Blog: Romans Cutaway (Short Story)

Romans Cutaway written by David A McIntee is one of the short stories in the second BBC Short Trips collection called More Short Trips. It takes place in the same gap as Byzantium but naturally is much shorter. If there’s a gap in a Doctor Who story, you can be guaranteed that someone somewhere’ll fill it with a novel or an audioplay. Having said that it’s not a bad short story.

After the TARDIS falls off the cliff, the crew is knocked out while Ian has a dream about Barbara being in a car crash. We’ve all had that. They all gradually wake up and find that the Ship has crashed to the bottom of a cliff. Ian leaves the TARDIS first to find it’s on it’s side so helps everyone else out. They should’ve dematerialised while he was outside! Barbara and Ian remain and try to get the TARDIS on it’s right way up while the Doctor and Vicki explore to see if they can find a village or house. The righting of the Ship is a lot more difficult than they expected in the heat so they have a rest. They can go up against Daleks and the Voord yet they can’t put a box on it’s side. Meanwhile the others have found a villa and discovered they’re in the Roman empire, presumably from the sign “Welcome to the Roman empire” but with the motto in English. In the villa they see blood on the floor (non dance) in front of a curtain. The Doctor goes to find out what’s behind it with cane in hand. It is revealed to be a man called Lucius who is caring for the villa while his master is in Gaul. He is dying after having been attacked by a lion that has escaped. Good thing the Doctor has that cane handy. Before Lucius dies, the Doctor agrees to care for the villa. Then Vicki remembers about Ian and Barbara unaware that there’s a loose lion, so the Doctor goes to warn them. Back at the TARDIS, it seems the warning is too late, the lion is inching towards Barbara until Ian throws a rock at it. The lion follows Ian as he leads it to a unstable rock shelf which collapses and he kills the lion. Poor lion. First Barbara murders pets now he murders innocent animals. He then collapses again and has the same dream as before until he wakes in the villa. He talks to Barbara and admits to himself he loves her but can’t tell her. Unbeknownst to him, she already knows. Along with all of the Western world.

So we have another reference to Barbara and Ian's feelings for each other, in this case Ian falling for Barbara, even almost going as far to say that he loves her. I wish there was more reference to this in the TV show but understand that would've taken a back seat to the main stories.