Doctor Who: The Fires of Pompeii

[Zoinksberg]

I always interpreted the bit about Latin sounding Celtic to mean that Latin was being translated back into English.

No, that would make it Germanic. Modern English comes via old Germanic languages, very distinct from the Celtic (or more properly Brythonic, as they were the original languages of the Britons) tongues (Welsh, Gaelic, Irish-Gaelic etc). Completely different linguistic family trees.

You might be overestimating the linguistic knowledge of a street vendor that, upon not understanding a tourist's language, started speaking his own language loudly and slowly. He was essentially just saying "I don't speak foreign".

[FlynnTaggart]

This is an episode I remember enjoying quite a bit. The Doc going back to save future Doc's face wearer echoes a bit of the first Doctor being stopped from bashing in someone's brains. The Doctor is good at heart but it occasionally takes a human to guide him to the right path. I also find it kinda funny in retrospect that the Doctor was pretty cold and willing to let people die in the episode with the guy who would eventually play a Doctor sometimes accused of being cold and willing to let people die.

Did they ever explain why Doc had Caecilius's face in the show?

[Fianna]

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

[Jonathan101]

Did they ever explain why Doc had Caecilius's face in the show?

Yes. In "The Girl Who Died", from season 9 of Nu-Who, he realises it was to remind himself that he's the Doctor, and he saves people, and if anyone has a problem with that, then to Hell with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qx-0lvC18

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

Because it's not just about the records, it's about what impact these people may or may not have had on others if they were supposed to die there. Ripple effects.

[RobbyB1982]

As for the tardis translation, I assume it picks up on some level how the universal translator works in Trek. It has a default setting cued to your instinctual language, so that when you speak it, that is translated appropriately. But when you use something outside of that language, a loan word or proper name, or a bit of Klingon, that goes untranslated because... you're saying something weird and it picks up on that.

Like if we're speaking in English or French and say "tsunami", a good translator wouldn't automatically turn it into "harbor wave", it would probably leave it as "tsunami". ANd if you're speaking japanese and say "tsunami"... it also shouldn't translate since that word has made it into standard use. It should only translate if you get to a language that hasn't taken in the loan word. (THough it is worth noting the word is pronunced a bit differently in Japanese than it is in english.)

Donna was basically speaking in gibberish that meant nothing to her, so the tardis left it as gibberish... and it was a completely outdated accent and variant of the language for the time period anyway.

Did they ever explain why Doc had Caecilius's face in the show?

To remind himself that he saves lives regardless of the consequences. They sooooort of implied that every face is a little bit borrowed based on in impression, you've had that's inspired you in some subconscious way, which sort of tracks with Romana turning into Princess Astra, a woman that she had met just prior.

That doesn't explain Six, Colin Baker, looking like random timelord Commander Maxil however. Unless he just went "wow, that guy is totally insane! I want to be like that!"

[Fianna]

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

Because it's not just about the records, it's about what impact these people may or may not have had on others if they were supposed to die there. Ripple effects.

Then just take them back to the present or the future with you and dump them off there. Didn't the First Doctor rescue someone from the Fall of Troy that way?

[Jonathan101]

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

Because it's not just about the records, it's about what impact these people may or may not have had on others if they were supposed to die there. Ripple effects.

Then just take them back to the present or the future with you and dump them off there. Didn't the First Doctor rescue someone from the Fall of Troy that way?

He might have, but that was before Fixed Points in Time were retconned into being A Thing.

[Darmani]

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

Because it's not just about the records, it's about what impact these people may or may not have had on others if they were supposed to die there. Ripple effects.

Then just take them back to the present or the future with you and dump them off there. Didn't the First Doctor rescue someone from the Fall of Troy that way?

He might have, but that was before Fixed Points in Time were retconned into being A Thing.

Everything Doctor Who I imagine it's never a matter of can't so much as don't or there will be severe Cosmic consequences
A fixed point is just simply one of those major linch-pins on what's left of the time stream but if you mess with if you're lucky you get bats from the middle of hell

[Philistine]

I don't get why not saving the family was even considered. The destruction of Pompeii and the death of thousands is a fixed point in time, okay, but I doubt there's any clear record of whether these specific people survived or not, so saving them wouldn't change anything as far as you're aware. Plus, they're right there. The Doctor wouldn't even have to go out of his way to save them; just leave the door to the Tardis open and make a "come over here" gesture.

Because it's not just about the records, it's about what impact these people may or may not have had on others if they were supposed to die there. Ripple effects.

I propose an alternative explanation: I don't think Ten was thinking anywhere near that clearly by the time he and Donna made their dash for the TARDIS. He almost left Donna in the ruins of Caecilius's house as well, and that certainly wasn't because he feared a butterfly effect from her survival! So I don't think Ten really "considered" leaving Caecilius's family behind; when he calmed down to a point where he was once again capable of "considering" anything, he immediately went back and got them.

It's always seemed to me that Ten in that scene was running on guilt and anger and fear, and trying desperately to stave off incapacitating PTSD by telling himself that everyone in Pompeii was already dead. When Caecilius begged him for help, it came as an unwelcome reminder that, No, they're not actually dead yet, further ramping up Ten's self-loathing. Going back to my own earlier post, this is where I think it's so important that Donna took part of that load on herself under Vesuvius. Even with that, she was barely able to pull Ten back out of his own head to help him realize that there was still some good he could do; if in the previous scene she'd instead added to his burden of guilt... I don't know. Not only would he likely have been farther under the cloud, but I think he also would have been more likely to discount, or straight-up ignore, whatever she said.

[Sir Will]

^ nice. Donna's great.