Doctor Who Season 4 Episode 2 The Fires of Pompeii

Doctor Who The Fires of Pompeii 2/13

The episode begins with the Doctor and Donna leaving the TARDIS and entering what the Doctor takes to be Rome in the 1st century. However, when the Doctor notices that none of the famous landmarks of Rome, such as the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, are present, and Donna points out that there is only one smoking hill and not Rome's famous seven, the Doctor realises they have actually arrived in Pompeii the day before it is to be destroyed.

The Doctor is quick to want to leave the inevitable disaster, but Donna wants to help evacuate the city, saying there is plenty of time for people to get out of the city. The Doctor insists that he cannot interfere in established events, which Donna is unwilling to accept.

The Doctor argues they can't tell anyone, pointing out that if Donna did try to warn the people, they would dismiss her as 'a mad old soothsayer'. However, their departure is stalled when they find that a nearby stallholder has sold the TARDIS to Caecilius and his wife Metella as a piece of "modern art". Meanwhile, a young woman dressed in red, a member of the Sibylline sisterhood, reports back on the arrival of the "blue box", which she and her fellows find is a fulfillment of a Sibylline prophecy.

At Caecilius' house, operating under the pseudonym of Spartacus, the Doctor attempts to procure the TARDIS, only to be interrupted by the arrival of the town augur, Lucius Petrus Dextrus. Dextrus is there to retrieve a marble slate with a circuit board carved into it. Upon seeing the Doctor, both he and Caecilius' prophetically-gifted daughter Evelina reveal several personal details about Donna and the Doctor, including their real names and places of origin, knowledge they claim to have gained by inhaling the fumes of the hypocausts in the city. Lucius also tells the Doctor that "she is returning", and Donna has "something on her back".

When Dextrus has gone, Donna finds that Evelina's skin is turning to stone whilst the Doctor is shown the hypocaust system, which is powered by hot springs from Vesuvius itself.

This system, he is told, was installed after the 62 AD earthquake on Dextrus and the other soothsayers' instructions. From that time onwards, the soothsayers have been inhaling rock dust from these hypocausts and all their predictions have been entirely accurate. The Doctor and Evelina's brother Quintus break into Dextrus' house, finding more marble circuit boards which come together to form an energy converter. When Dextrus confronts them, the Doctor rips off his arm, revealing that it has turned to stone like Evelina's skin. Dextrus sends one of the "underworld gods" to pursue the Doctor.

Meanwhile, Donna learns that Evelina cannot prophesy the eruption. She tells Evelina about the eruption, which Evelina psychically passes onto the sisterhood. They and their high-priestess decide it is a false prophecy and that Donna must be killed. The Doctor and Quintus burst in a few moments later, followed by a humanoid creature made of stone and magma bursting from the hypocaust. The Doctor distracts the creature while Donna and Quintus get water to throw on it. In the confusion, Donna is kidnapped by the sisterhood. Quintus throws water on the creature as requested, which causes it to die.

The Doctor realizes Donna is missing, and confronts the sisterhood to rescue her. Conversing with their high priestess, he finds she has completely turned to stone. She reveals that she is being used as a host by one of the Pyroviles, stone aliens who crashed to earth, shattered into dust, and were re-awakened by the 62 earthquake, psychically linking to the humans of the town (one of their adult forms is the creature they saw at the villa). The Doctor is, however, unable to find how they are psychically seeing through time.

Donna and the Doctor escape down the hypocaust, making their way to the volcano's core. As they run, Donna attempts to convince the Doctor to stop the Pyrovile from causing Pompeii's eruption, but he again refuses, as it is a fixed point in history and must happen. Dextrus and the cult of Vulcan take the circuit boards to the mountain. In the centre of the mountain, Donna and the Doctor find an escape pod. Dextrus informs him that the Pyroviles intend not to launch a rocket back home via the eruption (their home planet of Pyrovilia having been "taken"), but to remain on and conquer Earth.

The Doctor and Donna then lock themselves in the pod, where they find the Pyrovilians are using Vesuvius's power to set up a fusion matrix to convert millions of humans into Pyroviles — this will stifle the eruption, which is why the soothsayers have been unable to see it. The Doctor explains he can switch off the Pyrovilian circuitry and thus save the world, but in so doing he will cause the eruption and the deaths of himself, Donna and 20,000 people. Donna argues that causing the eruption may not kill the Pyroviles, but the Doctor retorts that nothing in Vesuvius will survive as the volcano will erupt with the force of 24 nuclear weapons.

They choose the latter as the lesser of two evils, and destroy the circuitry. Vesuvius erupts, destroying the Pyroviles and freeing the psychically-gifted from their control including the Sisterhood and Evelina, who can now see the coming eruption. The volcano blasts the pod a fair distance away, leaving the Doctor and Donna unharmed, and they return to Pompeii to make their escape.

Donna tells fleeing citizens to run to the hills, not the waterfront (many Vesuvius refugees died instantly in beach shelters as the eruptions prevented evacuation ships from approaching shore) and both Donna and the Doctor eventually make their way to the TARDIS.

On their way, the Doctor ignores the Caecilius family's pleas for help and de-materialises the TARDIS with himself and Donna on board. He is confronted by Donna, who tearfully tries to convince him to go back and save the town.

The Doctor refuses, replying that history is back on track and everyone will die; even if he wanted to change history, which he does, he cannot, just like he cannot bring back Gallifrey. Donna insists that, at the very least, he could save the Caecilius family, to which he complies. They and the family watch the eruption from the surrounding hills — the Doctor explains that Evelina's visions were caused by a rift in time made by the explosion, echoing back into the Pyrovilian alternative future, and that rift is now closed.

He promises that Caecilius and Pompeii will be remembered, and Caecilius coins the word volcano for the first time. The Doctor and Donna leave, with him acknowledging that she was right in that "sometimes I need someone" to stop and humanise him.

Six months later, the Caecilius family is in Rome, with Caecilius back in business, Evelina a healthy and happy teenager once again, Quintus having given up his dissolute ways to train as a doctor, and Donna and the Doctor worshipped as the family's household gods, with the TARDIS as their temple.