“Can he swing from a web? No he can’t, he’s a pig.” - Homer Simpson

The Last Days of Pomp-ee-eye

By Catherynne M. Valente

There seems to be a distinct hierarchy of Doctor Who episodes, ranging from the lows of Episodes Which Must be Accompanied by Side-Effect Warnings Which Include Spontaneous Organ Rupture to the highs of what for lack of a better term I shall call The Moffats. Each season has a couple of each, and peppers the rest of its allotted airtime with more subtle tiers: the Tooth and Claw sorts of episodes, which are fantastic in concept but flaccid in execution, the Gridlock shows, which exist mainly to be callbacks to either the original series or previous episodes of the new series or both, and the standalone, solid but forgettable Unquiet Dead eps.

The Fires of Pompeii was an Unquiet Dead episode for me. It certainly had its moments: being a lapsed classicist I giggled at the references which were more or less accurate—dormouse! Household gods!—groaned at the cap-sleeves on Donna’s “toga,” and enjoyed the budget Pan’s Labyrinth sybils. The running Celtic gag was inspired.

But it dragged in the middle due to an utterly forgettable and two-dimensional villain—and by the way, if an alien is made of fire, he or she may be named anything but by-god Pyrovile. That’s as bad as the Isolus! I would have loved it if someone had accused the monsters of “speakie Celtic” given that that is ever-loving Greek. Doctor Who seems to have a consistent problem, or a problem with consistency, in creating one-shot villains or supporting characters with whom we can really identify or engage. Not everyone can be Sally Sparrow or Madame de Pompadour, but when asking us to weep for a person’s fate, it would help if they had more depth than your average fresco. As long as I’m making wishes: a plan for world domination with more sophistication than that of the beasties in Signs would be nice. Water = instant death? Really? And…why couldn’t the true oracles see the doctor foiling the plan? Oh, nevermind.

DR WHO, BRANNIGAN 5" ACTION FIGURE -LOOSE, NEW & MINT

US $4.30 (3 Bids) End Date: Thursday Aug-07-2008 13:28:56 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

Which brings us to Donna, who was mercifully not nearly so irritating as expected, but whose heart seemed to have pulled a Grinch and grown three times its size. From a woman who militantly knew nothing about anything and cared about no one but herself to one who not only can identify Vesuvius and Pompeii immediately but beats her breast over the fate of 20,000 nameless Romans. I’m not really buying it as growth, since it’s so sudden. It’s more like a reboot of her character, to make her palatable in the long-term.

On top of which, the whole episode is a lesson we’ve learned before, and with greater impact, in Father’s Day. You can’t change the past, not really, and only the Doctor knows what can and can’t be changed. While I realize it must be necessary to teach every companion this, I question the need to do it on camera for every single one, especially if such dreck as Pyroviles, the final “volcano” bit, and yet another Magical Lever of Doom must be trotted out to do so.

On the other hand, Evelina saves all. The actress was so very affecting, and the writing of the dueling prophets scene lovely. And…as often lies at the heart of even the Organ-Rupturing tier of Who, there is a core of something profound here.

She tells the truth, and it turns her to stone. Not just the truth, but knowing the future, knowing it absolutely, turns her inhuman, hard, impenetrable. Of course, the Doctor too knows the future, and the past, knows the truth, absolutely, and he, too, is turned to stone by it, turned unforgiving, turned unyielding, turned pitiless. His (well-named, Evelina! I nominate her for Companion. We need a girl from out of town in the Tardis) trickster antics and rambling monologues belie a heart that is, at this moment in the series, all rock and no fire. Unmovable, inert.

But she is returning. There it is again, that talismanic pronoun. Rose? Martha? The Rani? It may not matter. He may just need a talisman, any one at all. Doctor Who is all about the magic words, all about fairy-tale thinking, for all its SF trappings. The magic wand, the obsession with calling a thing by its proper name. Even the Doctor’s proper name has been referenced three times now by my count.

Something is burning, under the stone.

I’ll live with “Pyrovile” if it’s something…well, fantastic.

Lastly, the author wishes to note that in no way did she have a small Tardis on her household gods altar long before this episode. She has no idea what you’re talking about.

Never miss an update. Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email or subscribe via RSS

Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the Orphan’s Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and four books of poetry, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and Oracles. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award and the Million Writers Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Rhysling and Spectrum Awards, and the World Fantasy Award. She currently lives in Northeastern Ohio with her partner and two dogs.

For more on Catherynne M. Valente, please visit her website.