'The Romans' is Doctor Who's first attempt at full-blown comedy after the hints of this in 'The Reign of Terror', also by Dennis Spooner. Despite this, it tends to be ignored in favour of 'Marco Polo', 'The Aztecs' or 'The Crusade' when historical stories are overlooked, which is shame because it is, quite frankly, brilliant. 

Firstly, 'The Romans' is frequently genuinely funny rather than simply witty or satirical. Most of the comedy comes from Derek Francis' Nero, who is an excellent character. Despite frequent slapstick or innuendo, Francis plays it with utter conviction – Nero may be a lecherous bumbling egotistical buffoon, but he can still have people killed and Francis gives an impression of stupid brutality. Whilst he gets lines like "I'll have you both killed over and over again", it is still easy to believe that he really could have the Doctor and Vicki slain, which stops 'The Romans' from being too cozy. Nonetheless, his scenes with the Doctor are pure comedy, and Hartnell proves himself a master, especially during the scene where he silently plays the lyre, having announced that the music is so sophisticated that only those with a keen musical taste will be able to hear it (not only is this an obvious nod to The Emperor's New Clothes, but the Doctor claims to have suggested the idea to Hans Christian Anderson). Nero's sulky announcement that "he's alright but he's not all that good" is hilarious. Even when Nero is absent however, the comedy lurks throughout from the scene in which the Doctor gets Ian's name wrong, to Barbara accidentally knocking Ian out during the fight with the slavers. The scene near the end of episode four in which the Doctor realises that he inspired the great fire of Rome is amusing but also significant; it is the first time since 'The Aztecs' that the idea of meddling in history is mentioned, but on this occasion, whilst the Doctor warns Vicki to be careful, he is clearly gleeful when he finds out that he has influenced events. His overall sense of responsibility to the web of time will remain throughout the series, but it's still interesting to see him consider the possibilities of interfering with almost childish delight. The Doctor shines throughout this story, but particular note must be given to his fight with the assassin, whom he easily out-fights. It is unusual for Hartnell's Doctor to participate in violence, with Ian usually fulfilling that role, but it is hugely entertaining to see him scrapping with such obvious relish. Although it does raise the question of why he didn't give Bennett the same treatment in 'The Rescue'. 

Of course, comedy of 'The Romans' is tempered by the predicament of Ian and Barbara, who are kidnapped and sold into slavery. The grim reality of this situation is largely focused on Ian, who first gets forced to row on board a slave ship and is later forced to train as a gladiator; Barbara's situation seems less perilous, since it becomes more comic once she reaches the palace. On one level the idea of Nero trying to force himself on the enslaved Barbara is of course horrific, but to be honest the way in which it is presented disperses any such horror, since Nero is more reminiscent of a harmless and self-deluded middle-aged flirt rather than a sexual predator. It still probably wouldn't be done today, but it has such a pantomime tone to the way it is handled that 'The Romans' just about gets away with it. Ian's experiences are much more brutally portrayed and, as in 'The Reign of Terror', Spooner uses this grittiness to give 'The Romans' a constant sense of danger despite the comedy element. The feeling of restfulness at the start offsets this, as we learn that the Doctor and his companions have spent a month relaxing around the villa – it is unusual to hear of the TARDIS crew getting some time to relax, but somehow welcome. 

This story confirms the suspicions sown in 'The Rescue' that Vicki is more fun than Susan, taking constant delight in the sights of ancient Rome, and generally giving an impression that she is eager for new experiences. Her frank discussion with Locusta is full of curiosity rather than the moral outrage that Barbara might have demonstrated on meeting the court poisoner. Later, her glib (and amusing) attitude towards nearly poisoning Nero emphasizes that she is still a child and suggests that, as yet, she doesn't seem to really grasp the consequences of her actions - indeed, she certainly doesn't grasp the implications of time travel yet, or she wouldn't have tried to poison Nero. I suspect that her attitude is largely a combination of giddiness at being able to go anywhere and any when, and also at having escaped from Dido - she constantly bubbles over with excitement. Kept largely by the Doctor's side as he uses his wits to survive in the court, she is effectively shielded from any real danger during this story. This changes during 'The Web Planet', after which she is at least slightly more cautious during her travels with the Doctor.

'The Romans' also succeeds in terms of characterisation; not only Nero, but all the supporting characters seem real, from the old slave woman in Barbara's cell, to Ian's new and trusty friend Delios, to the gentle Tavius who is key to Barbara's safety in the palace. The slave traders are nasty without ever becoming pure clichй, the unfortunate Tigilinus entertains throughout with his unwanted and occasionally unnoticed fussing around Nero, and the scheming and jealous Poppaea is deliciously icy. Every single character, however minor, is well captured. In addition, the sets are uniformly excellent, managing to give a convincing impression of ancient Rome. 'The Romans' is the best surviving example of the comedy historical and is easily as deserving of a DVD release as 'The Aztecs'.

This is madness! “We’ve wandered off our astral plane,” says the Doctor at one point, and he’s not wrong. This is Doctor Who - Timothy Leary style!

The Web Planet is often accused of being boring, but apart from episodes four and five dragging a bit, this is highly entertaining stuff. Of course you do need a similar sense of humour to me, and find amusement in things that make absolutely no sense, and on that score The Web Planet is a laugh riot.

It’s one big acid trip two years before such things were popular: giant talking insects, a story so garbled you wonder if they’re still speaking English, weird sets and lots of (presumably) coloured flashing lights.

William Hartnell is at his most incomprehensible – not just the famous line-forgetting scene in the TARDIS that leaves poor William Russell with a baffled look on his face, but throughout the first few episodes he rambles constantly, often laughing in the middle of sentences for no apparent reason and running around like a monkey, or a toddler with attention deficit order. He only shuts up when he’s been hypnotized by a big gold wishbone.

I found Vicki a pleasantly bland presence after having to sit through seven episodes of Carol Ann Ford’s hyperactivity last week during a viewing of The Daleks. She doesn’t scream at all really, which is great, and she gurgles quite horribly when covered in sticky web stuff. Ian and Barbera have pretty much the same roles as in The Daleks, though, clambering through caves and whipping the locals up into the obligatory suicide mission.

The worst bit is where the Menoptra and Barbara annoy a Zarbi by shouting “Zarbiiii!!” at it, which is all very Tellytubby in execution, as are the Optra who cheapen the whole experience when on screen. By hopping.

The best bit is the Menoptra attack – the sight of the Menoptra in flight is graceful, very very psychedelic and oddly moving. No, the best bit is where the Zarbi runs head first into one of the studio cameras – not so much because it happens, but because it’s so obviously going to happen.

The Web Planet is an imaginative and ambitious attempt to create an alien world run by insects. The moth-like Menoptera are trying to reclaim the planet that is being controlled by the ant-like Zarbi under the influence of the evil Animus. The plot devise is typical for early Hartnell stories. The TARDIS crew lands, then becomes separated, then the TARDIS is stolen, then the Doctor and his companions help the good guys triumph, then they reunite and retrieve the TARDIS and leave. 

However, there are a number of interesting ideas: a totally alien world without any humanoid inhabitants or visitors (other than the TARDIS crew), the evolution of intelligent insects, and the ability of the Animus/Zarbi to control gold objects and those in contact with gold. I also liked the attempt to give the Menoptera insect-like movements. 

The story suffers from too much padding and too little story to sustain all 6 episodes, but the novel ideas make it worth viewing. There is one biological problem with the Menoptera and Zarbi. Giant insects and insect-like creatures existed on prehistoric earth only during periods when the oxygen levels in the atmosphere we about 50% greater than our current levels. The reason is that the insect respiratory system is very effective at small sizes but not efficient at larger sizes. Increased oxygen levels allow them to over come this problem that normally limits the size of insects. The problem is that the alien planet has a thinner atmosphere than earth, so large insect-like life wouldn’t be possible. 

Visually the Web Planet looks like a high school play. The sets, Menoptera costumes, the Zarbi (plastic ants with human hind legs), and Zarbi larvae are awful and look amateurish. Some reviewers say that it was quite good for 1965 but it just doesn’t hold up 42 years later. I disagree because the visuals do not hold up to productions from the 1950s and 1960s. Alien insects with good visuals were seen in Them, First Men in the Moon, and the Outer Limits episode The Zanti Misfits. 

It isn’t just the low budget special effect that let the production down. Scenes set in the atmosphere of the alien world were shot with special filters that were smeared with Vaseline. This made the camera lenses distort the images with the intention to show that the alien atmosphere was different from earth. I understood this only after I watched the documentary that accompanies the DVD. Although I like the reason that they did this I just think that it looks like bad filming. 

The Web Planet is probably the most ambitious of the Hartnell years. But the comical costumes and props make this story primarily of interest to longtime fans who really want to see every existing episode. If this was the first 6 episodes of Doctor Who that someone watched, then it is likely that it would their last. It is interesting to note that the viewing audience in Britain peaked during the early episodes of The Web Planet and then dropped throughout the 6 episodes. The audience for Doctor Who was never this high again until a decade later. The story line is imaginative and interesting enough to make The Web Planet a great candidate to be redone with post-Jurassic Park CGI effects. 

** out of 4.

When I first started my journey of Doctor Who, I tried to keep open minded about certain things, and I still do. I tend not to let the opinions and views of other fans cloud my judgement of any particular adventure. However, I must be in agreement with fandom regarding 'The Web Planet'; it is simply, without a doubt, the worst adventure ever created. 

I first viewed this 6-parter on Christmas Day with my girlfriend three years ago, and we nearly didn't survive the experience because we nearly died of absolute boredom. 

However, I must say that recently I have watched 'The Web Planet' with a mission in mind; to write responsorial dialogue in the fashion of Mystery Science Theater. Most of the crappy films that exist are usually made enjoyable thanks to MST3K. And so I painstakingly wrote some rather funny lines to say at certain junctions of all 6 episodes, and it does make the experience a bit more enjoyable, simply because you can delight in taking a piss out of what is undoubtably a bunch of great ideas poorly executed. This is my suggestion to everyone, if you wish to enjoy 'The Web Planet', view it and attempt to develop your own witty responses, it's fun. 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that many of the ideas were good when they were written on paper, and a great deal must be commended to going above and beyond the call of duty to attempt a truly alien landscape and environment. However, what ruins it is the pacing, because it literally takes forever for anything exciting to happen. By the time you get to episode four, you really don't care if the Menoptra overthrow the Zarbi and the Animus, you just want it all to be over and done with. What also ruins it are those annoying sound effects used for the Zarbi, they sound like video game sound effects from Atari or even KalicoVision. Not only that, but there are so many fluffed lines, I totally lost count. In addition, what was the deal with the weird hand movements by the Menoptra, it looked like they were conducting an orchaestra or something. 

I feel sorry for Martin Jarvis, a highly respected and talented actor, for having to play one of the Menoptra. Then again, this could have been one of his first acting jobs, who knows? Luckily he makes up for it with a marvelous performance years later in 'Jubilee'. I also felt sorry for the regulars for having to trudge through such a horrendously plodded adventure. I feel bad for Bill Sutton, who recently passed away, he had a lot of great ideas. They just weren't translated well to television. I think his ideas were overly ambitious and were a bit too big for the timeframe in which they were used. If his script were proposed a little later on in the years, the result probably would've been slightly better than what we ended up with at the time. Then again, who knows for certain. But take my advice, if you intend on watching this, you may like it, you may not. But first watch it, come up with some cool lines to shout at the screen at appropriate times, then sit back and enjoy your very own MSTied version of 'The Web Planet'.

For a television show with the concept of time travel at its core, Doctor Who took its time in giving viewers a story about time paradoxes. Towards the end of the second season, Glyn Jones’ four-parter “The Space Museum” saw the TARDIS “jump a time track” and give the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki a glimpse of their future – as exhibits in a Morok Space Museum on the planet Xeros. The premise works well in the context of the story as the TARDIS crew struggle to avoid their destiny – Vicki stirs up the Xeron rebels, Ian tempts fate trying to talk down an armed man safe in the knowledge that he can’t be shot… but no matter what the travellers do, their destiny seems to be those glass museum cases…

Reviewing this story almost forty years on, I have been completely and utterly spoiled by the sheer brilliance of writers like Steve Lyons, whose skill when it comes to writing these time paradox stories is beyond compare. I have become used to stories so complex that is only quite a while afterwards that things start to make sense, and herein lies the rub. Glyn Jones’ resolution to “The Space Museum” is absolutely awful. There is no clever manipulation of time, no reset button, no grandfather paradox, no Blenovitch limitation effect… not even an excuse from the Doctor about mysterious “…power that Time Lords have.” Instead, the TARDIS crew are rescued by the Xerons, and don’t end up as exhibits in the Museum. They did change their fate after all. And that’s it.

The slow and contemplative bulk of “The Space Museum” is completely overshadowed by the ending – DALEKS! The Dalek casing in the Museum earlier in the story reminded us all that the destroyers from Skaro were never far away, and the cliff-hanger ending sees them actually begin pursuit of the TARDIS in the own time travel machine…

“The Crusade” is not one of my favourite first Doctor serials. The fact that half of the episodes are missing from the BBC archives does the story no favours, but my problem with David Whitaker’s story is that it is no more than a series of very unfortunate events. Granted, “The Crusade” is a series of well-written and well-acted unfortunate events, but as is the problem with so many Hartnell stories there is nothing more to the plot than the Doctor and his companions trying to escape Palestine in one piece. Comparing his story to “The Aztecs,” for example, really highlights its shortcomings. Although that serial is also based around the premise of the Doctor and his companions trying to get back to the TARDIS alive, it is a much more intriguing story as it explores Barbara actively trying to change history – something that by this point in her travels, she knows she cannot do.

That said, I think that the production standards of “The Crusade” are higher than in any of the earlier Hartnell historicals. There isn’t a cloth background in sight; the costumes and make-up jobs are superb and even the scenes set outside (in the desert and the woods, for example) are very convincing for a 1965 studio-bound TV show. Moreover, “The Crusade” should be watched if only for Julian Glover’s brilliant portrayal of King Richard the Lionheart. Glover manages to imbue the ruthless crusader with a surprisingly sympathetic side, depicting him as a tortured soul who always does what he believes to be right. Even when we, the audience, disagree with what he is doing – be it waging war on a foreign land or aggressively arranging his sister’s marriage – thanks to Glover’s performance we can still identify with the King’s point of view. Incidentally, Jean Marsh (who would return to the show in 1989’s “Battlefield”) also gives a spirited performance as Lionheart’s sister, Joanna, and I would be doing Walter Randall a great injustice if I did not mention his absolutely malevolent El Akir – possibly the most evil human character ever to appear in Doctor Who. His scarred face masks an even more hideous interior, and in spite of Doctor Who’s family audience, the implications of his deplorable actions (kidnapping, rape etc.) give his character a very real, very nasty side that many (particularly early) Doctor Who villains lack.

Watching “The Lion” and “The Wheel of Fortune” on the “Lost In Time” DVD and also telesnap reconstructions of “The Knight of Jaffa” and “The War-Lords” I think I have managed to get a very good feel for this story, and sadly I think the negative elements outweigh the positive. It’s slightly too depressing to watch Barbara be taken prisoner, escape, be hunted and then finally end up wrapped up the affairs of the Haroun family that El Akir has torn apart. The Doctor’s cringeworthy ‘feud’ with the Earl of Leicester is both tedious and painful to watch, and how on Earth Maureen O’Brien’s Vicki can credibly pass for a boy is beyond me! In fact, of the TARDIS crew I think that Ian is the only character who has a decent outing – he ends up not only saving the day but also being knighted!