Small side note before we begin: This episode is available in color on archive.org. Worth looking into if you like that sort of thing.

A pure historical written by Dennis Spooner. I don’t plan on bringing up writers every time, but it is notable how you can sometimes recognize the writer without seeing his name.

This story shares a lot of DNA with ‘The Reign of Terror’ from last season, which was my least favorite in that range. Spooner apparently likes to take a historical setting and mess around it, almost to the point of comedy. Dressing the doctor up, meeting some funny historical people, having some fun at the setting’s expense.

That’s fine I suppose, I’m open to a more comedic tone, but he seems to also want to add some drama, so his division of the cast and choice of setting are sometimes a bit skewed.

This time we’re in the ancient Roman Empire. We start of relatively light (And with a really weird transition from last time’s cliffhanger), but that’s a nice change of pace. It quickly becomes mingled however.

The Doctor decides to travel to Rome with just Vicki. He’s bored of sitting still. An odd choice, but okay. After that, Barbara and Ian quickly get captured as slaves. This is where the issues in tone begins.

We switch often between tones. We have the Doctor and Vicki on one side, disguised as a lyre player and generally having a jolly, comedic time. And then we go back to Ian and Barbara, who are drowning, forced to fight, sold to a lustful emperor and generally just not having a good time.

This is very jarring and detracts from both parts that are going on. The Doctor is having a laugh, and the story wants us to laugh with him, but we don’t because we just want to know if Ian and Barbara will be safe. It slowly becomes a tangled web, but the stories never quite meet each other and it becomes more worrisome and frustrating than intended.

The story does have highlights though. The Doctor in his energetic good mood, while unfitting, is fun to watch. Even getting another fight scene. The lyre performance he gives is also entertaining. At the start, Ian and Barbara are also flirting in a Roman villa, which is a blast and adds on nicely to the audio’s. Vicki does not add much on her own yet, but she still brings about a more positive doctor that wants to explain stuff, which is fun.

Some other notable moments are the emperor Nero, who is a bit of a buffoon, and the fire of Rome, which causes some nice introspection in the doctor, before he laughs it off. We’re getting closer to interfering…..

I haven’t learned that much about the history as the story assumes though. I’ve learned something about the slave trade and the habits of the Roman people, but I don’t really have any new insights in the actual fire or Nero, because both are played for laughs. It still feels very odd to me to do. The fire is by all means a tragic event, but we’re supposed to laugh at it. Doesn’t really land for me.

This story feels at times like a bunch of shorts stuck together. It’s fun in bursts, but the bursts don’t link together all that well and more often than not detract from each other (Let’s all laugh at the silly emperor who burned an entire city). The huge differences in tones make this one pretty weak, switching too quickly from comedy to slavery. That said, there are definitely some parts that are diamonds in the rough, like the lyre-based comedy.