The Romans

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. I quite enjoy the better Carry On films but when Doctor Who goes in that direction like here (or in the 8th Doctor audio Izzy's Story which is more like the WORST Carry On film I think) I am not a fan of it.

This is quite well liked by a fair amount of viewers but I seem to be out of step with the majority as 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 TV 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 in my judgement (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 - 5/10, Episode 4 - 6.5/10

A very funny historical taking place in Roman times while Emperor Nero is in power.

The humour works very well and is at the core of the story. I personally really enjoyed the humour as it is deliberately silly. This results in the story feeling much more fast-paced than previous ones, which I like a lot.

Well I never !
This was not at all what I had expected. The romans is basically a typical historical of this era but spiced with humour it actually stands out! Not like a sore thumb either. I have to say for me at least that this suited the first doc just as well as the serious sides stuff. I’d place this par with the Aztecs as my favourite historical ( excluding the lost ones)

Nero is great and ridiculous.
Hope others enjoy as much as I did 9/10

The rescue leads straight into this as some hartnell stories do

Though neither are related

A story that finds the Doctor and TARDIS crew taking a break in Rome with the Doctor and Vicki wandering into the midst of political intrigue while Ian and Barbara end up kidnapped by slavers. This adventure features some genuinely funny moments such as the Doctor fighting off an assassin singlehandedly or Barbara accidentally knocking Ian in the head during a fight, thus dooming them to slavery. The comic moments are set against the backdrop of Roman slavery and Nero's impending burning of Rome and mass murder, gives it a very dark edge. The more you enjoy dark comedy, the more you'll enjoy this story.