2x4. The Romans
Writer: Dennis Spooner
Director: Christopher Barry
Script Editor: Dennis Spooner
Producers: Verity Lambert & Mervyn Pinfield
Synopsis: While staying in Ancient Rome, the time travelers
split
up and find themselves uninentional participants in a series of
adventures:
the Doctor and Vicki are caught up in some palace
intrigue
involving an attempt to assassinate the emperor Nero, Barbara has to
fend
off the advances of the eccentric emperor, and Ian is forced into
slavery
and nearly dies in gladiatorial combat.
Review: "The Romans" is correctly recognized as the first
example of Doctor Who
attempting a story with a primarily comedic flavor, and while the
episode
deserves credit for experimenting with a new approach, I'm sorry to say
that
I find the results disappointing. There are some scenes where the humor
works,
but there are just many where it doesn't, and I don't think it would be
uncharitable
to suggest that the creative team had not yet figured out quite how to
do
comedy on Doctor Who.
It would be easy to say that "The Romans" goes wrong by trying to make
a
joke of things that aren't funny: Ian and Barbara are sold into
slavery,
the Doctor and Vicki nearly get mixed up in an assassination plot, and
at
the end Rome is set on fire. But I don't think the episode's problems
are
quite that simple. Ian's storyline is played straight for the most
part,
and there's no reason that seemingly grim material can't be played in a
humorous
way as long as the right approach is taken. Writer Dennis Spooner seems
to
envision the story as a farce, taking the excesses of Nero's Roman
Empire
and playing them as a comedy of errors and misunderstandings. The
imperial
palace as rendered by Spooner's script is a textbook example of the
lunatics
running the asylum, as Nero is so preoccupied with chasing Barbara and
contemplating
his ridiculous scheme to rebuild Rome that he barely notices or cares
about
a conspiracy being hatched right under his nose.
Ian and Barbara respond to all this as we might expect: Ian simply does
what he can to survive and reunite with his friends, while Barbara is
understandably repulsed by Nero. The Doctor and Vicki, however, are
written as if they
know that they're not really in Ancient Rome but only in a farcical
television serial about Ancient Rome, and they seem curiously
indifferent to the danger to themselves and to others. In the case of
the Doctor, it's not a return to the selfish attitude he showed in
early first-season episodes but a carelessness that's almost childish.
He walks into the middle of what he correctly guesses is a murderous
conspiracy for no real reason (given that he never takes sides or seems
to care about its outcome much), and the fade from his own chuckling
at having inspired the fire of Rome into Nero's insane laughter feels
just
a bit too appropriate. (Incidentally, if you thought the Doctor got
whimsical
in "The Rescue," he's positively giddy in "The Romans," and frankly
Hartnell's
endless "hmm-hmm-hmm" laughing got on my nerves after a while.) Vicki
is
less of a known quantity and thus perhaps less "out of character" in
the
strict sense, but she still has one rather jarring scene in which she
casually
and unconcernedly mentions that she may have just poisoned Nero.
I am aware, of course, that this is all intended as a joke, and I have
no
problem with otherwise dramatic series doing comedy episodes from time
to
time. I certainly don't mind it on Doctor Who,
of which humor would later become an essential ingredient, at least
during
certain periods of the show's history. But it's always been my opinion
that
the characters of any series -- comedic or dramatic -- must remain at
least
minimally consistent from one installment to the next, no matter what
the
situation around them. The Doctor has certainly never shown any signs
of
indifference to matters of life and death simply because some of the
people
involved are fools and buffoons, and there's no indication from what we
saw
of Vicki in "The Rescue" that she would be likely to behave that way
either.
For a later and more successful example, consider "The Stones of
Blood":
the Doctor notices the humor in a pretty grim situation and quips his
way
through the entire serial, but never does one get the sense that he
isn't
concerned about what's happening or that he would have laughed it off
if
he had accidentally given someone the idea to burn an entire city. But
"The
Romans" treats the Doctor and Vicki as if they were just two more
caricatures
in the menagerie of silliness rather than recurring characters with
established
traits.
I realize that I'm going against what appears to be a positive
consensus among Who fandom
about this serial, so I'll hasten to add that there were parts that I
rather
liked. The Doctor's charade when called upon to play the lyre -- he
claims
that only the most sophisticated ear will be able to hear the music,
and
then proceeds to feign playing it without touching the strings -- is
cleverly
executed, and it reaches its payoff when Nero, either pretending to
hear
it or fooling himself into thinking he really is hearing it,
grumbles,
"He isn't *that* good." And the more light-hearted tone does work when
the
script focuses on the increasingly affable relationships between the
leads,
such as when the Doctor calls Ian "Chesterfield" and then tells him
"someone's
calling you" when Barbara cuts in with "ChesterTON." And I also got a
kick
out of the back-and-forth between Ian and Barbara, especially the gag
they
both pull about using the refrigerator and Ian's reaction when he
discovers
that Barbara accidentally bashed a pot over his head in the struggle
with
the kidnappers.
"The Romans" is never boring (a claim that not every Hartnell-era
serial
can make), and I give it credit for trying something new and opening up
the
show's stylistic range. But while the creative team demonstrates a good
comic
ear at times, there are few things more essential to a television
series
than consistent characterization of the leads, and this serial's flaws
in
that area are too significant for it to be a success.
Other notes:
- The TARDIS falling off a cliff at the end of "The Rescue" turned out
to
be completely irrelevant: the ship was not harmed or even stuck
somewhere
that made it hard to enter or exit, as far as I can tell.
- On a minor point of historical accuracy, Nero himself wasn't in Rome
when
the city burned, whether or not he was responsible for the fire.
Rating: ** (out of four)
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