Rate & Discuss 4.2: The Fires of Pompeii

[SiHart]

Just superb. 9/10.

Si xx

[WhiteCrow]

This was a hard one for me.

I'm a bit overly critical of some things I know. This was good, in fact it was brilliant. Yet another chance for Donna to shine, with her humanity coming through. Some excellent acting by Catherine Tate - I'll never be able to take her seriously as a comedian again.

A great exchange between the soothsayers, with lots of tantelising bits about the course of the season. But in the end this episode came down to Donna's desperate pleading to save someone, even if not everyone, from this doomed civilisation.

I'm tempted never to give 10/10 because there's always the possibility of an even better episode coming along.

But heck, this deserves every one of it's 10/10 from me ...

[Jon Masters]

I don't think it part of any agenda, we have seen this apparant lack of compassion, from The Doctor, on many occasions in the old series most notably from the 1st & 4th Doctors so it' nothing new. And just like with the new series it was the companions in the old series who had to make the Doctor face up to his actions and responcibilities.

I think there's a world of difference between showing the Doctor to be alien, with different sensibilities and attitudes, and to show him being deliberately cruel or foolish until shown the light. Its like the difference between Star Trek TOS ( humans usually right but sometimes very wrong) and ST-TNG (humans always right, dumb aliens even in the Federation usually wrong), and just as cloying.

True, we see it in the old series (e.g. Frontios, Resurrection, Pyramids), but its a passing moment not the basis for a whole story. In the New Series we’ve had the 9th Doctor told off by Rose for daring to try to destroy a Dalek (she then goes on to commit almost genocide on them herself), Donna having a go in The Runaway Bride, Joan in the Family of Blood and now a scene where the Doctor deliberately walks past a family cowering in fear and terror and actually leaves, only saving them when Donna intervenes (herself having committed probable genocide on the Pyroviles).

To me its as bad a distortion of the Doctor’s character as the shouty rude death-quipping 6th Doctor that so many other people complain about. He’s bent and broken enough rules in the past to do what is right and heroic ; he doesn’t need Jimminy Cricket to help him do it.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I must admit I found a lot of ethical concerns with the depiction of such a natural disaster being the side-effect of Doctor Who's latest scheme to defeat the aliens, which seemed very insensitive when the rest of the episode was, quite rightly, depicting the event as the horrible tragedy as it was. I mean, would they do an episode where the Doctor has to cause one of the recorded tsunamis of the last decade to defeat alien baddies? I know Pompeii's destruction was 2000 years ago but I felt very uneasy about the episode, angry even (is it right to have the recorded deaths of thousands of people in a past event the result of a sci-fi battle between two extra-terrestials?). There's a difference between the Doctor observing history and getting involved in it (especially when he himself says "The past is concrete, the present is in flux") and when it's an historical tragedy I think a better judgement is needed. The crux of the episode was Donna's reactions to the Doctor's behaviour and the majority of the episode showed the Vesuvious eruption to be the awful event it was but the fact there's a sci-fi explanation behind it is... irksome.

Much as I hate the phrase "political correctness gone mad", I can't help but think that getting offended on behalf of people who have been dead for 2,000 years, and who belonged to a long-dead civilisation, is pushing quite close to being just that. If they'd done a story about aliens kidnapping Madelain McCann then fair enough, but I doubt there are any Roman descendents alive today who bear deep emotional scars because their distant ancestors perished in a volcano. I don't remember anyone being "offended" by The Visitation (although only about 3 people died in the fire of London, it must still have been a pretty traumatic time), or heaven forbid Earthshock, wherein the biggest natural disaster to ever befall the planet, which wiped out about half the life on Earth, was shown to be due to some Cybermen and a meddling teenager.

Obviously you yourself found it in some way offensive, and I'm not saying you shouldn't, but you have to recognise that you're going to be in quite a small minority of viewers to have even THOUGHT about it being offensive. If anything that might ever possibly offend anyone was removed from TV then there wouldn't be anything left.

[Captain Tancredi]

As Donna says at the beginning of the episode, by her time everybody they see in Pompeii is long dead. The harking back to 'The Runaway Bride' (in terms of the Doctor needing someone to stop him, and Donna doing just that) makes the difference between him being prepared to sacrifice Pompeii to save the world, and being prepared to go back and save somebody who's standing there asking him for help.

One of the reasons why the original series majored so much on Victorian and Edwardian settings was that in the 1960s and 1970s, it was a world recognisably different from the contemporary but not that far away either. Once you get to the First World War you're into a different situation, and not one that the series could easily have entered even in the 1980s when there were a fair number of veterans still alive- one thing 'The War Games' never quite deals with is that when the Time Lords send Carstairs and co. back to 1917, they're almost certainly sending some back to their deaths. It's a fine line and one you can never satisfactorily define, but if you're going to set a story around the destruction of Pompeii then if you don't explore the human angle, you're just exploiting the deaths of thousands of people to tell a story.

[Rob McCow]

I must admit I found a lot of ethical concerns with the depiction of such a natural disaster being the side-effect of Doctor Who's latest scheme to defeat the aliens

The Visitation is a much, much nastier story than Fires Of Pompeii if you take those terms, because it offered a sci-fi explanation for the Great Plague. Haven't sci-fi and conspiracy theorists been doing this for most of the 20th Century and previous?

It wasn't in any way presented as a real, scientific study of Pompeii, it's a bit of sci-fi adventure that asked a decent moral question. Looking at the ruins of Pompeii, it's easy to think that if only they'd known, if only someone had been able to tell them, they could easily have evacuated the city. The warning signs were there for long enough! This adventure is an extension of that, in a way.

I thought the 'Come with me' moment was wonderful, a highlight of the four years of the series so far. Great episode.

[Wayne]

Hmmmm....... Just watched it.
Very mixed feelings really. Definitely better than last week. Anyone who can't see that want's their head testing. But i was honestly quite bored for about the first 25mins or so, but then i liked the last 15mins or so. It just seemed to take ages to get going.
The usual silly Tennant voices/faces annoy. (I know you're all probably sick of me saying it, but when it's something as fundamental as the main character, it's pretty hard to ignore. I wish he'd just leave, & give somebody else a chance)
I thought Catherine Tate was mostly great, apart from possibly a couple of mis-judged shouty bits. Especially when she was made captive. Hard to explain really, but it's the sort of stuff that Camille Coduri could've pulled off as Jackie, but somehow it seemed a bit 'loud mouthed chav' from Tate/Donna.
However, the red-eyed, fighting back the tears, the 'just save someone' scenes were totally redeeming, and the best thing about the episode for me. I think she acted marvelously there, & i think her plusses are outweighing the minues so far, re Donna.
Visually it was good, but i have to say i mostly found the humour, mis-placed, & not really very funny. Acheiving nothing but detracting from the drama, and having an overall dumbing down effect.
So overall, i wasn't crazy about it, but was very impressed with emotional dilemma stuff which is right up my street, & is what i've like best about 'Torchwood'. I think the fact that 'Torchwood' has only just finished, & in particular Toshiko & Owen's death scenes, still being so fresh in my mind, might be throwing an unfavourable slant on my feelings about these first episodes of Dr.Who. And i think that's why the emotional scenes here have stood out the most for me, whereas a lot of the rest of it didn't make that much impact. But even so, it was still a big improvement on last week's fluffy rubbish.
All this makes it very difficult for me to rate, because i can't pretend that my overiding reaction to it as a whole is one of mild disappointment. Maybe i'm expecting too much of it after 'Torchwod', which after all does have a slightly different target audience. My natural score would be 5.5/10 for this one, but i'll upgrade to a 6/10 for Tate's good bits.

[Andrew Curnow]

Tate's good bits

And cue Tim!

[Wayne]

Quite.

[FlyingBeastie]

I was quite impressed with this episode! It was much better than I thought it would be. Donna is really starting to grow on me. As a character she's developed very well-she's funny yet she's not always a joke. I think Catherine Tate has surpassed expectations acting-wise cos' she was just brilliant in this episode with her dramatic acting.

I thought this was gonna be another Tooth n' Claw or The Unquiet Dead but I actually found this episode to be not only highly entertaining but poignant as well. The choice that the Doctor had to make at the end, again, keeps reminding the viewer it's not always fun n' games aboard the Tardis.

I also loved the wink back to The Romans and of course, the wink back to the Peter Davison era where the Doctor's actions actually are part of history.

The sooth-off was really awesome, I watched that a few times It's nice to see Archie from White Teeth playing evil

And, again, so many questions arise from this episode:

Pyrovale's home planet wasn't destroyed-but "taken"-by whom???
Shadow Proclamation also got another shameless plug in this episode.
"Ms Noble, you've got something on your back" ???????

"She is returning" I think is the most debatable one. Cos' my brother's like "It's Rose" but I think with RTD it's more than just Rose (or even Martha) as to who it is I can only speculate but I think those words are more than just the obvious answer.

9/10

[Jason Thompson]

Overall I can't say I was very impressed with that episode, though it undoubtedly had some excellent parts.

I found the first part very hard to sit through. Clunking dialogue, poorly delivered; crass jokes; a Del Boy market trader; a sisterhood with the usual crap lines about 'he has come', 'the prophecy', 'spilling blood' etc.; a 'typical' family with the usual teenage strops thrown in just so we think 'ooh, that's clever how they've transposed modern-day cliches to ancient history; Catherine tate's 'Well, I might just have SOMETHING to say about that!' was cringeworthy. Only once the circuit carving was unveiled and the seers started competing with each other did the interest actually pick up.

This episode falls into the pit that opens up when you have TV guides and pre-publicity. The episode is called The Fires Of Pompeii, and anyone who can read the Radio Times already knows they're arriving in Pompeii on the day of the explosion of Vesuvius long before the episode airs, yet it still wasted the pre-credits sequence with gobbledeygook about being in ancient Rome and the 'dramatic' realisation that actually they're in the place we already know they're in. It's wasted, because the pre-credits sequence should be the hook for the viewer, but for this one the hook had already been cast in the pre-publicity.

The escape from the Volcano: a small pod right in the centre of an explosion powerful enough to obliterate cubic kilometres of rock is hurled out over a distance of several miles, conveniently in precisely the right direction, and hits the ground, and Donna and the Doctor just clamber out and shrug before running back to the city ahead of a pyroclastic flow, and they don't even have a bruise? What the...?

And the last shot: Don't tell anyone I was here, the Doctor said to that family, so what do they do? They carve a bloody marble image of him, Donna and the TARDIS! Well that's going to help, isn't it?

What was good? Obviously this episode was visually stunning. Going to Rome to the standing set was such a good move. Trying to recreate Pompeii in Cardiff could never have gone well, could it? Catherine Tate finally gets some proper emotional scenes and shows that actually she's a bloody good actress. The best part for me was not her screaming that the Doctor can't abandon the family, or her tearful pleas to save someone, but her desperate attempt to warn people not to go to the beach where she finds herself being ignored as a stranger by a panicked population, just as the Doctor told her would happen if she tried warning people.

Now, to some points that others have raised: what's with this rubbish about the Doctor needing a human to show him the compassionate thing to do? He's 900 years old, and can see history laid out before him, and carries the burden of knowing he has to lose people and things all the time, and some human he's just met has to show him how he should behave? Is his abandonment of the family out of character? Not at all. It's out of the romaticised character that seems to have developed in the mids of viewers over 40 years, but what about The Massacre, where he tells Anne to return to a home he knows is going to be ransacked by a murderous mob in a few hours? Or Pyramids Of Mars where he has to remind Sarah that the one man who just got killed may be one of millions if he doesn't stop Sutekh? How about The Romans, where he laughs at the idea he might have been responsible for the fire that destroyed the city, apparently without a thought of trying to save anyone who might actually be in there? In this example he stopped, and thought about it, and was agonsied by what he had to do.

And then he goes and saves a family who weren't saved before. Has he forgotten what happened when Rose did something similar?

The arguments about what should be and what must be from the view of the man who can see the historical significance of the event and the woman who can only see the 20,000 people about to die was a strong concept to hang the story from. Reducing it to 'Pompeii or the world' rather trivialised it in my view. The Doctor got his view turned round and she made him realise he could save someone if not everyone, but no such thing happened to Donna. She made the decision that Pompeii had to be allowed to be destroyed (and actually helped initiate it) because it suddenly turned into that choice, not because he made her realise the importance of not changing time or anything. Wasted, in my view. I said earlier I thought her scene trying to warn the villagers not to go to the beach was one of the key moments of realisation for her. That could have come sooner.

So, a visually stunning and generally OK epsiode, but nothing special, in my view.

I enjoyed the accompanying Confidential's segment about the visit to the real Pompeii, however.

[The Secretive Bus]

Much as I hate the phrase "political correctness gone mad", I can't help but think that getting offended on behalf of people who have been dead for 2,000 years, and who belonged to a long-dead civilisation, is pushing quite close to being just that. If they'd done a story about aliens kidnapping Madelain McCann then fair enough, but I doubt there are any Roman descendents alive today who bear deep emotional scars because their distant ancestors perished in a volcano. I don't remember anyone being "offended" by The Visitation (although only about 3 people died in the fire of London, it must still have been a pretty traumatic time), or heaven forbid Earthshock, wherein the biggest natural disaster to ever befall the planet, which wiped out about half the life on Earth, was shown to be due to some Cybermen and a meddling teenager.

Obviously you yourself found it in some way offensive, and I'm not saying you shouldn't, but you have to recognise that you're going to be in quite a small minority of viewers to have even THOUGHT about it being offensive. If anything that might ever possibly offend anyone was removed from TV then there wouldn't be anything left.

"The Visitation" was written at a time when it was believed that barely anybody died as a result of the fire and that the fire itself destroyed the plague; a twist of fate that saved more lives than it took (even if it destroyed much of the city). You even say that very few lives were lost, a myth perpetuated by history books (the truth is we don't know how many died, as the poor people didn't count, and many of those killed would have been incinerated by the fire); the perception of history changes every year and we're more enlightened in that respect than we were in 1981. (And The Visitation doesn't offer a sci-fi explanaton of the plague; I imagine that had been the original intention, but the Doctor states at one point that the "local plague" is already destroying everybody - the "final visitation" is the Terileptils planning to use their own plague rats to "ensure that there are no survivors", which is why all the rats and plague related equipment is thrown into the fire at the end; their rats are never released and never kill anybody).

The Vesuvius eruption killed loads of people and there was no bright side to it. People who go on tours of the Pompeii ruins and see the casts of people caught in the ash are still moved to tears to this day. I can't see how political correctness has anything to do with it. I don't go around everyday mourning the deaths of thousands of Romans long ago; truth be told, hand on heart, I rarely ever think of Pompeii's destruction on a daily basis. It's just when you're doing a drama about a tragic event I believe that tragic event should be treated with required respect, which it was for the majority of the episode besides the "spaceship caused Vesuvius' eruption" bit in a sci-fi plotline that seemed unnecessary. As I said, get rid of that aspect and the Donna v Doctor argument is still top notch stuff.


If Donna in the episode can care about the deaths of all these people, why can't we? The episode is asking us to side with Donna and to view these people through her eyes. We are being deliberately asked to empathise with her and to care about the fate of all these innocent people, to perhaps take a moment to stop thinking about historical statistics and to think about them as human beings. That's what makes her argument with the Doctor dramatic, it's why we're meant to care about the episode. And, as I can see from comments here, the episode succeeded in that area for many people. For me it overstepped the line in that one moment but it was enough to make me lose my respect for the rest of the episode.

I must admit, it was only in hindsight that it seemed appalling. At the time I just thought the revelation was bloody ridiculous, as did several peeps I was watching the episode with at the time (does every major event in Earth's past have to be as a result of alien intervention?!).

[Andrew Curnow]

As I said, get rid of that aspect and the Donna v Doctor argument is still top notch stuff., etc

Agreed, but... I don't see how the episode could have then reached any real conclusion between the Doctor and Donna. If the eruption of Vesuvius had been, within the episode, the natural event it was, then just how would/could the Doctor have conveyed or convinced Donna that they couldn't actively evacuate Pompeii and save everyone? None of his arguments and attempts to persuade her had worked up to that point.

[Andrew Curnow]

The escape from the Volcano: a small pod right in the centre of an explosion powerful enough to obliterate cubic kilometres of rock is hurled out over a distance of several miles, conveniently in precisely the right direction, and hits the ground, and Donna and the Doctor just clamber out and shrug before running back to the city ahead of a pyroclastic flow, and they don't even have a bruise? What the...?

It was an escape pod, Jason - it would be a pretty poor design if it smashed to pieces on impact.

[Si Hunt]

I'd defy ANYBODY to find any criticism in that one.

C'mon! This is a Doctor Who forum y'know!

I thought it was a good episode, but FOR SOME REASON it wasn't one of my all-time favourites. I felt the same about "The Shakespeare Code" (and perhaps also "Evolution of the Daleks"). I thought I liked historicals, and I like the sci-fi adventures, but for some reason I don't take to the pseudo-historicals. Yet I love "The Time Warrior". But while that story felt like the Doctor (and Linx) were transported into a setting with genuine historical flavour, for some reason the new historicals feel more like sci-fi stories dressed up. I thought the rock creatures (and in particular the high-priestess highbred) were wonderfully designed, and the effects were brilliant. I like the plot too, but somehow it neither evoked that Titanic feeling of impending disaster or a vibe of historical flavour. The 'cockney' market trader was symptomatic of this - it was a neat gag that we heard him as a cockney, but somehow that defeated the whole point of having a story set in Rome. I WANT them to speak like you'd expect them to in a historical, otherwise we may as well be in Cardiff.

I think the problem I had with it were all to do with the sort of story I liked, it didn't annoy me or anything, I just didn't feel as interested as usual.

Definitely better than last week. Anyone who can't see that want's their head testing.

I preferred last weeks!

Si.

[Paul Clement]

I preferred last weeks!

Your appointment's booked for Monday week.

[Si Hunt]

I thought it was good! Fresh, funny, cute, breathless! What's not to like!

Si.

[Si Hunt]

By the way, I've given "Fires" 7/10 to acknowledge it was a good adventure, just not a personal favourite!

Si.

[Rob McCow]

I agree that the Pompeii revelation didn't work very well, but it was only for about 2 minutes at the start of the episode. Part of the fun was watching them and thinking 'Ah, they don't realise where they are - but we all know!'

Now, to some points that others have raised: what's with this rubbish about the Doctor needing a human to show him the compassionate thing to do?

That's the new mythology, isn't it? Since the Time War he's lost sight of his compassionate side. They've been banging on about that for four years, never mind the complete git he became in the New Adventures.

Also, wasn't the point that the alien's intervention would be to actually stop Vesuvius erupting? They would use the energy converter to use the power of the explosion. Therefore the Doctor had the chance to stop the eruption. This created exactly the same dilemma as in Genesis of The Daleks - is it right to commit murder of a few to save the lives of millions?

[Si Hunt]

I did like the explanation of why the Doctor can prevent an alien invasion in modern day but can't stop a historical event like Vesuvius. Writers have struggled to justify that one for decades, but "Fires" explanation - basically some events are "fixed" and some arn't, and being able to tell the difference is part of being a Time Lord - was surprisingly simple and neat. I'm amazed no-one's ever come up with it before.

Si.

[Jon Masters]

Therefore the Doctor had the chance to stop the eruption.

Except we're told that the eruption is a fixed point in history and therefore it has to happen , so free will is an illusion after all.

Unless of course the Doctor was wrong, in which case he's wrong about x number of people having to die, including an individual family. Or are we suggesting that the writer got to pick and choose which bits of history were fixed and not ?

[Jason Thompson]

If the eruption of Vesuvius had been, within the episode, the natural event it was, then just how would/could the Doctor have conveyed or convinced Donna that they couldn't actively evacuate Pompeii and save everyone?

By having her ignore him and try, only for all her attempts to fail, just as they did at the end when she was trying to tell people not to run to the beach but was ignored by everyone. Then they perhaps could have saved someone, if just one or two people listened and went with them, even if not the whole town.

Basically, in much the same way Barbara had it brought home to her way back in The Aztecs. That was basically the same idea.

[Jason Thompson]

It was an escape pod, Jason - it would be a pretty poor design if it smashed to pieces on impact.

It was an escape pod for creatures made of rock. And even escape pods are supposed to get out before the destruction of the thing they're escaping from. I just didn't like the 'we've got to blow this volcano and ourselves up, we're definitely going to die to save the planet... oh, wait, wasn't that a stroke of luck' aspect.

It is still very convenient that it got blasted in exactly the right direction for them to reach Pompeii on foot before the pyroclastic flow, though.

[Jason Thompson]

I agree that the Pompeii revelation didn't work very well, but it was only for about 2 minutes at the start of the episode. Part of the fun was watching them and thinking 'Ah, they don't realise where they are - but we all know!'

I don't find that fun or interesting, particularly, and as I said it just felt wasted as a pre-credits cliffhanger-type revelation.

Also, wasn't the point that the alien's intervention would be to actually stop Vesuvius erupting? They would use the energy converter to use the power of the explosion. Therefore the Doctor had the chance to stop the eruption. This created exactly the same dilemma as in Genesis of The Daleks - is it right to commit murder of a few to save the lives of millions?

But he didn't have that chance, did he? It was a fixed point that must occur, according to him, so he had to cause that explosion.

[Perry Vale]

6/10 from me. Should have been great, on paper, but just didn't gel right, too much crammed in, all but drowned out by the music. Shame they can't drown out Tate's shouting.