Question about "Fires of Pompeii"

[iko]

Comments

[evilgeniuslady]

A little bit of both, I think. There's always the choice to not fulfill your destiny - even though it's not a realistic choice, it's still a choice he has to make. It's the exact mirror of Nine not activating the delta wave in Parting of the Ways. He knew he had to push the lever, but he couldn't do it. This time he had the strength to make that choice - and he had Donna by his side, helping him shoulder the responsibility.

[fahrbotdrusilla]

that's an incredibly depressing thought.

[shadoweave]

I'm wondering if it *was* a fixed point in time, but when the Doctor ended the Time War, there was a ripple effect throughout time that created all sorts of problems - that business about planets disappearing, etc.

Now he's got to clean up the mess he made, creating situations where he has to make a choice to fix the stuff that's gone wrong.

[naushika]

but simply the realization that he HAS none? That he's behind the deaths of so many people?

That was how I took it.

And, perhaps strangely, I took the stuff about "someone having to make a choice" to mean Donna, and not the Doctor. Her choice to accept his role in the universe and that sometimes difficult things have to be done, and that sometimes, she'll have to help him do it. I'm going to have to watch it again because now those scenes are fuzzy in my memory, but that's what I came away from the episode thinking.

[hence_the_name]

This is almost the same thing, but I saw it as his realization that he had been the cause of the volcano's eruption all along, if that makes sense. There's a big difference between standing by and allowing a thing to happen and realizing that you're the one who has to push the button, and that's what I think was so devastating. Pompeii is fixed, it can't be changed--and therefore he has to take action.