A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 55. All Roads Lead To Rome (The Roman, Episode Two)

As is the mode of these early serials, we have our team triforcated: Ian ends up on a slave galley, Barbara is sold to be a house slave for Nero’s Wife Pompeii, and the Doctor and Vicki get to meet Nero Ceaser themselves...of course, considering that the Doctor doesn’t actually know how to play the lyre and it looks like the lyre player he is pretending to be in involved in some sort of political plot, things potentially get complicated.  And it’s even more complicated when Ian and his new friend head to Rome after the galley is shipwrecked and is now going to be trained to fight stock footage lions as a gladiator....

Things are moving at a pretty fast clip, but that humor creep continues when it comes to Nero. There is no ambiguity when it comes to Derek Francis’ portrayal; he is a broadly comic buffoon.  I do wonder if that might be Dennis Spooner’s point--that when it comes to government, you cannot expect a moron to achieve greatness (kinda pertinent these days, huh?)--but Francis aims so far into the bleachers that it’s impossible to take him seriously.  It takes away from the absolute grimness of Ian’s thread and the nuanced performance of Michael Peake as Tavius, who ends up buying Barbara, which seem to exist in an entirely different serial.

To be fair, the resolution of the cliffhanger is also played for comedy, and it’s a joy to behold.  We get to see Hartnell (or Hartnell’s stunt double) get into a fight with the assassin and revel in his physicality after he and Vicki dispose of the threat.  This approach, with the Doctor and Vicki treating this as a grand escapade when their friends are going through a gauntlet of the worst Rome has to offer, actually was effective for me.  Of course, a lot of this might be because I am thoroughly on board with Vicki and her sunnier, more adventurous outlook.

So....I’m still on board.  I like that Spooner is continuing to deal with Rome’s ickier aspects head on.  But still, I fear that, with the appearance of Francis’ Nero, things are going to do downhill from here.