The Fires of Pompeii by: James Moran

 

The Fires of Pompeii was written by: James Moran from his television story of the same name.  It was the 180^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

There’s something great about experiencing a story from a different perspective.  James Moran’s singular television episode of Doctor Who, although he would write for Big Finish and Torchwood after and before this respectively, “The Fires of Pompeii” is an easy candidate for novelization, being part of the third wave of releases in 2022.  Until very recently, about a month ago in fact, The Fires of Pompeii was the only novelization of an adventure with Donna Noble, adapting her first trip in the TARDIS and bending the plot around that fact.  Moran’s main interest in adapting the story is to add depth to the characterization and some small deleted scenes that if filmed would have assisted in this but clearly made sense for deletion due to the 45 minute time constraint of a television episode.  This is exemplified with this internal exploration of Donna’s internal thoughts about the not so snap decision she made to travel with the Doctor.  Partially, this internal monologue is there to catch potential new readers to Donna’s history and the plot of “The Runaway Bride” and “Partners in Crime” which as of writing haven’t been novelized yet, but it’s also serving a dual purpose of showing Donna’s depth as a person.  Donna has convinced herself this is what she wants and while there had been thought in packing for travel and finding the Doctor, she doesn’t actually know much about him.  There’s this subtle fear that he could just want her there to kill her and nobody would ever know.  With this depth, and some retrospect of how production changed on the fourth series with the passing of Howard Attafield, Moran actually reflects on the loss of a parent, something largely ignored on television because it was never meant to be a lens for Donna’s story.

 

The Fires of Pompeii is a story that couldn’t have been told entirely through Donna’s perspective, integral scenes are from the Doctor’s perspective, but in writing the novelization Moran makes the decision to focus on these scenes from the perspective of other characters.  This and Donna’s perspective on the Doctor helps to alienate the Tenth Doctor more than David Tennant’s television portrayal ever did.  There are scenes from Quintus and Caecilius that make up the majority of this effect, something that adds this sense of real history told through reference points that a modern reader would understand in the way that the characters speak.  In universe this is explained by an extension of the TARDIS translation circuits which Moran does an excellent job at integrating into the narrative.  There is also this beautiful moment when Vesuvius erupts that shows Moran clearly understands how to write a novel, the eruption is described on a single line, the only line of the page and chapter as a whole in stark contrast to Moran’s usual flowing prose.  It's a simple device used to really hit home in the reader the unthinkable destruction that is now coming to pass, and with an extended scene before the Doctor goes back to save Caecilius makes the deus ex machina ending (for the family at least) feel earned.

Overall, while “The Fires of Pompeii” was an excellent episode of television The Fires of Pompeii works better as a novel.  Moran, while letting in other little Doctor Who references, never forgets the scope of the novel that he is writing so it doesn’t become bogged down in additions of fanservice while the prose flows from beginning to end.  Like many of the single episodes of the revival being adapted into novels that have nearly double the page count that the television scripts would have, Moran’s vision is expanded in simple ways to add depth that cannot be done in a 45 minute television story.  9/10.