"Conspiracy" - Season 2, Episode 56

Written by Dennis Spooner | Directed by Christopher Barry | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 01/30/65

We arrive at the first episode of the second season that I don't like, and it's purely for ideological reasons.

Like I've said, this serial is a comedy. It's flagged as such from the resolution of the cliffhanger from "Flashpoint." There are several instances in this episode where it works okay - mostly in the second half. And for a certain type of person, it probably works in the first half, too, but not for me.

Most of the first half of the episode is Nero chasing Barbara around the palace so he can rape her. There's no sense sugar-coating it - that's what's happening. And it's played for comedy. Sandifer makes some good points in his post about it - but he doesn't take Nero "sleazily hitting on" Barbara far enough. Yes, I understand what's going on here - the point of Nero chasing Barbara around is to give the audience a scene straight out of Looney Tunes, where Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny through a bunch of doors, Bugs improbably entering and exiting ones at such a pace that Elmer Fudd eventually runs into a wall or passes out from confusion or something, that sort of thing. This is done in the Tenth Doctor episode "Love and Monsters," as well - some monster is chasing the Doctor and Rose through a bunch of doors in a warehouse as Elton looks on incredulously. The thing is, it actually works there - because the Doctor and Rose are not being chased by a lech trying to get in their pants. I can't get behind a "joke" or a "funny scene" where the heart of it, the entire reason the scene is able to exist, is a woman running from a rapist.

I get it - Spooner is going for Looney Tunes, not playing up Nero's desire for Barbara. All of it is supposed to characterize Nero for the audience as a foul, disgusting pig, too - we're supposed to hate him. It's just too much for me. I mean, I wouldn't accuse Spooner of being a disgusting misogynist. It's just one of those things that absolutely ruins the episode for me.

It's not that there's nothing to like about it - the scene where the Doctor makes a fool out of Nero to get out of paying the lyre. Like Sandifer mentions, the idea of a professional poisoner is pretty cute. The vaudevillian scene in the sauna where Nero has to point the sword the Doctor's holding in a different direction every few seconds is charming (if archaic even for 1965's standards). And I do mostly like the serial overall - this episode stings because of the awful runaround with Barbara and Nero, but I can't fault it for being poorly plotted or boring (a pair of descriptors that I would apply to other Hartnell serials, perhaps even one that's coming up very soon).

That Nero gives Barbara a gold bracelet that becomes part of the plot of the next serial bothers me a bit, simply because Nero's foul nature taints the next serial, in a way. I know, it's not like Nero's in the next serial, but I wish Barbara had just picked the blasted thing up rather than it be a gift from Nero.

Perhaps it's the political climate we're in, now, that makes this episode sting worse. Who knows.

"Doctor Who" puns so far: 2 | Tomorrow: "Inferno"