History Meets Fiction in Doctor Who, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’: A BBC Reception of Ancient Rome on Screen and Online

Abstract

‘Ancient Rome!’ The door of the iconic police box squeaks open. The camera pans, following a dark-haired man as he emerges, pushes through a curtained doorway, and, with a glint in his eye, glee in his smile, and a touch of London in his voice, announces their destination to his redhead companion. So begins ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, the second episode in the fourth season of the current BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) science-fiction drama Doctor Who. And so, no doubt, began the scribbling of pens on notebooks, as classicists who examine popular receptions of ancient Greece and Rome recognized a fresh opportunity to explore the dynamics of modern engagements with the classical world. At the time of broadcast, I was ensconced in my Liverpool office, writing the final lecture of a new undergraduate module devoted to Roman society. The topic was ‘Receptions of Roman Life’. My plan was to contrast depictions of Roman life in different media from distinct periods to encourage our students to recognize how modern reconstructions of Roman society are variously informed by questions of authority, genre, and cultural contexts. Serendipitously, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ provided an engaging contemporary reception of the Roman world on television.

Teaching historical literacies to digital learners via popular culture

“…There is, for example, no reference to slavery in Dr Who 'The Fires of Pompeii', although the episode deals largely with a wealthy Roman family who would certainly have had slaves. This family brought to life characters featured in the Cambridge Latin Course (CSCP, 1998), themselves based on a real Pompeian household (Hobden, 2009), who did own slaves. 2 Using our approach, students are asked to consider possible reasons for this omission after pairing the episode with depictions of household slaves in ancient Roman plays, letters and inscriptions.…”

“…The popular visual media representations discussed above are not solely responsible for these impressions, since they themselves draw upon earlier versions of Rome from painting, film and other media (Wyke, 1997), even Latin textbooks, as is the case in the 2008 episode of Dr Who ‘The Fires of Pompeii’. In the episode, the recollection of the Cambridge Latin Course ’s (CSCP, 1998) household, itself based on a family recorded in the ruins of Pompeii, is calculated to appeal to those familiar with the textbook (Hobden, 2009) – but this presupposes an unusual element of prior knowledge and is clearly intended to add an additional layer of allusion. This episode appeals to the two most well-known aspects of Pompeii for the modern non-specialist: that its remains provide us with our best evidence for everyday life in a Roman town, and that it was destroyed in the most spectacular manner by a volcanic eruption, which paradoxically also preserved it.…”