Someway, Comi Sauditor, et bene tibi reventum sit in fugam per
totalitatem.
Solam seriam colloquiorum inperretialem doctor who, inqua nos
omnes cambricce loquimur, sum Nathan?
Sum James?
Sum Brendan.
It's time for Donna Noble to take her 1st trip back into the past
and what better place to visit than Pompeii, where the Latin is
dodgy, the dormice are lightly toasted, and the moral dilemmas are
based on absolutely nothing at all.
Pass around the marshmallows, everyone.
It's the fires of Pompeii.
So, background for this story.
This was something of a backup script.
So, originally, this was the slot for Mark Gatis's much discussed
but never produced World War 2 museum story.
Oh.
But at this point, it was still planned to be World War I during
production, during pre-production, I should say.
They moved it to a World War 2 setting while also developing the
fires of Pompeii.
And the reason they didn't just go for Pfizer Pompeii straight
away is that they were worried it would be too expensive to
replicate Rome. not Rome, sorry, Pompeii, obviously.
They were worried it would be too expensive to replicate Pompeii
and the volcanic eruption and it might be much cheaper to do
something inside a museum.
Russell said to Mark Gators, make it in World War II.
And then a couple weeks later said, actually, we've done World War
2 recently, so we're going to go with the Pompeii one.
So Gatus doesn't get an episode this season.
He was that annoyed.
No, it was just, you know, he'd spent all that time working on the
script, which I believe was still paid for because they were
overcommissioning scripts at this stage.
They were usually commissioning 15 to 16 scripts for the year.
Stephen Fry got paid for his script that wasn't made 2 years ago
for instance.
Yeah, but he just doesn't end up writing another one this year.
And Gatus will get one in 2 years' time in the next full season, a
World War 2 script, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, he gets victory of the Dalux.
So Pompeii is sort of a sort of fairly obvious place.
I mean, we've had it mentioned in the doctor dances or whatever.
And I think there's the Fires of Vulcan, isn't there?
A big finish audio.
Yeah, the 7th doctrine Mel story.
That was years before this though.
Yeah, I think this was before they had McGann.
So this would have been 1999, 2000.
It's the 1st 7 Dr. Mel Big finish story.
Ah, okay.
There we go.
So how do we feel about the Pompeii setting?
I have to ask why.
Not that I don't like it and I don't think it doesn't work, but it
does...
It's an interesting choice to raise this huge dilemma about the
doctor's role in history and all that sort of, all that sort of
stuff that I'm sure we'll talk about via making what is
essentially a slow motion disaster movie where we witness 100s of
extras, then, you know, not actually, but it seems like many, all
of whom we know are just going to die.
It's a very dark story because they choose that setting of
Pompeii.
But also, because there's a sort of tradition of comedy Rome, you
know, there's a sort of tonal thing.
I mean, we used to this episode being a romp, you know, being a
celebrity historical.
It's interesting what you say, Eric, about the tone of it, because
they actually initially had this plan for episode three, that's
flipped it with Planet of the Oud because they thought that was a
too dark story to have straight after partners in crime.
How did that work out?
But, I mean, do you know what I mean?
This is the Shakespeare code slot.
This is the unquiet dead slot.
It's supposed to be kind of a fun romp.
And it sort of is.
I mean, there's a Roman historian, Mary Baird, who talks about how
quickly into a sort of Roman pastiche, you mention the fact that
Romans eat dormice, you know, and obviously in this episode we
lasted maybe about 30 seconds.
But it's a thing that you do because it's one of the comedy things
that we know about Romans.
And it's pitched at the kids or at least at the kids who are
learning Latin because, of course, Caicilius, Quintus and Metella
are the 3 main characters in the Cambridge Latin course.
Um, there's a real Kyculius.
I've been to his house.
He wasn't called Lobus Caicilius.
He was called Lucius Caicilius, Yucundus.
He may not have still been alive when the when Pompeii erupted, but
it's identified as his house.
And so the kids are all familiar with these people.
You know, the kids watching this or anyone who'd learned Latin at
school since the 1970s knows these characters.
So there's something sort of fun and familiar and silly about it
but then it ends up turning into this sort of rather horrific
moral dilemma.
And that's backed up by the fact that we have Phil Cornwall, as
the store holder, right up front to the centre, doing that joke
about Donna speaking Welsh. as he's a famous comedian.
I think he goes on to be in horrible histories as well.
He used to do a Christopher Eccleston impersonation for Dead
Ringers.
That's right, yes.
Yes. how I knew him.
Yeah, very good he was too.
And I think Phil Davis, who's Lucius.
He's got a comedy background as well.
Right.
Yeah, I saw him in the, I was the only person to watch the final
series of being human.
Everyone else had stopped watching.
You don't count, James.
And he played the devil in that.
No, he's fantastic.
Yeah, he was really so dark.
Such a bleak ending.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, good.
You mean Lucius Petris, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Lucia's interesting...
Well, except no one is called that and the Latin is wrong.
This is the thing that irritates me about this episode, and it's
ridiculous, and I need you all to tell me how ridiculous I'm being
but all of these things that happen.
All of this sort of Roman stuff that they do is like completely
weird and wrong.
The modern art thing doesn't work.
People aren't called the right names.
There's no way the sister would be called Evelina.
No one is called Lobus.
You know, like all of these historical things just annoy me.
Did you ruin a reference to City of Death?
Why?
What?
The modern own.
That's what it's a joke.
It's just a city of death joke.
Well, that's the thing, is this is, this isn't an exploration of
what life would be like in Pompeii, in, you know, the day before
the volcano inflation.
I mean, the doctor never even mentioned Herculaneum.
No, which is something like because they're thinking, well, the
viewer at home won't know it was 2 cities.
Yeah.
Completely destroyed by Pompeii.
So let's not mention it.
But also, God, if Donna finds that out.
Sorry, Erica, there's a whole other city.
She forgot to run around screaming him.
But it is, it's all based on this idea of what the writers and the
showrunner think the people at home will think they know about the
Roman world.
And so it's the dormouse joke, but it's also, we think Latin names
were things like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and we
don't know what the actual names were.
And so there's little jokes built into that.
Um, and they, but it is, there's no attempt to actually explore
what life would be like at that time.
It's the Romans were modern people or the Pompeians, I guess, were
modern people.
They just happen to be old.
And that's just not true.
We know that from history, but that's not actually how life was
but they want us to get us into the drama and not be sort of
stuck.
And so we think we know everything, and we feel familiar with the
world, and we get the little jokes, and we get the name references
and whatever, and that's, and that's all we need.
Otherwise, it's not actually at all about Pompeii.
Like, this could be Planet X. Yeah, yeah.
And I think it is, there's a tradition of this that dates back all
the way to Dennis Spooner. you know, like if you look at the
Romans, for instance, it probably does a better job of the history
but it's not interested in the history it's interested in, in sort
of gladiator movies and, you know, menacing Ian with stock footage
of a lion.
But that's still when Doctor Who is doing the educating...
Well, I mean, let's look at Shakespeare code.
Do you know what I mean?
We talked about Shakespeare code and and it has virtually no
engagement with Shakespeare at all, really.
Yeah, Sexy Shakespearean is perfect teeth, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, like it skirts across the surface of what
Shakespeare writes about, you know, in just the most kind of
superficial way.
Yeah.
And I, like, it just irritates me because it could so easily have
got it right, but I kind of recognise that that's absolutely not
what it's trying to do.
And it's probably not what it should do.
Look, I would agree with that.
Russell T. Davies vision of historicals is, as I think it was Pete
said in our Shakespeare code episode, theme park history.
Yeah, yeah.
And that makes it accessible to the audience.
The audience does learn something.
And I can entirely understand for historians that that would be
annoying.
It's a bit like when I watch a movie and someone is holding a
video game controller the wrong way.
But, you know, I accept that and I move on, partly because it's a
more niche interest than being a historian.
But also because I have to look at, does the story work on its own
terms, even if it has to take some liberties.
And just last week, Nicola Tesla's Night of Terror was criticised
for, you know, being historically inaccurate in places.
And it's just like, oh, I'm sorry, I'll pull up middle-aged Nero
as this as this bastion of historical accuracy.
Yeah.
So having said that as somebody who's studied history, who has a
history degree, I find that really irritating when I know that
history, and I think this is what you're getting at, Nathan, isn't
it?
Like, when I know that history and and that culture, because I've
you know, as much as we can in the modern era.
It takes me out of the drama when I, that's historically
inaccurate.
I know most of the people watching are not going to have that
reaction, but I do.
Well, I mean, the show sort of telegraphs that it's not interested
in historical accuracy.
In a way that Nicola Tesla's Night of Terror doesn't.
You know, it is trying to show us a sort of underappreciated or
until recently underappreciated historical figure.
And, you know, the Chibnall historicals tend to have more ambition
than sort of theme park history.
But this telegraphs are theme park history with the jokes about
Spartacus with, you know, having a servant called rhombus, you
know, like all of that sort of stuff is just very deliberately
silly.
Oh, and they're playing it as comedy.
Yeah, even after they work out where they are, they're still
playing it as comedy, until the moment that Donna realises that
the doctor is not going to save anyone, because he can't change
established events.
Yeah.
So I guess maybe now is the time to think about that.
This is the 1st time that we have fixed points in time mentioned.
Can't change history, not one line.
Yeah, so that's in the Aztecs.
And we don't know what that means.
Is that a moral stricture or is it a sort of physics kind of
restriction?
They never make an attempt, though, in any time in the classic run
to essentially say that history can't be changed.
So I think we have to believe, even if that's not what they've
been at the time, we have to believe the 1st doctor means, I won't
let you.
Yeah, you can't.
You're not allowed. because they clearly do change history.
I mean, Atlock leaves and, you know, all these other things that
they play around with in history.
It doesn't affect big picture stuff.
It doesn't affect small picture stuff.
And can they affect big picture stuff?
Do we think that's ever happened?
So, you know, the Fendal can come back and do it, or but that
doesn't change history.
That's sort of part of established history.
Like, can you can, does the doctor ever actually change history?
Only to actually make it be the history that we've already...
Such as if we look at the visitation, where without without the
doctor's involvement, we wouldn't have the Great Fire of London
and the doctor immediately goes, right, I'm getting out of here.
I'm actually in the process of writing a series of videos from my
YouTube channel called How Does Time Travel work in Doctor Who and
looking at how it evolves.
And yes, I've absolutely come to the conclusion, Eric, you're
right, that in the 1st doctor's era, at the very least, not
changing history is a moral rather than physical imperative.
Right.
But it also implies that a human sent back in time does not have
the power to change history, whereas time lords do.
And I think part of the doctor's struggle unstated is that, you
know, he tells Donna, I can't change this because horrible things
will happen.
But the other thing is, he's like, I am still making that choice.
I could still try, and if I try, it would be a terrible thing
because these other things wouldn't happen.
But is that a problem for the show?
Like, is that a problem?
Because as far as I'm aware, there are no actual moral issues with
changing history.
Well, the thing is, the show neatly avoids that by having them
have to blow up the volcano in order to stop the pyroviles.
So it leaves hanging. how far the doctor would be willing to go to
change this.
But don't you, I think I think there's a huge, huge problem here.
And so the problem is, and the problem is recognised.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not, it's not, um... unrecognised?
Well, it's not kind of just skated over, is it?
It's the problem is that the doctor has to decide to let 20,000
people die in order to obey a stricture that is a complete science
fiction stricture that has no real world analogue as far as I can
tell.
So it's not a real moral decision that he has to make.
Until waters of Mars.
And I think that's RTT gets very obsessed with this idea of the
fixed points in time and what happens when you try to screw with
them.
And his answer is, no, the fixed points are fixed points, if you
think you interfere with them, you just make things worse or you
get blood on your hands directly.
So here in Fires of Pompeii, yeah, the doctor could try to
interfere, but then anything that happens is his fault as opposed
to how history played out.
And so I think it's about abdicating moral responsibility.
I'm not saying it's good.
But I'm saying I think that's the position the show takes.
Because you've got this. here the problem, right?
The doctor's allowed to change and Donna calls him out on it.
You know, like the show actually confronts it head on.
In the present, the doctor can do anything.
He's not, do you know what I mean?
He never says the Slovene are a fixed point in time, so I'm afraid
we just have to let this happen or whatever.
It never happens in the far future either.
It only seems to happen in Earth's past.
And maybe that's part of what's clever about Waters of Mars, is
setting it in the near future and having a fixed point in time
there.
But so it is why can the doctor overthrow the racist regime in the
savages, but she can't overthrow the racist regime in Alabama?
Do you know what I mean?
Like, like, it's a big problem, I think.
And it makes the historicals bad drama in a way, I think.
Yeah, because the moral, the moral quandary in this story is
turned into a trolly problem.
It's 20,000 people here. or it is James is bouncing up and down, so
I think he can finish my point.
It's 20,000 people here or...
What, like a 100,000 somewhere else?
No, it's, you know, 1000000s of people.
The entire human race.
Yeah, no, I was just really excited that you've got onto the good
place.
But yeah, good place to not event for Charlie, bro.
No, I know, but I've just rewatched that episode.
But yeah, it turns it into a trolly problem.
So that the doctor's choice is understandable by the audience, you
know, because suddenly we at home are affected because we will
never have been born if this happens.
It also means that Donna can become complicit in it.
So because it becomes a straightforward moral decision, it's not a
decision, 20,000 people or this magical rule that I just made up
it's 20,000 people or 1000000s of people.
And that looks like a more straightforward kind of moral
decision.
I think it probably is, you know, just given the scale of it.
But, you know, the trolly problem isn't that straightforward.
And you, you know, there are all those sort of analogous
situations where our instinct is actually no, we can't save the
greater number of people.
You can't pluck someone from a waiting room and implant their
liver and kidneys and lungs and heart into 5 other sick people
just at random, even though the kind of moral calculus in a sense
is the same.
And I think that Doctor Who doesn't do utilitarianism, that that's
not the doctor's general moral code.
Well, it was, I think, or at least it was part of the doctor's
character in the RTD era, and I think it's something that Moffat
rebelled against. meeting today of the doctor.
Yeah. where he's like, no, there's never a justification for
something like that.
But I was just going to say, what's interesting to me about this
moral question is, once you get them in the little pod, okay, it's
the 20,000 versus all of human history.
It's fine.
Easy but still stupid.
The question is how you get to the point where Donna's raises a
very good idea about why don't we just tell people to leave town?
Just leave?
Like, would, would, would it really destroy the fabric of human
history if 100 people, like, he's not even going to save the
family?
There's 4 idiots.
You're not even going to save them until she's crying off her
makeup in the TARDIS.
So at a certain point, maybe he has bad memories of year 7 Latin
lessons.
I love that in Britain, people still study Latin. charming.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that is absolutely inexplicable, isn't it?
And that scene, can we just say that Catherine Tate is just
amazingly brilliant in that scene.
And this is, you know, we saw her in Runaway Bride, and we saw her
just gradually ramping the performance down and humanising it from
being sort of really kind of loud and bleary and blustery, and she
becomes quite introspective.
And it's very clear from runaway bride that she's a very good
actor.
And then, you know, last week, it was all kind of fun and games
and stuff.
But this time, you know, she's going to do this a lot this season
I think.
But the fact that she is a surprisingly compassionate person and
is just played so well by Catherine Tade.
It's really something Yeah, we, I don't think, I'm not saying we
wouldn't care, but, um, the amount to which Donna is outraged by
what the doctor is doing and the amount to which Donna, the scene
where she talks to the kid and then the mother comes and takes the
kid.
It's, I mean, I lose it because...
It is.
The last 5 minutes of this is the doctor and Donna failing to save
1000s of people.
That is what happens in this story is they have set off the chain
reaction and they are unable to save them.
Every time.
It's devastating.
Yeah, I just, I end up in tears when I watch this episode every
time.
Like, it's, I don't know why.
I mean, because parts of it are really broad comedy, but like you
hit that last sort of 5 to 10 minutes and you know the whole thing
is inevitable and she starts to really lose the plot over what's
going to happen.
And I just start crying.
The other moment is where they're standing on the heel watching
the, you know, the smoke and ash roll over Pompeii. and Capoldi
goes all those people and his voice catches.
And it is just that you've got these incredible actors because, you
know, you know, is it too soon to make jokes about Pompeii?
I mean, it's 2000 years ago.
It's very easy not to care.
Do you know what I mean?
There was people were sharing a story with me just this week as we
record. where they found the body of someone, people sheltered on
the waterfront at Herculaneum, which is now, obviously, several
kilometres from the modern day waterfront, but you can sort of go
down there and see these places where people were sheltering.
And um, And the pyroclastic surge was so hot that his internal
organs were all sort of gellified and his brain was turned to
glass. you know, and everyone was sort of saying, that's a really
kind of amazingly interesting thing, and I do want to sort of
share that around.
But I think it's very easy to just not care. that that was a
person, that they were people terrified, who had no idea what was
happening.
And another thing, it takes hours, that column of ash, which goes
kilometres into the air and weighs, you know, 1000000s of tons.
It starts to collapse hours and hours after its 1st scene.
So this whole thing takes a very long time.
And then gradually, you know, the surges happen and all these
people are just horribly killed.
There's plenty of time for people to fear and panic.
Oh, look, a lot of people evacuated.
Do you know what I mean?
Pompey's population was well in excess of 20,000 people.
People were able to get out.
But because it's so long ago, we don't care.
And it was, for me, what was fun or what was worthwhile about the
episode was being forced to care about those people.
We, yeah, we care about the family because we've spent time with
them, they all get something to do in the story, they all get time
with the doctor or Donna or both.
We get.
I think one of the most charming bits in the whole episode is when
the doctor convinces Quintus to help him break into Lucius's
house.
It means that when we get to that last scene, I don't think we've
ever had a situation like that with a one-time family in the show
where we have bonded with them as viewers so much.
Also, we've had an extra 8 minutes to do that.
Yeah.
This is like a very long episode.
It was 50 minutes long on original Broadway.
Right.
Right, right.
Well, it uses the time very well then, because I didn't I didn't
feel that.
You know what I mean?
feels like a regular length episode.
Well, what they do is they, they, they, Yeah, give you all that
time with the family at the expense of time with the villain.
I mean, we have the few scenes with Petristectris.
Um, but, I mean, who are the pirate files?
We don't care.
We never care.
We never remotely care about them as big fire monsters.
Um, and that's fine.
I'm not saying that's criticism, but they deliberately wait the
episode towards making you care about these people to the point
where you kind of forget for moments at a time, they're all going
to die tomorrow.
Yeah.
Like, you know, the doctor's doing his thing investigating the
aliens and what's going on.
It almost makes you wonder like, well, doctor, if that, if, you
know, Pompeii is happening tomorrow, why don't you just let him
get burned to death?
Oh, aliens die, fine.
It is?
I mean, it is very strange, and it is that scene where he just
walks past them.
Um, into the Tartars.
And he's so determined not to rescue them at the end that he
starts to take off even before Donna gets on board.
You know, like it's it's a principle that is worth or worth
sacrificing Donna for if he has to, you know.
And what is that?
What even is that?
It seems ridiculous.
And then he just sort of breaks...
Get in.
Yeah, yeah.
But it is very strange.
And it's, you know, like, I'm not sure why, why it's there.
The new series loves to do this whole the TARDIS starting to
dematerialise before the doors are closed thing as a hurry up
hurry up thing.
No, no, no, but I mean the scene of him just walking past.
You know, like, why does he do that?
You know, as I guess we said before.
What would be wrong with ringing a big bell and getting them all
into the amphitheatre and telling them to leave?
The doctor says it doesn't work and sure that's fine.
I mean, that's very much the David Whitaker view of how history
works because we get a brief discussion of it at the end of reign
of terror and we get it in his novelisation of the crusade where
pretty much the characters say you could slip Robespierre a note
saying he's going to be deposed and he would think it came from
the hand of a madman.
You could, you know, you could chuck a boulder in the river to
stem the river, but the pressure will build up and it will just go
round the rock. why doesn't that apply now?
Why doesn't that apply when the doctor is, you know, in Gloucester
in 2020?
Why why is that it any different?
It just seems, I think the problem with coming up with a
definitive answer for that in the context of writing the show is
that you would break the show.
You would have to say we cannot have any more adventures in
history, or you would have to say nothing the characters do
matter.
So you have to find a balance of it, and it's not a healthy
balance by any means, but it's a balance that...
I'm not I'm not even sure you could say it stands up to scrutiny
but it's more, if you accept at face value what the characters say
it works.
You remember when we were talking about tooth and claw and having
Queen Victoria die at the end.
And we can't do that because then Doctor Who stops being in the
world that we're in or something.
Like, it seems to be just a sort of, it's an aesthetic choice to
have the doctor not interfere with the kind of history that the
viewers are aware of.
But I will interject, though.
There is the time where RTD made the meth and then he either
deliberately made the meth so that he could clean it up in an
interesting way or he fixed his own mistake, quote unquote mistake
even though it wasn't our history, which is the Christmas
invasion.
And him bringing down Harriet Jones, who is supposed to lead
Britain to the Golden Age, all those such of things, and be much
longer in her proposed.
Him bringing her down makes the vacuum in history that the master
fills.
Yeah.
So there is some sense that RTD keeps going back to that you need
to be really careful with it.
It's not that it can't be done.
It's that when the doctor is stupid, he does it badly.
And when he's acting out of emotion or anger, he does it badly.
And I think we're meant to think that's why Tenant, the 10th
doctor here, is so hesitant to say if anyone, is because he'd be
doing it purely from emotional concerns, but he never articulates
why he can't save just these people.
He never says.
He never says, well, what do I know that Quintus one day will go
up and he will kill Galba, and you know, whatever, and the whole
history of Roman Empire will be different and blah, blah.
He never does anything like that.
He just sort of doesn't help anyone.
Well, like I like to think that the doctor's saving the family is
actually what creates the Cambridge Latin text.
But it also, it's interestingly enough, it leads to a whole family
worshipping them as gods, which is an interesting thing.
I like it.
It's a fun note, I think, to end on.
But at the same time, it's like, okay, does Quintus raise his kids
to worship these people on their blue box?
That seems like a dangerous trace to leave in history. especially
considering he says to them, I was never here.
He does the whole frontios nonsense.
Yeah, I mean, you wonder whether I think maybe we were left
wondering whether that would pay off, you know, that thing at the
end, but I mean, I guess you hand wave it.
Just the household gods of one family.
Do you know what I mean?
it doesn't matter all that much.
It does actually, I don't know if it's conscious, but it does
actually tie in with the fires of Vulcan.
The big finish play because the fires of Vulcan starts with
finding a fossilised impression of the Tartars in the ruins of
Pompeii.
Not only that, but earlier on in the 80s, in the Dwim comics
during the Stars fell on Stockbridge comic arc, they find a
fossilised impression of the Tartar Underground somewhere.
Russell T. Davies would at least know about the big finish play
very possibly the comic as well.
So it's a nice touch to imagine that that would be found, you know
2000 years later.
It's kind of funny, you know, that we don't see it in the black
archive or something.
You know?
It'd just be a nice little nod, but I suppose maybe they maybe
they don't want to think about that.
It's a little bit like the blue box in the stained glass window in
the end of time, part one.
Like, I guess we might have been left expecting it to sort of come
back in some way.
And I actually like the, quite like the way that Quintus plays
that. where, you know, the household gods.
One of the things, you know, you said earlier, Eric, that these
are just modern people, but they're wearing togas, not that they
seem to know what togas are, but whatever.
No, Dunn is wearing a dress.
Yeah, diamond dress.
Women did not wear togas, hold on your...
Um, but I guess they needed to put the word toga in just to kind
of tick off their Roman tropes, you know, um, because the thing is
that they believe in uh, fortune telling and so saying and they
believe that things are caused by the gods and stuff in a way that
we don't.
And it's dealt with sort of weirdly, I think, here.
I must say, I do love the soothsayer rap battle. between Lucius
and Evelina and especially how it starts off with just both of
them insulting the doctor and Donna and then gets really seriously
dramatic and the lighting changes.
Like, it goes all fiery and whatnot.
And as she faints, it fades away.
It's like, 0 my god, that was diagetic.
Yeah.
No, that scene is, of course, brilliant.
But I do think they kind of, the thing, they want to have their
cake and eat it too.
They need these people to be superstitious and focussed on, you
know, the Roman deities as the modern viewer might understand
them.
But at the same time, they need them to be just folks.
And so we get this really odd, I think, combination that doesn't
necessarily work of like the modern art joke and get me a dormant
all those, all those sort of things that make them seem like
modern humans.
And her son, her being proud of her son, the doctor, which no, you
would not have been, um, combined with, yeah, that's not a good
thing.
Um, combined with, oh, but they need to be, you know, they need to
be modern people who just happen to still believe in the gods of
ancient Rome, um, and have tremendous superstition.
And they don't quite thread the needle perfectly, I think.
I think it would have been much better to drop the sort of their
just folks angle and just have them be show us how alien the past
is.
And have them be different people.
Certainly the very, very 1st historical in the new series doesn't
seem to do that and is about the different types of intellectual
worlds that these people inhabit, you know, that Gwyneth is in a
very different world than rose is.
But do you think that's because the Victorian era is so close to
the time we live in now and so familiar to the British viewing
public that you want to play out sea watching British viewing
public is you know what the Victorian period is.
So you can't really fiddle with that in the same way.
But I think that often, you know, Victorian English people are
just us with waxed moustaches and sort of sticks up our butts
having that religious element played up and partly because you're
doing Charles Dickens and the way his worldview changes throughout
the episode as well.
Whereas here, the comedy is, like it is funny that they have our
concerns because we kind of know that they don't in the way that
the Shakespeare code worked as well.
And that's a very deliberate creative choice by the showrunners
and the, like, and the people involved, like, They stated that
many times that, you know, people in the past should be us, but
you know, but in silly dresses and, you know, I think Casanova was
the 1st time I saw it happen.
RTD's Casanova.
That's very much a Russell kind of trope.
Like people back then are just like us now.
And it's his shorthand to get you into the drama.
Sometimes that doesn't work so well and sometimes that makes
things less than believable.
It's like you were saying earlier, Eric, like, there could be Zog
monsters from the planet, Zog.
You know, but as Russell says, we don't care about Zog Monks. the
planet Zog.
We care about the human colonists on the planet Zog.
Super racist.
Absolutely super racist.
I've been having a lot of fun recently rewatching Star Trek
Voyager.
You have?
And yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, I know, fun.
It can be done.
Well, look, it's not as bad as my very serious 15-year-old self
found it, but there is so much racism towards Tuvok there, which
is passed off as comedy.
Yeah, that's a feature of original Star Trek as well.
Oh, God, like this is the 1st time Rod's watching original Star
Trek because as a kid, he's like, nah, I lost in space.
I want to watch Lost in Space. the same type.
So I'm suffering lost in space when he's suffering original Star
Trek.
But yeah, every time McCoy really gets stuck into Spock.
Rod's like, well, that's just mead.
You know, and quite frankly, it is sometimes.
I was just thinking about a point, someone made earlier, with
doctors not being held in the higher esteem back then as they are
now.
And I'm just trying to think of a way to rationalise that.
And I suppose it would be that it's not so much that, oh, he's a
doctor in the modern sense that you'll be very proud of your child
becoming a doctor, it's he's following the path of the household
god.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like, we're meant to read it that he's been inspired by the doctor
to become a doctor.
But in sort of no ancient Roman context is being a doctor
something that you would want a freeborn Roman to do.
Yeah, but the thing is, they're like, oh, in a way, you know
you're taking this noble calling because it's a household god, even
though it's not something impressive. you know, no one else will
think it's impressive, but we understand why you're doing this.
But in fact that he's just taking a modern attitude and sticking
it there so that we can...
Yeah, yeah.
Because you works with that.
I'm right down to Evelina going out in the too short.
I mean, for God's sake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I actually really like it.
I like that the fact that Quintus is hung over when we 1st see him
and he's been at the Thermopoleon the night before and drinking
and whatever.
And then he's sort of a serious good boy, whereas Evelina, who had
to be, you know, all religious and Sibylline and stuff, then gets
to be a party girl afterwards.
And I think that's really actually quite.
That's a nice reversal.
Yeah, but I just mean like the attitude is very absurd.
Especially the hangover.
Yeah, legit.
Roman's got drunk a lot.
So entirely possible that he would have a hangover.
Uh, and he'd be eating like canary brains for it or something, if
you believe plenty.
Um, But it's, I think, I think what always irks me about this, and
this is not a thing fires of Pompeii does individually.
I think, I think we diminish and demean the past when we pretend
it's the present in funny costumes.
Yeah.
And I think it has its own culture.
Yeah, it has its own, they were different people as one of my
favourite professors at university said.
Um, you know, people didn't used to think differently, but they
thought about different things.
And I, you might even quibble with the 1st part, but they
certainly would not have thought about the same things.
They valued different things than we do.
And so their entire lives were structured differently.
Yeah.
And I think why bother exploring history, if it's just going to be
about funny costumes and interesting sets and going to Chinichita
if it's not going to be about exploring what it means to be in the
past.
Do you think the show ever does that or as spies to do that?
I don't think the show does.
I think I think the the medium or the the sort of uh, uh, franchise
of Doctor Who does.
I think some of the novels do that very deliberately where they
actively try to explore the past and what it would be like to live
in the past or different cultures.
I'm thinking some of the Kate Orman books, like Room with No Doors
that said in like feudal Japan, and is very much about like, feudal
Japan is not like England, which I think is good and interesting.
Um, and other another of the novels do it.
I'm not sure if any of the big finish really bother with that.
I think they tend to take Boy's book of history approach to
things.
Um, And I think maybe some of the Hartnell ones too as well.
Kind of some of the serious Hartnell ones do actually attempt to
explore what history is like.
But I mean, for them, I think it's a source of unusual threats.
So when Hartnell's history is not doing the romp that the new
series does, it's creating, you know, strange unusual situations
for them to be threatened by and to escape from, I'm not super
convinced that it properly engages with the past.
One that does for me from big finish, and it's funny you say big
boy's book of history, because I'm going to talk about a woman
Carolyn Simcox, who writes the Council of Nicea.
Oh, yeah.
And I don't know if she also writes Son of the Dragon, but those
are 2 that are pure historicals.
They use the character of Eramim and compare her reactions to
Perry to what we would consider history.
And the Council of Nicea is so focussed on the politics of the
time, without any science fictional elements. that I think it's
one that actually does embrace what you're talking about and
showing the past as it really was rather than a filter of what we
think it was and the horrible histories version.
I tend to agree with you on that, Brendan.
Like it's one of the better early, early now.
Yeah, yeah. was still around number 70 or something.
Um, as opposed to number 235.
What have we got to do now?
It's yeah, it does it really well.
I was really impressed with that. and also heartbreaking what
happens in it as well.
Let's not talk about that because we're talking about Pizer Pop.
Yeah, but I think it's, I do think it's, um, it's history being
used as backdrop because of all of recognised Pompeii.
Pompeii being used because they want us to get to the heart of the
moral decision quickly.
It's a story written around having the doctor make that choice.
And him showing us, that's what it means to be the time lord, the
only one left.
And him showing Donna.
That what it means to be the time lord. anyone left.
And also giving Donna a role.
You know, like making, yeah, like reestablishing that Donna's role
is to pull him back from that.
Yes.
To bring us back to that moment in a Christmas invasion, not
Christmas invasion, Runaway bride.
Yeah, where they, where she, he drowns all the baby Raknuff. nice.
Well, you flush spiders down the sink.
That's what you did.
And their cousin, the scorpions.
But yeah, it does feel like they had this idea for we want the
doctor to have this moral choice.
And he then it structured everything around setting up that
situation.
Even though I think, as you say, Nathan, I think you're right, the
moral choice feels false.
And so, well, I find the episode very moving.
I don't think about it in the sense of like, oh, that's a real
thinker.
Like some of the moral choice ones that would be later on in the
like the harness stories can be legitimately like, I don't know
what the right answer is.
Yeah.
You know, this one feels like, well, that's obvious.
What do you do?
You do this.
I think maybe Vinay Patel's 1st episode, does a better job in that
what's at risk is the existence of Yaz, and they probably don't
lean into it quite enough, but this is a dodgy place to interfere
not because it's a fixed point in time, but because it's the
origin of Yaz's family, and it actually risks the existence of her
family.
It makes it real.
Yeah.
And whether the decision that the doctor makes there is fair or
right or whatever.
The stakes are a little bit clearer than like waters of Mars for
me.
It seems to me that the doctor is behaving in such a way to ensure
that none of the Wikipedia pages, he's read need revision.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like, it's like every new Star Trek episode, uh, or Star Wars
you know, will uh, Wikipedia have to be rewritten as a result of
this and uh, if it uh, interferes with too many Wikipedia pages.
It a bad film.
And the answer to that is yes.
That is the right decision.
Yeah.
No, it's it, but I do just keep coming back to this idea that it's
an episode designed to raise a question that it then dismisses
without actually confronting it in any serious way, almost as if
RTD said, we need to raise this and give a good enough answer
their fixed point in time.
How do you know at fixed point in time, the doctor knows it when
he sees it.
He sees the strands of time.
And that's that's it.
So he's trying to resolve a problem that the show has always had
by creating a new bit of law for the show.
But even then, even after the, I can't, you know, this is a fixed
point, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It cops out of actually making him make that decision.
He has to make that decision to destroy the aliens who are going
to alter the timeline.
So he actually says, you know, you have to intervene to defeat
these aliens and the, the consequence of that, if you like to read
it that way, is that Pompeii dies.
Not, not, you have to kill all these people, but the aliens, the
aliens, the reason you're doing this.
So it actually, it sidesteps that.
Yeah.
So if there wasn't a fixed point in time, the right moral decision
still would have been to destroy Pompeii because of the empire of
fire or whatever, yeah.
And it does it does make you wonder if a fixed point in time is
simply defined as the thing the doctor did and he can't undo it
because he did it.
You know, like if the destruction of Compe is a fixed point in
time and it's the thing that he made.
He made it happen that way.
It's like, oh, well maybe that's what makes it fixed, is the
doctor's already been here and interfered.
And so he doesn't know that, obviously, but, you know, he gets
someplace and he's like, hmm, this is a fixed point because I'm
the one who did it and I can't undo my own thing.
Of course, they have the doctor again, undoes that.
But Moffatt had a much more playful sense of what could and
couldn't be done.
Yeah.
And I think too, as you pointed out earlier, some problem with
utilitarian is, you know, the doctor has to kind of Kobayashi Maru
his way out of that situation.
And that's what Moffat does all the time.
We look like we're about to tell this story.
But then he says, no, that story's not good enough and we're going
to tell a better one.
On the topic of Stephen Moffatt.
It's such a shame that he didn't come up with the idea of a
companion with multiple facets throughout the timeline for Amy
Pond.
Given that Karen Gillan is one of the sisters of the Sibele.
She's the one running around making giant eyes at Tenant and
Donna's back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's after Catherine Tate's job, I think, probably.
Yeah, yeah.
And the amazing thing is, look, I researched and I don't think
this is the case.
She puts on such a posh RP accent that I was certain it was
dubbed.
Yeah, no, no, it's not.
You can actually her.
Well, because you can hear her struggling to do the accent.
That's the fun thing about it And Capaldi as well.
You know, sometimes gives posh readings.
He has to do the Welsh accent a couple of times because whenever
the doctor sees ipso facto or status quo or something, he goes
that's lovely.
Yeah, which perhaps gets a little bit tiresome by the end.
And he's incredibly good as well.
Like, this is, he's fabulously overcast.
And I can't help imagining him thinking, oh, well, you know, wow, I
get to be in Doctor Who, because we know what an incredible fanboy
he was.
Um, little suspecting that um, he would, uh, this is his Commander
Maxil, yeah, all along.
Yeah, if Colin Baker can do it, why can't?
And our, you know, our final connection to the broader Doctor Who
universe, of course, is Dame Tracy Childs, Asmatola, who is Klein
in the big finish audios.
Oh, okay.
The alternate universe X Nazi scientist companion to the 7th
doctor.
Oh, that doesn't sound ethically sort of problematic in anyway at
all. sounds awesome.
Completing the Tracy Child circle.
Her 1st big finish was Colditz, featuring David Tennant as the
villain.
Ah, there we go.
And Nazis.
So it brings us back to some Gatus's new script.
Oh my god.
And of course, we do have, like, we do have the, um, like, the
12th doctor does deliberately reference the fact that he's seen
this face before, and although it's not until what the girl who
died, where he realises why.
Yeah.
And it's like, he took Kaiselius's face because he knew that this
incarnation of the doctor would be just as much of a jerk as the
10th doctor tries to be in this story. and abandon people he could
save.
And that is, you shouldn't do that.
And then he shouldn't do that.
And then it's something the 12th doctor actually does quite a bit
until that moment and then he does it much less after that.
Once he realises, oh, that's what this face is reminding me of.
But also, you could argue that probably that was a mistake given
where that character goes with her extra life.
Yeah, no, that's entirely true.
I think Tatwood points out that, or someone, I'm sure this has
been pointed out any number of times, that, you know, we're lucky
the doctor never ran into John Frobisher, you know, who, you know
sells children to alien paedophiles and then shoots his entire
family.
Yeah, which you'd think the British public might know about from
this little thing called the news.
And this is, it's actually something I believe RTD had like an
explanation for.
That he would, if he ever needed it.
He had something in his back pocket for why Capaldi had appeared
multiple times in the Doctor Universe.
Because we know for a fact that children of earth happens in the
same universe as the doctor, which...
Yeah.
But as well, you know, it's while he's taking a year off and dumb
and seducing Queen Elizabeth.
So, you know, it's fine.
You know, I'm not even convinced that Planet of the Oude next week
takes place in the same universe as this, to be honest.
Like, you know, like, it's one of those things that I don't spend
too much time caring about.
One of the things that we'll end up doing this season is talking
about the, like the, the arc watch.
Yeah, there is a kind of a weird thing where there's a series of
things that get dropped into nearly every episode.
And so last week, what, we had the bees disappearing.
Bees disappearing.
And you had the experience of Adipose 3 and Rose. and Rose.
And so this time we had she's returning, which we probably know is
Rose.
What else did we have?
There's something on your back.
Something on your back.
And there's the pyrovile planet's missing.
So it's 2 planets in 2 weeks that have disappeared.
Also, when we had a reference to the shadow proclamation.
Yeah, yeah.
Another commonality I found between these last 2 episodes is it's
both of them include an alien race converting humans.
Yeah.
Because their planet has been lost.
Right.
So the adipose breeding planet has been lost.
So they are converting humans, and even the doctor last week
acknowledged, that could actually work.
And rewatched Pfizer Pompeii last night with my other half.
And he loves Catherine Tate.
So when I said, oh, we'll just watch episode two.
Well, you'll need to watch episode one so you understand episode
two.
I'm like, no, remember it.
We're watching episode.
Okay, right.
And this thing, halfway through the episode, he's just like, why
didn't the adipose just ask?
They would have loads of willing volunteers.
You know, you get to make a cute baby every night and lose
weight.
Take my fat.
Whereas, of course, the pyra vowels are even more underhanded and
it will destroy the host.
Yeah, you know.
But it's interesting that Russell T. Davies, when imagining these
planets go missing, then imagines 2 parasitic alien races. because
he, of course, creates the adipose, and he also created the
Pyravol.
James Moran's original pitch was a lot more historical.
It did have an alien menace, but wasn't as well defined.
And then Russell comes along and says, let's make them file.
Lets make them volcanic and they're converting people.
And the interesting thing about that too.
And Tatwood, I think, points this out in about time, that the
bodies of the people in Pompeii don't sort of, this is a bit of a
thing, but they don't really survive.
And what we have is, you know, plaster casts of them.
So they're turning to stone, you know, while they're still walking
around, even before archeologists come around and start creating
sort of mineral versions of the people who die.
Yeah.
And the thing is, the missing planets and yields to the, uh, leads
to this on tarn, 2 parter.
Um, that's that's why they're trying to convert the earth.
It is, it's surprising that when we were watching it.
And this the thing is because there's no way to guess what it all
leads to, but we were clear something was happening with missing
planets.
And, you know, whatever else we, but there was no, it's weird
because RTD didn't actually do arcs.
He did like drop ins of references, like torture.
Okay, great.
Torchwood.
Okay, they said Torchwood again.
So Torchwood something.
He did foreshadowing.
Yeah.
And not even really foreshadowing, just like saying a word over
and over again.
And then, like, if I said the word, um, flambaba to you every day
for a week, and then on Saturday told you what it meant.
It's not really sort of like Flambaba.
You're like, mm-hmm, indeed.
Great.
It's like, it's not actual information.
The, um, perhaps the closest it comes to an arc and again, it's
not very close because it is just references, uh, is the, we've
said this before, the master in utopia, you know, stealing the
TARDIS and travelling back in time to sometime in series two.
So that's a little bit more of an arc, whereas this is just a
series of things or themes.
I think it's, you know, we'll talk more about it as the series
goes on, but I think it's pretty good for what it is.
It does introduce, though, the actual, I would say, the thematic
thrust of season four, which is about war, um, and conquest, which
um, comes back and comes and goes.
And maybe Doctor Who is always about that, but given how the
season ends and how it's liberally about the doctor turning people
into weapons and things, the idea that the pyro vials looked like
giant Roman gladiators and they're in the Roman Empire, which is a
war empire, blah, blah, blah.
It sort of, it begins that sort of motif because it's not really
in partners in crime at all.
Well, dear listener, we're all going to leg it now before a
piroplastic search tells our brains to glass.
And so we'll be back next week to tie up some important loose ends
on the planet of the Oud.
Ow.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety on Facebook
at FT podcast on Twitter, and on our website, FlightthroughEntirety
com, where you'll find links to our other podcasts, Bondfinger, and
Jody Interterterra.
Eric, where can people find you?
All over the place?
I have a variety of podcasts.
There's the real McCoy podcast, which some of you have recently
been on, which is about the 7th doctor and his times, we're about
to release an episode about Silver Nemesis.
So maybe come back after that one.
Uh, I also have a podcast called uh, the writer's room colon the
other limits where we're looking at the science fiction television
show the other limits.
I have one called so much stuff to sing, which is about American
Musical.
Anyway, you can find all of those links and everything else I do
at my Twitter account, which is at SJC off tonight.
S J-C-A-U-S-T-E-N-I-T-E. So, until next time, sit terra tibi lewis
thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Gracias, TB.
That was Flight for Entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley, Brendan
Jones, James Selwood and Eric Stadnick.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, Strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode, the Cambridge Latin course, was recorded on the 27th
of January 2020 and released on the 22nd of March.
If you enjoyed this week's ethical dilemma, tune in next week when
we'll discuss the moral permissibility of electrocuting your
capitalist overlords.
We think you're gonna love it.
For me, what was fun or what was worthwhile about the episode was
being forced to care about those people?
We spend time with Kerkilius and his family.
And look, I'm going to butcher Latin pronunciations all through
this episode, so I'm going to try not to mention names.
And the word pronunciation.
I always say pronunciation.
I never say pronunciation.
And whenever I go to spelling it.
I was thinking it, James said it.
Sorry.
I was an English teacher and I think I was 29 when I found out
that there's only one, there's only 2 O's, I should say, in
pronunciation.
Yes.
There's no O in the middle.
That's right.
It's not pronounciation.
No.
Or pronounced.
It's one of those stupid situations where we've taken a letter out
for no readily explored reason and I've just said that in front of
2 linguists.
Yeah, look.
Yeah, we care about the family because...