YMMV / Doctor Who S30 E2 "The Fires of Pompeii"

• Fridge Brilliance: There's a lot in the episode about soothsayers being able to tell the future from the past. Two extras would go on to be in the lead cast, fulfilling this. Doctor Who does have a tendency to invoke all this.
• Genius Bonus: The Graffiti on the walls (when not being translated by the TARDIS) is genuine, if rather scatological Latin. Examples of the now-rare "Vulgar Latin" can still be found on artefacts in Pompeii's ruins.
• Growing the Beard: Granted, softening Donna's personality had already begun with "Partners in Crime". But this episode showed how empathetic she could be, and what she brought to the table travelling with The Doctor. It also firmly established that their dynamic would not be romantic, with Caecilius lampshading them acting like "brother and sister".
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Tenth Doctor and Donna saving Caecilius and his family may have seemed like a heartwarming moment at the time, but it ended up setting off a series of events that would lead to the Doctor losing Clara Oswald as well as his subsequent Despair Event Horizon ^note Inspired by Donna's words, 12 subconsciously chooses Caecilius's face as a reminder that he saves people, even if it seems impossible. His realizing this inspires him to save a Viking girl he'd bonded with, Ashildr, by making her immortal, while refusing to take her on as a companion due to the fact that their immortality would lead to them becoming jaded. Centuries of life on The Slow Path ultimately lead to Ashildr becoming bitter and jaded, adopting the moniker Me, and eventually opting to remain on Earth to clean up the messes The Doctor leaves behind. To this end she eventually creates Trap Street, a refuge for alien refugees in London, and is manipulated to lead 12 into a trap by the Time Lords. This trap ultimately costs Clara her life, with 12 trapped in his confession dial, where he spends 4.5 billion years fighting his way out, and eventually risking the safety of the universe in his efforts to save her life.. If one also takes into account John Frobisher apparently being Caecilius's distant descendent, the Doctor and Donna's act of compassion indirectly lead to another tragedy they would never know.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Going back and seeing a pre-Amy Pond Karen Gillan and a pre-Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi alongside David Tennant, can make this episode either hilarious, confusing, awesome, or possibly all three. Especially since both are softening their native Scottish accents, with Karen Gillan putting on a classic RP accent, when both Amy and Twelve were extremely Scottish and proud of it (or at least, Twelve ended up sounding Scottish and liked the accent).
    • Heck, the very first thing we see Caecilius doing is gushing over his new purchase, the TARDIS, thinking it some form of modern art.
    • Karen Gillan's first episode of Doctor Who involves people's arms turning to stone. One season later, Amy's arm would (seemingly) turn to stone in "The Time of Angels."
    • Capaldi related a story of meeting a Doctor Who fan who recognized him shortly after he was cast when it hadn't yet been made public, causing him to freak out a bit that it had been leaked, until he realized they recognized him from this episode.
  • The announcement of the Thirteenth Doctor made the Doctor's "just us girls" line a lot funnier. Looks like the Doctor is telling his own prophecies in this episode. The cherry on top? She would regenerate back into David Tennant.
  • There is a certain resemblance between Caecilius and Mark from Skins.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • If you didn't watch The Thick of It, you might still recognise that Roman noble... from Doctor Who itself — he's the Twelfth Doctor! It gets lampshaded in the Season 9 episode "The Girl Who Died."
  • Also, one of the soothsayers is Amy Pond, and later still, Nebula.
  • And for fans of Big Finish Doctor Who, Caecilius's wife Metella is the Seventh Doctor's audio companion Dr. Elizabeth Klein.

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