The Monthly Adventures #012 - "The Fires of Vulcan" by Steve Lyons

One of the many oddities of the Doctor Who IP is the many pseudo-remakes born from the extensive expanded universe. From Jubilee into Dalek or The Star Beast into… The Star Beast, you can find many examples of this phenomenon throughout the revival, with inspirations ranging from the books to, yes, the audios. Perhaps one of the strangest links between Big Finish and New-Who is The Fires of Vulcan, which shares a number of similarities with the Series 4 story The Fires of Pompeii, including in name. But exactly how similar are they? Let’s find out.

Italy, 1980: archeologists uncover an impossible artefact in Pompeii - a 1960s British police telephone box. 2000 years earlier, two stranded travellers desperately try to escape a tragedy, and keep their lives whilst they’re at it.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The Fires of Vulcan, though on the surface incredibly similar to its revival counterpart in many ways, has a vast number of differences, namely that this is a pure historical as opposed to the more traditional alien outing of The Fires of Pompeii. However, both deal with similar themes about time travel and not being allowed to impact the web of time, though they go about it in different ways. The Fires of Vulcan opens with archeologists and UNIT discovering the TARDIS buried under the rubble of Pompeii, which is an instantly startling visual and a great way to open the story. How did the TARDIS get there? How do the Doctor and Mel escape the passage of time? It’s by all means as good as an opening hook can be and it makes for a great premise. Once we get to Pompeii however, we start to notice the cracks, though they’re not that immediately obvious. The story is very fast, we get into the action quickly but still let the story have time to build. Heck, it takes a whole part for the actual plot to begin but I don’t really mind because even that first part is filled with some quality action and some great characters. Whilst said characters certainly don't stand out (god knows I can’t actually name a single one of them but that’s more because of Latin than script), they all feel like real people and work in the confines of the story. Chief amongst them all is the Doctor; McCoy has very quickly gone from the worst performance in Big Finish’s roster of Doctors to quite possibly the best, his mournful attitude as he slowly grows to accept his fate is brilliantly performed.

Unfortunately, the plot of The Fires of Vulcan just does not work for me at all. Despite the very brisk pace and great setup, a lot of the subplots just don’t go anywhere, it consists of a lot of disconnected plot threads that end abruptly when Vesuvius erupts in Part 4, and the whole narrative can only be described as loose in nature. I think the story would be a lot better if it took advantage of its premise, which it mainly does not. The paradoxical elements of The Fires of Pompeii are the basis of the entire plot, it’s the whole thing that spurs the Doctor and Donna onwards and the themes it brings up are central to the entire episode. The Fires of Vulcan is probably the bare minimum you could’ve done with the concept of the Doctor getting stuck in an inescapable disaster. Nobody seems worried at any point in this episode. Mel, a human being who just learned she’ll die tomorrow, is acting as calm as ever. Even during the eruption, no performance or dialogue sells how terrifying this is, everybody is very oddly dismissing this end of days event with a shrug and it makes the whole audio take on this very weird, tensionless atmosphere that adamantly refuses to grab my attention. This story is not boring, not by a long shot - Lyons is very good at keeping a snappy pace, but he never gives me any reason to care about what’s happening, the terror is left underdeveloped. Plus, our threat besides the volcano - our “antagonists” - leave no impression on me, they never feel particularly malicious or dangerous. This entire audio is incredibly odd, it feels like the whole script’s on valium and it has the same pace as a story where a character calmly wanders around an ancient city for a day. Not helping this is the whole conundrum of “how does the Doctor escape when the TARDIS is lost to time?” doesn’t even matter, because he just goes at the end. He doesn’t even do anything clever, he just flies to modern day and then sends the TARDIS back into Pompeii; Doctor, you’re the smartest being in the universe, could you not have thought of this any time in the last 24 hours? The fact that the Doctor and Mel were literally never trapped in Pompeii to begin with detracts from the one thematic element this story had and it makes the last 100 minutes feel pointless.

The Fires of Vulcan was very disappointing to me; I’ve heard some great things about it but it just failed to do anything with its unique premise and, whilst a perfectly fine historical with a well realised Ancient Italy and a well paced script, it was decidedly lacking the tension it desperately needed. The Fires of Pompeii will always be the better of the two “Pompeii stories” for me - a simple but incredibly effective idea executed in a melancholic and beautiful way as opposed to the Doctor and Mel waiting a day to move away from one of the biggest explosions in history.

6/10

Pros:

+ The Doctor’s mournful attitude compliments the tone of the story well

+ Moves fast and smoothly, never drags

+ The characters, if simple, all felt very real

+ Great premise that immediately hooks the listener

Cons:

- Full of wasted time and wandering plot threads

- Antagonists with very little depth or presence

- Very lacking in threat or tension

- Fails to utilise its premise

- Has an ending that renders the rest of the audio pointless