The Doctor is quick to want to leave the inevitable disaster, but Donna wants to help evacuate the city. The Doctor insists that he cannot interfere in established events, which Donna is unwilling to accept. However, their departure is stalled when they find that a nearby stallholder has sold the TARDIS to caeliuss as a piece of "modern art". Meanwhile, a member of the Sibylline sisterhood reports back on the arrival of the "blue box", which they find is a fulfillment of a Sibylline prophecy.
At Caecilius' house, the Doctor attempts to procure the TARDIS, only to be interrupted when the town augur, Lucius Dextrus, steps in. He is there to retrieve a marble slate with a circuit board carved into it. Upon seeing the Doctor, both he and Caecilius' prophetically-gifted daughter Evelina reveal several personal details about Donna and the Doctor, including their places of origin, knowledge they claim to have gained from the fumes of the hypocacolus in the city.
When Dextrus has gone, Donna finds that Evelina's skin is turning to stone whilst the Doctor is shown the hypocaust system, which is powered by hot spring from Vesuvius itself. This system, he is told, was installed after the 62 AD earthquake on Dextrus and the other soothsayers' instructions. From that time onwards, the soothsayers have been inhaling rock dust from these hypocausts and all their predictions have been entirely accurate. The Doctor and Quintus break into Dextrus' house, finding more marble circuit boards which come together to form an energy converter. When Dextrus confronts them, the Doctor rips off his arm, revealing that it has turned to stone like Evelina's skin. Dextrus sends one of the "underworld gods" to pursue the Doctor.
Meanwhile, Donna learns that Evelina cannot prophesy the eruption. She tells Evelina about the eruption, which Evelina psychically passes onto the sisterhood. They and their high-priestess decide it is a false prophecy and that Donna must be killed. The Doctor and Quintus burst in a few moments later, followed by a humanoid creature made of stone and magma bursting from the hypocaust. The Doctor distracts the creature while Donna and Quintus get water to throw on it. In the confusion, Donna is kidnapped by the sisterhood. Quintus throws water on the creature as requested, which causes it to die.
The Doctor realises Donna is missing, and confronts the sisterhood to rescue her. Conversing with their high priestess, he finds she has completely turned to stone. She reveals that she is being used as a host by one of the Pyroviles, stone aliens who crashed to earth, shattered into dust, and were re-awakened by the 62 earthquake, psychically linking to the humans of the town (one of their adult forms is the creature they saw at the villa). The Doctor is, however, unable to find how they are psychically seeing through time.
Donna and the Doctor escape down the hypocaust, making their way to the volcano's core. As they run, Donna attempts to convince the Doctor to stop the Pyrovile from causing Pompeii's eruption, but he again refuses, as it is a fixed point in history and must happen. Dextrus and the cult of vulcan take the circuit boards to the mountain. In the centre of the mountain, Donna and the Doctor find an escape pod. Dextrus informs him that the Pyroviles intend not to launch a rocket back home via the eruption (their home planet of Pyrovilia having been "taken"), but to remain on and conquer Earth. The Doctor and Donna then lock themselves in the pod, where they find the Pyrovilians are using Vesuvius's power to set up a fusion matrix to convert millions of humans into Pyroviles — this will stifle the eruption, which is why the soothsayers have been unable to see it. The Doctor will be able to switch off the Pyrovilian circuitry and thus save the world, but in so doing he will cause the eruption and the deaths of himself, Donna and 24,000 people. They choose the latter as the lesser of two evils, and the eruption rockets the pod a fair distance away, allowing them to escape to the TARDIS.
On their way, the Doctor ignores the Caecilius family's pleas for help and de-materialises the TARDIS with himself and Donna on board. He is confronted by Donna, who tearfully tries to convince him to go back and save the town. The Doctor refuses, replying that history is back on track and everyone will die; even if he wanted to change history, which he does, he cannot, just like he cannot bring back gallifrey. Donna insists that, at the very least, he could save the Caecilius family, to which he complies. They and the family watch the eruption from the surrounding hills — the Doctor explains that Evelina's visions were caused by a rift in time made by the explosion, and that rift is now closed. He promises that Caecilius and Pompeii will be remembered, and Caecilius coins the word volcano for the first time. The Doctor and Donna leave, with him acknowledging that she was right in that "sometimes I need someone" to stop and humanise him. Six months later, the Caecilius family is in Rome, with Caecilius back in business, Evelina a healthy and happy teenager once again, Quintus having given up his dissolute ways to train as a doctor, and Donna and the Doctor worshipped as the family's household gods with the TARDIS as their temple.
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