10th Doctor - The Fires of Pompeii (i)

Serial 403 – The Fans of Up, Pompeii
An Alternate Program Guide by Ewen Campion Clarke
From An Entry In The EC Unauthorized Guide O' Ripoffs

"YOA's Discontinuity Guides - Inaccurate But Caring."


Serial 403 – The Fans of Up, Pompeii -

Stepping out of the TARDIS, Donna is jubilant to discover the Doctor
has taken her to the far distant future, a world of strange alien creatures who mingle with human beings in tight spandex.

The Doctor awkwardly admits he was aiming for the Taj Mahal and they’ve actually arrived in England in the 20th century – as can be spotted by the signs written in English. Donna is annoyed, as she assumed that the TARDIS translation circuits were telepathically altering her perceptions and making weird outer-space language LOOK like English.

"Yeah, as if!" the Doctor snorts derisively.

Unaware they are being watched by a fit redhead in a criminally-short miniskirt, the two friends walk through the hotel they’ve landed in and realize they are at a science fiction convention. The Doctor admits he finds his surroundings disturbingly familiar, but then, he’s been to a lot of science fiction conventions.

The Doctor and Donna emerge from the convention and find it is being hosted in Peckham, specially the Berk’s Head Hotel. "Oh jings!" the Doctor exclaims in bug-eyed horror.

"We’re at Vulcanalia 1980! AND IT’S TWO FOR ONE DAY!"

Donna is unimpressed. "Blimey, you take Star Trek conventions seriously, don’t you?"


Parte the First

The redhead in the miniskirt runs to the café of the Burk’s Head Hotel where she meets a floppy-haired youth in a bowtie and tweed jacket, consuming copious amounts of tea and biscuits. Believe it or not, this is an incarnation of the Doctor in the distant future, and the redhead is his achingly gorgeous jailbait companion Amelia Jessica Pond!

Amy explains she has just seen a blue box appear out of thin air, an a skinny Scotsman and a ginger woman with big tits emerge.

"Oh, fuck me slowly with a coat hanger," the Eleventh Doctor exclaims, checking his wrist watch. "Is that the time?!"

The duo hastily prepare to leave, passing a familiar piratical figure pulling the moves on an incredibly obese fan in red shirt. "Captain Jack Sparrow," he says lustily. "Being an experienced time traveler like myself, I couldn’t help noticing your obituary is in tomorrow’s newspaper. You wanna die a virgin, boy? Or let Captain Jack ride you hard tonight, savvy?"

Thankfully, we never see what happens next.

The Doctor and Donna run back to where they landed but discover the TARDIS is gone. A nearby merchandise vendor with a psychotic delusion he is in fact Del Boy Trotter from "Only Fools and Horses" cheerfully explains he knew it was their time machine and incredibly precious, which is why he sold it a novelty video cabinet – all the while screaming "LOVELY JUBBLY!" in a Celtic accent.

Donna headbutts him until he is comatose.

Suddenly, there is a wheezing groaning sound and a police box appears in the corner. The Doctor bites his fist in embarrassment as a small Scotsman in a straw hat and carrying a question-mark umbrella scuttles out, followed by another obnoxious redhead... it’s beginning to look like the Doctor’s got a ginger fetish, doesn’t it?

Donna folds her arms and tells the Doctor to make his explanation for what is happening PHENOMALLY good.

"Well, Donna, see... it’s just one of those things. I keep visiting the same doomed science fiction convention in every incarnation. It’s tradition. Like doing a UNIT story or fighting Dustbins. You’re not a proper Doctor until you’ve hung around Vulcanalia and agonized about the impossibility of changing history. It’s good for breaking in companions, too..."

The Doctor nods across the dealers’ hall where a Northern skinhead in a leather jacket is shouting a blonde teenager. "Save them? Save them? They’re a fixed point in time, Rose! Don’t you understand? No, of course you don’t! Oh it figures, I pick up yet another stupid ape feigning to tell ME how to be clever! ME! You think I wanted this? Do you understand now? That’s who I am!"

The Doctor sighs at his past self. "Jings, I was a miserable old asshole back then, huh?" He turns to Donna. "Come on, we’ve got a TARDIS to find. Allonzee!"

Elsewhere in the building, the Fourth Doctor, Leela and K9 are also present. "Marvelous people, the Trekkies. Well - a shame about the acne, of course. But the miniskirts, the props! Oh, the props. Marvelous. You know, I met Patrick Stewart once. 'Doctor,' he said to me, 'there’s nothing more satisfying than the careful redistribution of water.' No idea what he was on about, but still..."