TODAY'S TWD: POMPEII & CIRCUMSTANCE

With this run of "Turn Left" Tiddlywinkydinks, we're looking at those episodes of 'Doctor Who' which were set in the past and which should have had dire effects for the Earth if the Doctor was no longer alive to be the planet's guardian. (That premise was established in the episode "Turn Left".)

The world could have been - SHOULD have been! - destroyed several times over if the Doctor had not stepped in to save the day. So why did the basic set-up of daily life in London seem so normal for Donna Noble at the beginning of "Turn Left"?
Unlike the episodes which I looked at before yesterday, I don't think the four historical episodes (and two of the three suggested) could have been rectified on their own. The villains involved were all too powerful and should have wreaked havoc which would have made an impact to the present day.

So I think somebody else stepped in to take care of matters in each episode. And this being about Toobworld, I think those somebodies would be from other TV shows!

"THE FIRES OF POMPEII"
Today we're looking at the first historical episode of 'Doctor Who' to feature Donna Noble, "The Fires Of Pompeii". This was not addressed in "Turn Left", but the absence of the Doctor should have caused seismic changes. (Literally!)

Maybe the lack of an eruption for Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD wouldn't have had an effect on modern day England, but the Pyroviles should have been in control of the entire planet. Yet there was no sign of them in Donna's revised time-line.

So what happened to the Pyroviles? And did Vesuvius blow its top in Donna's brave new world?

It's not likely there were too many alive at that time who might have been able to defeat alien beings made of Living Fire. But there was (and still is) a classification of humanoids that would have at least been brave enough to face them - and with the intelligence gained from many lifetimes of experience to give the Pyroviles a good fight.
And those people were the Immortals.

There are/were differrent sub-groups of Immortals. Some of them were:

Vampires
Witches
Demi-Gods
And those who absorb the bio-energy from other Immortals (and sometimes from humans)

As you can see from these classifications, "Immortal" can be a relative term......
I'm not sure which witch of Toobworld might have been alive that far back, maybe Aunt Clara of 'Bewitched'. But as I've focused on them in my examination of the revised world of "The Shakespeare Code", I'm going to set them aside for this post.

As for the demi-gods, it's always possible that Zeus and the other-dimensional super-beings of Olympus would have had to step in if they wanted to make sure their worshippers survived! And since they were able to defeat the Titans, the Pyroviles should have been a walk in the Parthenon, especially with any special water cannons that Vulcan/Hephaestus might forge.....

We can probably eliminate any of the Vampire clans (as established in "Kindred: The Embraced") that were in existence at that time as being involved. The Nosferatu, the "sewer rats" of vampires, might have even been living in the dark caverns that ran through Vesuvius; keeping out of the sight and knowledge of the Pyroviles after they awakened. And even if they knew what the Pyroviles intended and even if they could divine the future, why would they have risked the loss of their undead lives and their home by blowing up the volcano?

Immortals like Walter Jameson ('The Twilight Zone' - "Long Live Walter Jameson"), Flint ('Star Trek' - "Requiem For Methuselah"), and Methos ("The Highlander' - many episodes) - who may have eventually taken on the nom de plume of Flint - would have had no prior knowledge of what should have been the destiny of Vesuvius. After all, they were living out the passage of Time as it happened; as such, they were time travellers in the best Spider Robinson sense of the word - travelling at the rate of one second per second. But once the Pyroviles made their presence known in the world, such Immortals would have recognized the threat to their home planet and their place in it. And if they were in the area, they would probably try to find some way to prevent the Pyroviles from succeeding - with the hope that their immortality could protect them against the fiery monsters.

Involvement by Jameson and Flint/Methos depended a lot on the coincidence that they just happened to be in the area at the time. But Coincidence plays a major role in Toobworld; there should be a Greek God in charge of it! TV characters are always present at the great moments in world history just by happenstance: Lady Marjorie Bellamy ('Upstairs, Downstairs') perished on the Titanic; Mac Taylor's wife Claire ('CSI: NY') died in the World Trade Center collapse; and Sophia Petrillo ('The Golden Girls') witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
So maybe one or more Immortals were in Pompeii before Volcano Day. And if so, they could have engaged the Pyroviles in combat, which would have given someone else with knowledge of how the Future should play out to make sure that Vesuvius erupted.

The only ones who would know that would have to be time travelers from the Future. With the Doctor dead, that would leave the home-grown variety - "Voyagers" from the Temporal Agency, like Phineas Bogg, a now-adult Jeffrey Jones, Captain John Hart, and Captain Jack Harkness, perhaps Captain Z-Ro, among others.
But the best candidates would be the scientists Tony Newman and Doug Philips who were working on Project Tick-Tock, the Time Tunnel. Using themselves as guinea pigs, Doug and Tony ended up trapped somewhere along the infinite corridors of Time. Speaking of great coincidences, they often found themselves landing at key junctures in world history - Pearl Harbor, Custer's Last Stand, the Fall of the Walls of Jericho. It almost seemed as if they were being drawn to these events. So I think we can assume that eventually, had they remained visible to the audience watching in the Trueniverse, we would have seen them arrive in Pompeii just before August 24th, 79 AD.

There's only one problem with this. Tony and Doug were stupid. For scientists who specialize in the study of Time, they never gave any consideration to the consequences if they should disrupt the original flow of the Timeline. It always seemed like no matter where they landed, they tried to stop the original event from occurring. This would have caused major chaos all down the timeline.

So it's quite possible that once they arrived in Pompeii, Doug and Tony would have taken the decision upon themselves to let the Pyrovile plan play out so that the citizens of Pompeii would survive. Either way, I don't think the two of them would have survived Volcano Day, and it's probably just as well.....

(In the original timeline, we don't know whatever happened to Tony and Doug after the series ended. Looking at the TV series as a stand-alone, it's always possible they are still tumbling along the infinite corridors of Time even into their seventies. But this is Toobworld. It's more likely the Doctor finally rescued them himself and then made damn sure they couldn't bleep up the timeline again; probably by using his sonic screwdriver to destroy 'The Time Tunnel'.)

If the Pyroviles were successful without the Doctor's interference, the lack of an explosion of Vesuvius would be noticed in the future. And who you gonna call? 'Voyagers!' Phineas and Jeffrey could have gone back and made sure that history was re-aligned by finding some way to detonate the volcano. And unlike Tony Newman and Doug Philips, they'd be able to use the Omni to get themselves out of there in time!
Or it could have been due to alien tampering by another race who would want to make sure the Pyroviles were defeated. Perhaps it might be the Asgard arriving via the 'Stargate', or maybe even Terraphile Exigius 12½, citizen of Mars. (He would be better known in the 1960's as "Uncle Martin O'Hara" on 'My Favorite Martian'.)
Because the Pyroviles were not prevalent in the revised timeline of "Turn Left", we do have to figure that somebody put an end to their plans of conquest for Earth. And that means that Vesuvius had to explode. But this time, without the Doctor present, it meant that not only did Lurcio ('Up Pompeii') and the other citizens of Pompeii perish, but so did the family of Caecillius, whom the Doctor rescued at the urging of his Companion Donna.
This would have been a major blow to the timeline when it comes to other residents of Toobworld who were of Italian ancestry. We have no idea who should have been part of the family tree of Caecillius, but we could have lost such Italian-Americans as the aforementioned Sophia Petrillo as well as the following:

Lt. 'Columbo'

Carla Tortelli & Coach Ernie Pantusso ('Cheers')

Joey Tribbiani ('Friends')

Arthur Fonzarelli ('Happy Days')

Dominic Santini ('Airwolf')

Tony Vincenzo ('Kolchak')

Larry Mondello ('Leave It To Beaver')

Laverne DeFazio ('Laverne & Shirley')

Vinnie Terranova ('Wiseguy')

Mrs. Baciagalupe ('The Abbott And Costello Show')

Michael Garibaldi ('Babylon 5')

Captain Frank Furillo ('Hill Street Blues')

'The Fanelli Boys'

'Bert D'Angelo, Superstar'

'Bonino', 'Delvecchio', 'Petrocelli'

and 'The Sopranos'

as well as Mama Magadini, maker of those spicy meatballs!

Those are just some ideas about what could have happened, and who could have been involved. The best part about suppositions like this, unlike other Toobworld theories, is that we don't have to hold to them. After all, it was all a moot point since Donna was able to revert the timeline back to its original version.


SHOWS CITED:
'Torchwood'
'Voyagers!'
'Kindred: The Embraced'
'The Golden Girls'
'Upstairs, Downstairs'
'CSI: NY'
'The Twilight Zone'
'Time Tunnel'
'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys'
'Up, Pompeii'
'Stargate: SG-1'
'The Highlander'
'My Favorite Martian'
'Bewitched'
'Star Trek'

BCnU!
Toby O'B