The historicals quickly descend into parody
‘The Massacre’ bucks the trend, but after the early grisliness of ‘The Aztecs’, which doesn’t shy away from the human sacrifice aspect of the culture, and ‘The Reign of Terror’ that evokes the paranoia and violence that drove the French Revolution, the historicals start to take themselves less seriously. The trend begins with Dennis Spooner’s ‘The Romans’, which, despite its historical inaccuracy, is good fun. Derek Francis’s camp depiction of the Emperor Nero is like something out of ‘Carry on Cleo’. William Hartnell clearly relishes being able to show off his comic timing for once, and gives perhaps his giddiest performance as the Doctor. Donald Cotton, who contributed the scripts ‘The Myth Makers’ and ‘The Gunfighters’, also favoured a comic touch, and those instalments are light on historical detail and heavy on humour, with some horrible puns thrown in to ‘The Myth Makers’ for good measure. Hartnell’s penultimate story, ‘The Smugglers’, would be a pastiche of Robert Louis Stevenson-style storytelling, and owes more to adventure comics than to literature or history. It’s little wonder that, by the time Patrick Troughton took over, historical were phased out altogether, with ‘The Highlanders’ providing one last gasp.
