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.
Rating - 6.83/10
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