The Fires of Pompeii

[armb]

It was nice to see in Doctor Who Confidential that they took David Tennant to Pompeii and taught him some history. A shame they didn't teach anything to the scriptwriter. I know it's not about the history, but that's no excuse for gratuitous ignorance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etna#Historical_eruptions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius#Before_79
http://www.aeoliancharme.com/islands/vulcano/eng.html

(The end was a bit poor too - either he can interfere then on a small scale, or not, but claiming he can't and then changing his mind?)

But good fun on the whole.

Comments

[armb.livejournal.com]

I didn't see any hint of retconning changing geological history to that extent.
But even if it did, we still saw Caecilius inventing the Latin word for volcano after the rift had closed, when it should have been retconned into prior existence too.
We do know that alternate universes exist and the Doctor's timeline isn't ours, so maybe he's in a universe where Vesuvius really was the only volcano known to the Romans, and that only after AD79, but that's just excusing gratutitously poor writing.