Doctor Who is funny. I don’t mean that
in a deep, philosophical kind of way like “Isn’t it funny that…” I mean Doctor
Who makes me laugh. Often. Whether it’s a dry wit or a bit of slapstick or just
a one-liner that makes me smile, one of the things I love about this show is
that it is funny. “The Romans” is often billed as the series’ first attempt at
comedy, which strikes me as a bit unfair to the eleven stories which preceded
it. What “The Romans” does is present Doctor Who’s first attempt at farce, but
with all the standard trappings of a Doctor Who story. I mentioned in the Time
Stream entry for “The Rescue” that I was looking forward to this next story,
and I was by no means disappointed.
The cliffhanger from the end of The
Rescue is repeated at the beginning of the story, and once we find the TARDIS
crew we are told they’ve been squatters at a Roman villa for about a month.
Conveniently, it’s at this point they start to worry about retrieving the
TARDIS from where it fell at the end of “The Rescue”. I find it hard to believe
that the Doctor would take a month before visiting Rome when he is so close,
but so be it. He and Vicki, who seems to have gelled well with her traveling
companions, head off to Rome, leaving Ian and Barbara to their own devices.
This sounds innocent, and at first I thought all the fan knowledge of the years
was reading WAY too much into this, but Ian and Barbara are so obviously a
couple here. And they are adorable. Get a little wine into them, and the staid teachers
from Coal Hill School know how to have a good time. Until they’re captured and
sold into slavery of course, but really, that’s just an excuse to get Ian all
sweaty and heroic, and for Barbara to get drooled over by “Wacky Nero”.
The Doctor’s masquerade as Maximus
Petullian is enjoyable, making him think on his feet and be the clever, witty
Doctor he doesn’t always get to be. I literally laughed out loud whenever the
Doctor referred to “our hissing friend” – especially when he hissed back! –
because it was a bit of humor I hadn’t been expecting. Something else I wasn’t
expecting was the sight of a shirtless Hartnell as he took a steam with Nero.
That, admittedly, caught me off guard.
I
didn’t find Nero’s pursuit of Barbara to be as humorous as it may have been
intended, but that could simply be twenty-first century values being placed on
a 1964 production. Even with her being the focus of a quarter of the narrative,
I don’t think this was Barbara’s strongest story, although she does have some
good moments. Making her the damsel in distress, even for comic value, just
didn’t work for me. Ian appears to have
picked up a lot of valuable practice in armed combat ever since “The Aztecs”
and has an awful lot luck in being able to pick up Barbara’s trail in Rome. He
also gets a good line about the Doctor, and one that I hadn’t been familiar
with, but it’s about as good a description as I can think of: “Perhaps,
but I've got a friend who specializes in trouble. He dives in and usually finds
a way.” That’s the Doctor, through and through.
As I said in the beginning, Doctor Who makes me
laugh. There are dramatic bits, scary bits, exciting bits, but there are always
funny bits. “The Romans” is four episodes of fun, wit, farce and comedy. There
are some weak points to be sure, and the plot itself is so thin as to be
translucent, but I spent my time watching this story with a smile on my face.
Frankly, there’s not much better praise than that.
NEXT EPISODE: The Web Planet
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