Pompeii Pompeii was a city in Italy remembered for its destruction by the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD . ( TV : " The Fires of Pompeii " ; AUDIO : " The Fires of Vulcan " , PROSE : " Timechase " ) Before its name was dug up , the locals called it Civita . ( AUDIO : " Coming to Dust " ) History . A group of Pyrovile s landed in the region and slept for thousands of years until awakened by an earthquake in 62 AD . They set in motion a plan to xenoform the Earth into a planet of fire , to become their new home . In 79 AD , shortly before the volcanic eruption that was destined to destroy the city , the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble arrived and foiled the Pyroviles ' plan . Unfortunately , to save the Earth , the Doctor and Donna were forced to trigger the eruption of the volcano , Vesuvius . The eruption completely destroyed the city and killed most of its population of twenty thousand people . Although Donna pleaded with the Doctor to rescue the population , he stated that the event was a crucial and unchangeable event in history , a fixed point in time . However , he agreed to save the Caecilius family from the destruction . The eruption was so powerful that it briefly created a time rift , which by echoing back in time granted a number of Pompeii ' s citizens precognitive powers . ( TV : " The Fires of Pompeii " ) The Seventh Doctor and Melanie Bush arrived in Pompeii on the day before the eruption and tried to escape from the coming eruption . The Doctor ' s TARDIS was buried in the city . ( AUDIO : " The Fires of Vulcan " ) The Dalek s once stole the Mark One model of a time machine called the Time - Conveyor , which was built by Peter and David ' s uncle . They hoped to reverse - engineer their own time machine from it . Peter and David pursued them through time in the Mark Two . They finally recovered it in Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius , having defeated the Daleks one - by - one along the way . ( PROSE : " Timechase " ) In the 18th century , the ruins of Pompeii were called " Civita " . Faction Paradox hid some of its biodata codices and remembrance tank s in the ruins after the Gregorian Compact . They were hidden in a cavern sealed behind a door like those in the Eleven - Day Empire , building not just bodies but entire timeline s for new Faction " rugrats " . However , when the products were still just infants , the shrine was rededicated to Sutekh in a treaty between the Great Houses and the Osirian Court . Sutekh defiled the race bank s stored there and smashed up the remembrance tanks . The Eye of Horus was scratched into the door , and instead of being opened by a Faction phrase , it would be opened by the Sign of the Eye , an Egypt ian ritual gesture . The rapid growth biomass in the broken remembrance tanks fed the local plants until the cavern was filled by the gigantic " Tree of Filth " , twenty or thirty feet across , with pitch black skin . Shapes in its bark resembled human bodies . Its roots fed into the cracked remembrance tanks , and its branches merged into the cavern ' s ceiling , feeding the plant life above . By 1783 , small black flowers called the " bugs of the hours " had begun to spring up . The locals collected the seeds of these flowers , ground them , and mixed them into wine ; the mixture would promote visions that affected not only the memories of the intoxicated , but also the memories of the people around them , even if they ' d never consumed the drink , as if the drinkers had too much history and it spilled into those around them . Merytra Ellainya and her Mal ' akh stole a creature from the shrine to sacrifice in order to open a time tunnel to the Osirian Court ; Cousin Eliza described it as looking like a rabbit with its legs pulled . When Eliza entered the shrine with Cousin Justine and agents of the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini , she said it smelled of rotting history : not human flesh , but the " potential " for human flesh . ( AUDIO : " Coming to Dust " ) After millennia of legend , archaeologists eventually rediscovered the lost city , and humanity remembered its fate . ( TV : " The Fires of Pompeii " ) In 1980 , an earthquake damaged Pompeii and uncovered the buried TARDIS . ( AUDIO : " The Fires of Vulcan " ) Alternative Timelines . A time disruption briefly changed history so that Vesuvius took longer to erupt , allowing the city ' s populace to evacuate in their boat s . ( PROSE : " The Algebra of Ice " ) References . On the planet Torcaldi , Barbara Wright was reminded of Pompeii when she found the inhabitants of Cantosi frozen in time . ( PROSE : " The Ruins of Time " ) The Eleventh Doctor once commented that the victims of the Shroud , which lined the walls of its wormhole , looked a lot like the victims of Pompeii . ( PROSE : " Shroud of Sorrow " ) Jack Harkness in his rogue days claimed that Pompeii was an excellent setting for a time agent con job , as long as you got out before " Volcano Day " . ( TV : " The Doctor Dances " ) From the graffiti in Pompeii , historian s were able to learn a great deal about Roman life . ( AUDIO : " The Unwinding World " ) Behind the scenes . One possible " game over " for the video game " Don ' t Blink " has the player being sent back in time by a Weeping Angel to the year 79 to die in Pompeii .