We also go back in Porter and John’s personal timelines to discover that they live way more awesome lives than YOU do – John took five years of Latin in Catholic school and they BOTH have been to Pompeii (separately). So just imagine the two of them wandering around in the background of the set of Rome in flip-flops and “I’m with stupid” T-shirts as you watch the Doctor take Donna on her first trip into history. There they meet a future Doctor and companion cleverly disguised as completely random characters (almost as if there was no connection at all…), and then they battle some CGI rock creatures who have a super awesome plan (that John and Porter totally understand, by the way) that is thwarted by flooding the city of Pompeii with liquid hot magma. The first half of this podcast is so hot that you should be careful that you don’t burn your fingers in The Fires of Pompeii.
We then take a short hop back in Roman history but a giant leap back in Who history to the era of Nero and the First Doctor as he, Ian, and Barbara take New Susan (a.k.a., Vicki) on her first TARDIS trip into history too. There, the Doctor light-heartedly loots a corpse and vaguely toys with the idea of assassinating the Emperor (who has also hilariously enslaved Barbara and is trying to rape her). Ha! Ian, meanwhile, scrambles to live every plot of every Roman history-based movie/television show that has ever been made. Yes, it’s a laugh-a-minute in ancient Rome in the cunningly titled The Romans.
