User Reviews

Review of all 4 parts:

This 4 part historical adventure from writer Dennis Spooner is a mix of serious drama and comedy. It takes place in Roman times and brings the time travellers to the court of Emperor Nero leading up to the burning of Rome. It features murder, intrigue and humour, some of which is reminiscent of a 'Carry On' film.

This is quite well liked by a fair amount of viewers but I find it pretty weak. The tone is uneven, slipping jarringly rather than smoothly between whimsical humour and dark drama throughout the adventure and descending to full on crazy farce in episode 3. This farce element is silly and just does not work as far as I am concerned, especially when mixed with the story's dark themes, making episode 3 not much better than the very weakest Who episodes. The drama is relatively uninteresting at times throughout the story too. If it were not for the strength of the main cast it would fall totally flat. Luckily the cast carry it off to some extent and I can accept that amongst dark stories such as The Dalek Invasion of Earth and weird sci fi drama The Web Planet a story like this is intended as a fun interlude. I just find it mostly not very well done. Writer Spooner was also the show's new script editor. His tenure had problematic humour and a drop in quality (with the exception of The Crusade).

A few good aspects to the drama and the funnier moments of humour along with some entertaining interaction and dialogue for the main characters (including a decent performance by newcomer Maureen O'Brien as Vicki) keep standards from being entirely poor but this was a disappointing adventure for me.

My Ratings: Episode 1 - 6.5/10, Episode 2 - 6/10, Episode 3 - 4/10, Episode 4 - 6.5/10

The Doctor does what he can go stop himself bring thrown to The Lions, Barbara has to think up a means of escape.

It's a funny old mix of historical reality and historical tampering. It's been a good four part story overall. These historicals were good fun, and the involvement of the four travellers in the mix was imaginative and fun. It's quite striking how in these early years they managed to find purpose for all four, in later years this would sometimes be a struggle. Terrific sets and costumes.

Favourite scene has to be The Doctor's accidentally setting the map of new Rome on fire, and the subsequent rant that followed. I enjoyed Derek Francis here as Nero, particularly the scene where he appears with a wild eyed glint in his eye and a plan to burn down Rome.

This has been a very good watch. 8/10

Next up the totally different Web Planet.

As Nero prepares to burn Rome, the Doctor and Vicki escape while Ian rescues Barbara.

"Inferno" is probably the least rewarding episode of The Romans. It's a fun episode, but somewhat lacking.

Dennis Spooner makes some silly writing decisions, such as making Tavius a Christian and having Sevcheria become the captain of Nero's guards. Quite why Nero would need a slave trader to manage his security I don't know, but it's obviously a cost-cutting measure to save hiring another actor. However, Sevcheria does suffer a rather gruesome fate for a Doctor Who villain: he has a torch shoved in his face by Delos!

Overall, The Romans has its ups and downs, but overall it's very enjoyable. The main pleasure is William Hartnell and Maureen O'Brien's wonderful chemistry and comedic timing, and Derek Francis' excellent performance as Nero. The set design, direction and costumes are all first rate. However, while this rewatch has lowered my opinion somewhat, this is still an great story.

After the brief stop to pick up another companion, the show returned to a proper 4-part serial and I was quite looking forward to getting a decent story again. This time the group travel through time and space and, although they arrive in the same place and time, there appears to have been some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff going on because some of the land in a very serious plot where life is on the line whereas the rest of them appear to have landed into a parallel universe where Sid James is god and innuendo is the main spoken language. Specifically we see Ian in slavery and ultimately fighting as a gladiator while the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki go off into something more humorous.

It is a strange mix and it will certainly stop me complaining that the silly humour in the modern Doctor Who is something new, because this is only the second season and here it is. I don't really have an issue with the sudden shift in tone because I think it is good that it can go lighter when the mood takes it, but the problem for me was that it was such a shift and so sudden that it threw me a bit. It isn't that it becomes lighter, it is that at times it is out and out silly. I got used to this though but the issue that remained was that only parts of the story were like this and the others were more serious. This mix doesn't work and it does feel like two different writers and crews worked on the different bits and they both got different memos about what the end product should be like. It still just about works, but it does so by the silly bits undercutting the more serious bits and trying to drag it down .

The person I feel bad for is Russell; he gives a pretty good performance and really sells the danger of his situation – only for the very next scene to have a bumbling Nero make a smutty pass at Barbara 30 seconds later. Hartnell appears to be greatly enjoying himself although I did turn to Google at one point to see if he was drunk at any point. He is actually pretty funny but, like Russell, he isn't allowed to have the material stay with him to build on it. Hill somehow manages to make the bridge between both and works well in the serious bits while also having a nice comedic touch as well. O'Brien didn't make an impression on me at all here – I didn't make a point of judging her, I just realized at the end of the serial that I had hardly noticed her even though she was in it quite a lot. She seemed to giggle a lot and be silly – although she was in the silly parts of the serial, so maybe this was part of it. Francis' Nero is ridiculous but at least he goes for it.

The Romans is an odd beast; it has bits I enjoyed but it doesn't gel very well between the serious and the comedic, with the end result of them weakening each other. It is an OK serial but it needed to decide what it was doing and do it better.

This one took a couple years for me to finally get through. I always would grow really tired of the serial by episode 2 or 3. While it should be fun to visit ancient Rome and Nero, it ends up being rather tedious and overlong. Watching sword fights should be incredible fun, but I kept on wanting it to move forward to the next thing.

It bothered me to watch The Doctor and Vicky staring at awe at an entire city being burned to the ground, killing hundreds of people in the process, and leaving thousands homeless. They are joyful, and it should be a sorrowful event, given the empathy the two characters normally have. It was rather dark compared to the normal mood and feel of the show.