Doctor Who: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Twelfth Doctor
8. Deep Breath Aired On Volcano Day
The Twelfth Doctor's debut story Deep Breath aired on 23 August 2014, and featured a scene in which the Doctor pondered his strangely familiar new face.
Fans speculated whether or not the show would provide an explanation for why the Doctor and Caecilius looked alike. Which is odd, because we all just accepted that the Sixth Doctor chose the face of the gun-toting guard who tried to kill him during Arc of Infinity, right?
But of course, we did get an explanation, and it was later revealed that the Twelfth Doctor chose the face of Caecilius to remind him to always save people, regardless of the apparent impossibility of doing so.
The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble first met Caecilius on the day before Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the city of Pompeii. That eruption took place on 24 August, 79 AD – meaning that we met the Twelfth Doctor in Deep Breath on the very same date that the Tenth Doctor met Caecilius!
It's highly unlikely that those in charge of putting together the BBC1 schedules were aware of this fact. However, it's a rather brilliant timey-wimey coincidence that further ties together the stories of the Twelfth Doctor and Caecilius.