Doctor Who: The Romans (1965)

Picking up from the end of The Rescue, with the TARDIS toppling over the edge of a cliff, the action of The Romans suddenly jumps forward rather oddly and The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki have been enjoying a relaxing holiday in a villa in a month.

They are in Italy, 64AD, and Vicki wants to see Rome, so The Doctor offers to take her, while Ian and Babara continue to rest in their new home.

On the road to Rome, The Doctor is mistaken for murdered lyre-player Maximus Pettulian and escorted to Emperor Nero's palace.
Back the villa, Ian and Barbara are ambushed by slave-hunting thugs - Ian is sold off to be a galley slave while Barbara is taken to Rome to be sold at auction.

She becomes a handmaiden to Empress Poppea (Kay Patrick), but catches the eye of lecherous Emporer Nero (Derek Francis).

Meanwhile Ian's galley runs aground and he heads off to Rome to try and find Barbara, but is recaptured and sent to the arena as a gladiator.

The Doctor is supposed to entertain Nero's court with his lyre-playing, but instead manages to bluff everyone with a variation of the "Emporer's New Clothes". This, however, backfires as Nero believes the court prefers The Doctor's playing to his own and wants to have him consigned to the arena as well - as lion bait.

Inspired by Carry On Cleo (the finest of the Carry On films), Dennis Spooner's script for The Romans was the BBC's first attempt at playing a Doctor Who historical story for laughs.

Sadly verbal wit soon gives way to annoying farce as Nero chases Barbara around the palace halls (you can almost hear the Benny Hill theme in your head).

While it is quite inspired that throughout the whole story The Doctor and Vicki never find out what is going on with Barbara and Ian (and actually believe them to have spent the entire time relaxing back the villa), much of the humour is pretty weak and rather silly.

This story must also hold the record for the amount of fluffed lines and missed cues by William Hartnell.

Although this story's light-hearted style laid the groundwork for future historical stories to take more liberties with the recognised facts for the sake of a good story, The Romans was ultimately a slight misfire and meant that the next few historical tales, such as The Crusade and The Massacre, reverted to a more straight-forward approach.

Both this story and The Rescue also showed William Hartnell's Doctor being more action-orientated than we generally consider him, with The Romans seeing him boasting to Vicki of his martial prowess and claiming to have trained the the Mountain Mauler of Montana (presumably a wrestler or a boxer with a nom-de-guerre like that).