“The Romans” is a great story and gives Hartnell a chance to show off his superb comic skills. Naturally though, as it’s me writing this, there are just one or two tiny details that bug me. Namely gravity, fist fights and dirty laundry. Gravity we will come back to another time (I’ve got the feeling that when I do cover it, there will be diagrams, formulae and hand wringing over what’s a production “error” and what’s important) so let’s make the one that’s more unique to this story the focus of this blog. It’s the big question that I think is often overlooked about the character of the Doctor (and, of course, the companions too) and it’s one that wasn’t even really hinted at until the 60th anniversary special “The Giggle”. I’m talking, of course, about what underwear the Doctor wears and how often he goes commando.
VICKI: Well, the way you spoke I thought we were going to have adventures and see things. We’ve been here nearly a month and all everyone wants to do is sit around and rest.
At the end of “The Rescue” there’s the obligatory cliff-hanger into the next story and, unusually, “The Romans” picks up on things about a month or so later. In the revived series we’ve had a few instances of large amounts of time passing between episodes/scenes but this is the first time we’ve had it in the classic series (without some sort of “Marco Polo” style narration filling in the gap). This means there’s some filling in to do. Before we get into the detail of the story though, a quick comment about the extended universe. Turns out I’m not the only one who wanted to know what was going on in the month between stories and the BBC Novel “Byzantium!” does try to patch some of it up. It was released in July 2001 and is somewhat tonally different to “The Romans”. This isn’t really an issue till you realise that in March 1999, BBC Books released “More Short Trips” which contains “Romans Cutaway” which gives a different set of events taking place after the TARDIS arrives in 64AD. This is one of the reasons why I’m (mostly) keeping away from the expanded universe until I’ve done the TV stories, if you think it’s confusing keeping track of the information on screen in the 60s then it’s going to become a nightmare when you bring the 90s into it! As for the 00s…
Anyway, back to the meat of this piece. There are actually two reasons why clothing baffles me for this story, along with other trivial domestic issues. One month is actually quite a long time to lay around doing nothing and the script makes it clear that they haven’t been back to check on the TARDIS in all that time. So the first question has to be “Whose clothes are the TARDIS crew wearing?” with the follow on question of “Whose food are they eating and what on earth is going on??”. In recent first Doctor stories, it’s established that the Doctor doesn’t seem to worry too much about carrying currency with him (“The Reign of Terror” springs to mind and there will be similar issues with obtaining clothing in “The Crusade”). Yes, in “The Ark” we learn that the Doctor has some very random historical outfits in the TARDIS wardrobe but just exactly how many he has we don’t know. We won’t see the wardrobe on screen until a brief glimpse in “The Space Museum” and in that story it doesn’t look too extensive. Given the end of “The Rescue”, it isn’t particularly vertical either. Therefore it seems unlikely that the crew packed suitcases with enough clothes for an indefinite stay (plus, of course, they wouldn’t have known where they were, or when, till they’d vacated the ship and nosed around in true first Doctor style). Option two is that they belong to the villa owner. The script tells us that the owner is called Flavius Guiscard and is currently away campaigning in Gaul. Doesn’t sound the sort of thing you take your family with you to do, and there’s no mention of “he and his family are…” so are we to assume that Flavius is a batchelor? It’s also clear that whoever owns the house, they haven’t left any servants behind (the broken vase is still on the ground when Ian and Barbara get back, they assume the Doctor or Vicki would have done the clearing up and that the master of the house isn’t back yet with his servants, or that could be Ian suggesting that the Doctor is the master of the house and that Vicki is his servant!). So the house is currently only occupied by the four travellers. This leaves us with a few random possibilities, all of which seem as likely as the Doctor even wanting to stay in the same village for a month or so without having been to Rome in all this time. First up is that, somehow, the Doctor knew Flavius from his early travels (and I’m guessing it would have been in the Hartnell body otherwise there might have been some awkward questions to answer) and, by total chance (hey, it’s television drama, these things happen), the TARDIS has landed them in 64AD just in time for Flavius to hand over the keys to the house, a whole load of money and the instruction to have a good time. Kind of like the ultimate in time share arrangements 🙂 But if Flavius is a soldier, unless they’re a retired Time Lord that made some very weird retirement choices, are they the sort of person that the Doctor would be all chummy with?
Next possibility is good old fashioned theft (version 1). Worryingly, as noted above, the Doctor isn’t worried about pinching the odd outfit or two. This would possibly work if they were only staying for a couple of days and didn’t plan on changing their clothes much/at all. However, you would hope that in four weeks they had each gotten through at least a dozen outfits. Theft (version 2) suggests therefore that the Doctor has been buying up a wardrobe for himself and his friends by selling off things he’s found around the villa. This can’t be ruled out (as there’s a get out clause ahead) because the other “obvious” answer is that once they’d found the abandoned villa, the Doctor went back to the ship and found a whole load of sparkly things to trade in the market. IF this had been a later Doctor then I would probably have favoured this as the solution (as by the time of, say, the fourth Doctor, we knew what a hoarder he allegedly was). The first Doctor just doesn’t strike me as the sort who keeps a whole load of gems and precious metals in the ship, if he did then he could easily have used them in his many games of backgammon in “Marco Polo” (plus there would also be the question of where they came from in the first place). So, let’s go back to version 2 of the theft idea but add in an unhappy ending. The villa is deserted and the Doctor finds out the owner’s name. Is this a name that, in the universe of Doctor Who, was one that the Doctor had come across in his travels or research and he knew this poor soldier wouldn’t ever be coming back, so selling off the villa’s trinkets wouldn’t technically be stealing?
There is a highly unlikely option 3 as well. We learn, in episode 2, that the Doctor used to train fighters. There is, I guess, the remote possibility that the Doctor has been sneaking out at night to train up the locals in the gentlemanly art of fisticuffs, and earning their keep that way? And herein we find the second problem with the script. Just exactly “when” did the Doctor acquire the knowledge and, more importantly, have a chance and a reason to try it out in the first place before becoming a teacher? I can see the Hartnell Doctor being a coach (though given how out of breath he regularly gets I doubt it was in the immediate run up to “An Unearthly Child”) but actually being in the ring and learning on the job? There’s a big change coming up in the Doctor’s whole character and “background information” over the next season or so. For there to have been such a change there needs to have been a trigger. Now, call me suspicious, but this flood of new information seems to begin the moment he kicks Susan out of the TARDIS. Not that I’m making any allegations (just yet) but it’s quite surprising that he managed to steal a TARDIS and also smuggle Susan off Gallifrey without tripping all kinds of alarms. It’s almost as though she could have been a plant of some kind to keep memories of his time as a fugitive repressed…
Anyway, Susan issues aside, let’s return to the villa as there are still two issues to address. Somehow the Doctor has clothes (as do they all) and somehow the Doctor has refrained from visiting Rome up till this point. Of course, he gives in and heads off. So, what does he pack for his journey? Food. Enough for two or three days (which, strangely enough, he doesn’t then double up on when Vicki decides to accompany him). Food. And nothing else. If I’m going away for a few days then, along with food, I’m sure as hell packing some kind of change of clothes! But no, the Doctor doesn’t seem to worry about such things. Not even a change of underwear. Which leads to the question… is he even wearing underwear for the whole adventure? Is Ian going commando? Are Vicki and Barbara subject to the perils of gravity or have they got one bra each with them that they were in when they left the TARDIS and they’re frantically hoping that it’ll see them through? Please note, I have zero knowledge of bras but I’m assuming that you do occasionally need to change them?
This also brings me to the final question and possibly Doctor Who’s first missed opportunity for a spin off show. Again, I’m wandering into territory here that isn’t my specialist subject but… well (and I’m purely going by what’s on screen here), do you get the impression that Ian and the Doctor have been lazing around all the time whilst Barbara, and probably Vicki, have been the ones lumbered with cooking and cleaning? This is where I start to really question the talents of the companions. I’m not a “bad” cook, I can do stews, roasts, the usual things like that. However, if you were to ask me to cook you a meal featuring larks tongues, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. And that is if I’m in my own kitchen. Put me in a roman villa without hot and cold running water, a decent electric oven and a (probably very needed) fire blanket for when I get distracted and you’ve got the makings of a disaster on your hands. I can’t see Vicki as being thoroughly versed in roman cooking implements or delicacies (books in her time seem to be worrying light on pictures as we’ll find out in “The Space Museum”) and though I can see Barbara knowing the basics, ants eggs in honey probably wouldn’t have been a standard dish in the early 1960s for Barbara to learn! What I’m thinking is that we missed out on a damn fun four week “reality show”, featuring our four heroes arriving at the villa and trying to figure out just exactly how to survive. I’m guessing a week or so at least of some very cold baths till they work out a rota for heating things up. Having said that though, I wouldn’t put it past the SEVENTH Doctor to finally remember that he arrived at a fully stocked roman villa, complete with recipe books and instructions on how to light the fire and then popping back to make sure it was all in place for the first Doctor to find. We know HE had a very extensive wardrobe, so perhaps he even remembered to leave himself plenty of clean underwear. Knowing him though, he probably also left a note saying “Don’t let the fire go out” without remembering just what happened when he did finally make it to Rome…