a month with the crew resting. Well Ian is resting and the Doctor is watering the plants. Vicki an Barbara are going to the market. When Barbara and Vicki are in the market, Vicki is presumptuous as she thinks that Barbara will make a dress out of some material. She’s also a little ungrateful as she is bored and wants to leave. Though she seems to perk up when the Doctor goes to Rome.

The crew aren’t looking for trouble (though they never are) yet it seems to find them very quickly. There are lots of people interested in them and its quite good how people have just assumed that they are looking after the house for the owner who is in Gaul. It’s quite a convenient plot point that answers the question as to how they have ended up in this house/villa. There is a lovely scene where they are all sitting around enjoying the food that they are eating. There is a nice bit of enquiring on the Doctor’s part about what they’ve eaten and it shows how the series has developed in a relatively short time. Despite being together for only a short time, its amazing just how well they seemed to have gelled.

There’s a lovely scene with Ian and Barbara after the Doctor and Vicki have left where they seem to behave like a married couple. They spend a lot of time lounging around and joking going on between them and it’s a nice moment that we don’t often get to witness in Doctor Who. Sadly it doesn’t last long and just when you get use to the niceness of the pacing and the humour, it all changes. They are taken as slaves and so their story is more ‘grown-up’ than the one featuring the Doctor and Vicki. The Doctor gets taken to be someone else by a Roman guard after Maximus who was first seen in the square by Vicki. He was suppose to be killed by the mute on the order of Nero. When you first seem him in the market you think how much he looks like the Doctor. To be honest it’s a bit silly as it’s the cliché of drama that someone is taken for someone else.

The thing about this story is that the comedy takes some out of the sting out of the grim idea of being taken as slaves. This means that there isn’t much in the way of drama and it just feels like two plots are running side by side and you know that they will be reunited. The cliffhanger is a bit odd if I’m honest. What we have is the mute assassin walking up to the curtain which belongs to the room containing the Doctor and Vicki and then the screen fades to black.

The whole episode is a comedy episode with a faint hint of seriousness. It wrong foots us because we had become use to serious episodes and at times quite dark that when it tries to do comedy it doesn’t seem quite right. It’s hard to believe that they decided to do this story but it exists and as an episode is perfectly fine. There are some nice moments and its better than some of the stories coming up.

Episode2 starts off with the cliffhanger of the mute assassin about to kill the Doctor. What follows is a nice little fight sequence which is similar to the one in The Rescue. I thought that the cliffhanger was a bit odd and I still think its odd but the fight was quick and immediate that I forgot about it at first. The Doctor almost won before Vicki chases him out of the window, much to the Doctors annoyance.

More odd models to show that they are in Roma, at least it’s a step up from the drawings in ‘The Reign of Terror’. Barbara is on her own and she is about to become a slave. She is looking after a woman who is very ill a bit like Ian was back in ‘The Reign of Terror’. She gets an offer from Tavious but refuses it which is in keeping with her character but I think had Vicki or Susan been with her then there might have been a different outcome. Ian is also on his own but has ended up on a ship. Neither of their settings is particualry cheery which is at odds with the light hearted tone the story has taken on the Doctor and Vicki’s side of things. Things get worse for him when the ship hits the rocks. It’s all got really bad for him really quickly.

Tavious seems like a nice person even though he is involved in what is essentially human trafficking. Which I’m not sure how I feel about it. Being such a horrific thing it feels wrong to sympathise with him even if he shows kindness to one of our favourite characters. He gets his own way and buys her at the auction but Barbara is still not going to be 100% grateful. It’s good how the Doctor and Vicki miss seeing Barbara because the Doctor is in too much of a hurry to meet Nero. It’s a frustrating thing that happens here but if they did meet then the story would be over too quickly.

We get to meet Nero in this episode and he’s not quite historical figure that he should have been. He is very much played for laughs and I must admit that the scene with the Doctor and Nero was quite fun to watch with Vicki chipping in the odd line that makes the initial scene between these two quite good.

Despite starting off quite comedic, the story takes a more darker tone than in the previous episode. Ian and Barbara are in quite harsh situations. It’s good that the Doctor and Vicki’s story is more light-hearted as this story should have the right balance and Dennis Spooner has done well with this script in my opinion. This is a better episode and my opinion of the episode has changed greatly since watching the opening episode.

The penultimate episode of this story sees the four regulars have their own adventures. The Doctor is on course to play in front of Nero and befriends him. Unfortunately there is a lot of nothing happening in this story. Instead of trying to install some action into this, Dennis Spooner decides to base a large chunk of the episode Nero’s palace instead of having more of Ian which is something I was yearning for. Had there been more of William Russell then I would be more warm to the whole four episodes but sadly what we have is about 20 minutes of the Nero running around after Barbara and the Doctor enjoying a sauna.

The scene where Nero is chasing after Barbara is a bit like a sketch from the Benny Hill show. It’s rather silly and whilst I know that its suppose to be a comedic episode its still a bit frustrating. Another thing that was frustrating was how the Doctor missed Barbara yet again. It’s quite a while before we finally get to the more serious side of the story and that of Ian’s situation. He’s about to be trained to be a gladiator.

 

Vicki gets to spend some time with Locusta. Locusta is a woman who poisons people. I quite like the character and thought that Anne Tirard played the role quite well and seemed to add some sanity to the plot.  Vicki ends up nearly poisoning Nero which would have been against history.

The Doctor is still due to play his musical instrument even though he can’t actually play a note. The scene where the Doctor does end up playing the instrument he decides that he is going to play it but so quietly that no one can hear it. It’s quite a bold plan of the Doctor and it fits in with the feel of the story. The moment where the Doctor stops Nero from drinking the poison is the Doctor’s attempt to prevent history from being changed and it brings the events of ‘The Aztecs’ to the viewers mind. Nero gets someone else to test his drink and it is filled with poison. The rather pithy comment that he makes when the person drops dead I think is rather out of step with the show.

The episode ends with Ian in another fight in front of Nero and Barbara. It’s quite a good fight and it leads to a nice cliffhanger where Nero does the dreaded thumbs down thing. What almost makes it seem tense is Barbara’s reaction. The episode is rather a let down because after the mix of comedy and drama in the previous episode, it was sad that it seemed to be more comedy in this one. My view of the story hasn’t really changed and it’s easy to anyone why this story isn’t as well loved as it is.

The final episode of this story which hasn’t been one of the greatest in Doctor Who. It starts with the sword fight with Ian. Sadly that’s where the excitement ends because the rest of the story continues to be a precession of scenes where we are suppose to find things funny but it doesn’t work. The next time that the story picks up a bit is when the Doctor is looking over a map of Rome and accidentally sets fire to the map which Nero is horrified by at first but soon cheers up when he realises that he could burn Rome to the ground so the senate would back his plans to rebuild Rome.

The problem with this episode is that I have lost patience with the story and just think that its neither funny nor dramatic. The performances are fine but its what they have to do that is poor. Even William Russell cant save this story and what started off as an interesting journey at the early start of the story now descends into nothingness. The moment the fire starts on the map it is when the story is getting wrapped up and the regulars start to make their way out of Rome and back to the villa. The shot of Rome up in flames might seem cheap and a bit of a let down but I think that whilst it might have been good to see something better but its rather effective and I liked it.

The last shot of Nero is of him playing his lyre whilst Rome burns which has spawned the phrase. Nero has been a massive disappointment because unlike Marco Polo, I thought that they could have done something different with the character and made him a threat in the story instead of the clown that he was portrayed.

I like it when the regulars are reunited after narrowly missing each other for the previous episodes. It might have been a far stretch to believe that they could all have missed each other whilst almost tripping over each other but that’s the least of the stories problems and it’s a massive relief that it was only four episodes long.  The final scene of the episode is in the TARDIS and the Doctor says the TARDIS is being dragged down by some force. It’s a nice way to ensure that people turned in for the next episode as it’s a nice mystery about what could be powerful enough to do this. I cant deny that I’m sad that this episode is over. It was fun a bit at the beginning but soon became tiresome and not really what I think Doctor Who should be doing. Historicals are hard enough to get right without adding comedy to it. Sadly The Romans fall well short of the mark.