Mummy on the Orient Express (TV story)

Mummy on the Orient Express was the eighth episode of the eighth series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales.

Writer Jamie Mathieson was approached to write the story while crafting another script for Steven Moffat. He was given the the title, chosen by Moffat, which immediately led Mathieson to images of "Agatha Christie, Victoriana, lots of luxury". Frank Skinner's character was based on a friend of his, Perkins, a "train buff" from whom he acquired information about the Orient Express.

The original idea for the script had far more content, with the Express visiting the "Seven Wonders of the Universe", but this was removed due to time constraints.

Brian Minchin expressed early on to Mathieson that the Mummy might force the episode to be broadcast at a later time as the BBC judged it to be too scary. Minchin had repeatedly tried to have it shown in the series trailer, but the corporation would not allow it. (DWM 478)

Synopsis
As the Doctor takes Clara for a final trip aboard the Orient Express, they find it has a supernatural passenger...

Plot
In a luxurious dining car of a train, Mrs Pitt, an elderly lady, spots a man "dressed as a mummy monster", at which point a clock starts counting down in the corner of the screen. She wants him out of her dining car, but no one else seems to see him. She calls a guard over and tries to get him to throw the man out of her dining car, but he can't see it either. As the clock reaches 6 seconds, the Mummy gets closer and closer to Mrs. Pitt. At 5 seconds, it has its face in hers. At 4 seconds, her granddaughter, Maisie Pitt, is starting to worry. At 3 seconds, everyone in the car is staring. At 2 seconds, Mrs. Pitt seems to be having a panic attack. At 1 second, the Mummy has his hands on her forehead. Then she collapses, dead.

The Doctor lands the TARDIS in the train's baggage car. He steps out with Clara. Clara is dressed in a 1920s outfit, and the Doctor in a tuxedo. "There were many trains to take the name Orient Express," he tells her, "but only one in space." He opens the door to reveal the dining car, where there is a singer performing Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". The Doctor ushers Clara inside. As they look out a window at a nebula, the Doctor begins to tell Clara about the various planets that used to be there thousands of years ago. Clara interrupts, discussing her recent anger towards the Doctor. She says she could never hate him, but intends this to be their last trip together. As the Doctor mentions having had a picnic on one of the now-gone planets, Maisie overhears and calls him a liar. She says he must be, as that planet has not existed for a thousand years. Visiby distraught, she is gently ushered back to her room by guards. Clara asks Quell, the Captain, what happened nad he explains Mrs. Pitt's sudden death, before escorting Maisie out.

During the night, the Doctor ponders the story of Mrs Pitt's death and the mummy which only she could see, becoming increasing suspicious of it. Clara meanwhile is on the phone with Danny, discussing this as her last trip with the Doctor. He is relieved that at least the train is safe, which Clara seems somewhat unsure of, but nevertheless confirms. The Doctor leaves his room, stopping at Clara's door. He almost knocks, but instead goes on, leaving her to sleep. As soon as he disappears down the hall, Clara emerges from her room, fully dressed, and goes to the Doctor's room. She knocks, but not being there he of course does not answer.

Clara sees Maisie, who is coming down the hall with a determined look and a high heel shoe in hand. Clara greets her, then follows her. Maisie asks the computer for access to a room, and the computer replies, "Call me Gus. I'm afraid this door can only be opened by executive order."

Maisie says that that's the room where they're keeping Mrs. Pitt's body, and that she should be allowed to see it. Clara agrees, then tells her that she has a friend who's really good with locks and he can open it for her. Instead, Maisie smashes the computer with her high heel shoe and the door slides open.

The Doctor starts to poke around the engine room, where he examines the chair that Mrs. Pitt had died in. It's then that he meets Perkins, chief engineer aboard the Orient Express. Perkins tells him that they think something else might be responsible for the deaths of some of the passengers. The Doctor leaves, retreating to the back of the train, where he sits down with a man who the Doctor recognises as Professor Emile Moorhouse, professor of alien mythology.

The Doctor asks him about the Foretold - a mythical mummy. Moorhouse tells the Doctor various bits of information, including the saying: "They that bear the Foretold's stare have sixty six seconds to live."

At that moment, in the kitchen, the chef catches sight of the Foretold and screams. Alerting the other kitchen crew, who, of course, can't see it, the chef grabs a knife and waves it around. The chef backs up towards the freezer and locks himself in it, seeing that the Foretold is on the other side of the door and can't get inside. But when he turns around, he comes face to face with - the Foretold, who has somehow teleported inside the freezer. As the clock ticks to 1 second, the Foretold wraps its hands around the chef, who collapses.

The Doctor confronts Quell about the Foretold but Quell does not believe him. Perkins then gives the Doctor a large amount of documents and information. They meet up with Moorhouse in the engineer's room to watch footage of Mrs. Pitt's death and note the details of her death.

Maisie and Clara get into the room, but Mrs. Pitt's body isn't there. Because the door has been damaged they cannot leave. The Doctor calls Clara, who tells him that there's a strange sarcophagus at the back of the room. It opens up, but there's nothing in there but bubble wrap. Captain Quell then apprehends the Doctor believing he is the one causing the deaths.

The Doctor and Quell go to a different cabin, where they find a guard writhing on the ground, shooting his gun at an invisible thing in front of him. The guard drops dead and Quell releases the Doctor who then deduces that the passengers are all experts and scientists in specific fields of study. They have been gathered here to study the Foretold. The inside of the room turn into a white laboratory, and most of the passengers disappear. They were holograms, says the Doctor, to make up the numbers. The train comes to a stop and the computer Gus reveals that the Doctor is right and the whole Orient Express cruise was to find out more about the Foretold. "Your goal is to ascertain the Foretold's true nature, probe for weaknesses with a view to capture, after which we will reverse engineer its abilities" explains the computer. Gus reveals that an ancient scroll is what causes the mummy to appear.

Moorhouse suddenly catches sight of the Foretold, and the Doctor tells Perkins to start the clock. Perkins sets his stopwatch for 66 seconds, and the Doctor asks Moorhouse to describe the Foretold in as much detail as he can. Moorhouse does just that, but a dead man can tell no tales, and Moorhouse collapses, as have the other victims of the Mummy.

Clara calls the Doctor to tell him about some documents they found about the Orient Express. Gus tells the Doctor to terminate the call. When he refuses Gus de-pressurises the kitchen room. Looking out the window, those in the laboratory see the lifeless bodies of the kitchen staff floating in space. The Time Lord ends the call.

The Doctor and Perkins figure out that the Foretold is targeting weaker passengers first after looking at the medical history of the previous victims. Quell reluctantly tells the Time Lord that he suffers from post-traumatic stress and the Doctor tells him he will be next. It isn't long before Quell sees the Mummy, too. The Doctor tells Perkins to start the clock. Quell describes the Foretold as much as he can and dies too in 66 seconds.

Perkins reports to the Doctor that Maisie is next because of her trauma from Mrs. Pitt's death, and so the Doctor calls Clara to inform her that Maisie is next on the list. He tells her to bring Maisie to the car that he's in and that Gus agrees to bring her there. Clara is greatly upset by this, telling the Doctor that she can't just lead Maisie to her death, but the Doctor, claiming that there is no other solution convinces her, though very reluntantly, to lie to Maisie and claim that the Doctor is going to help her.

When Clara brings Maisie to his car, she screams and points, the Foretold staring at her coldly in the doorway. The Doctor fiddles with Maisie's mind and scans her for her emotions of grief and trauma. When he implants that same emotions on himself, the Foretold now believes that he is Maisie.

The Doctor sees the mummy and Perkins starts the clock. The Doctor deduces that the mummy is actually an ancient soldier augmented with technology to allow it to kill only its victims by pulling them out of phase and that it is protecting the scroll which is actually a flag. The Doctor notes that for him the war isn't over yet and with one second left, the Doctor shouts, "We surrender."

The Foretold suddenly stops and comes out of phase. It rigidly raises its arm in a salute. "You're relieved, soldier" says the Doctor. With that, the Mummy shrivels into dust, and the Doctor picks up the animation device from the dust of the Foretold. He starts to fiddle with it, right before Gus' voice comes over the speakers again, congratulating them on solving the mystery, before telling them that no survivors are needed. "Ah, well, there's a shocker" the Doctor mutters. As Gus starts to let the air out of the cabin, the Doctor fiddles with the device and the camera cuts to the Orient Express exploding.

Later, Clara wakes up on a rocky beach. The Doctor greets her, and says that as soon as he beamed all the passengers into the TARDIS, he tried to hack Gus to find out who had created him, but this trigged a security measure, causing the train to blow up so no evidence could be discovered. Then he dropped everyone off safely at the nearest civilized planet.

Clara is impressed that the Doctor managed to save every survivor, and asks him why he didn't tell her straight away what he was planning to do with Maisie, and the Doctor explains that he couldn't risk Gus getting tipped off about his plan and trying to stop it. Clara then asks him if he was just pretending to be heartless. The Doctor pauses for a bit, before asking "Would you like to think that about me? Would that make it easier?" He then expresses sadness at having failed to save Moorhouse and Quell, and admits that he wasn't even sure if he could have saved Maisie back then. He states that if that plan also had failed, he would have kept sacrificing the other passengers until he had found a way to defeat the Foretold. He tells Clara that sometimes, all your available choices are bad ones, but in the end you still have to choose.

Back in the TARDIS, Perkins complements the Doctor on the TARDIS and tells him that a couple of the drive stacks need replacing. The Doctor invites the train engineer to travel with him so he can replace the drive stacks. Perkins politely declines stating, "that job could change a man," and him and the Doctor bid each other goodbye.

Clara, reflecting back on their previous conversation, asks the Doctor if he loves being the man who has to make the impossible choices all the time. The Doctor responds that it is his life. Clara then asks if it is an addiction to him, and he answers that you can't truly tell if something is an addiction until you have tried giving it up, something she notices he never has.

Clara then recives a call from Danny, and he asks her if it that last travel of hers is over. Clara, having decided to forgive the Doctor, first lies to Danny and tells him "Mission accomplished," she then tells the Doctor that Danny just told her that he is fine with them traveling around, and so is she. The Doctor, happily surprised by her sudden change of heart, asks her if she is serious, and Clara answers that she wants to see more planets right now. The Doctor excitedly tells her about "one that's made entirely of shrubs" and plots a course for it.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
 * Clara - Jenna Coleman
 * Danny Pink - Samuel Anderson
 * Perkins - Frank Skinner
 * Captain Quell - David Bamber
 * Gus - John Sessions
 * Maisie - Daisy Beaumont
 * Prof Moorhouse - Christopher Villiers
 * Mrs. Pitt - Janet Henfrey
 * Singer - Foxes
 * Foretold - Jamie Hill

The Doctor

 * The Doctor wears a bow tie, in a fashion identical to the ones he used during his first incarnation.
 * The Doctor keeps jelly babies in a case about his person.
 * The Doctor uses psychic paper.
 * The Doctor mentions receiving free tickets for the Orient Express a long time ago.
 * When the Doctor is soliloquizing about possible danger on the train, he imitates the Fourth Doctor's voice for one half of the conversation.
 * Professor Moorhouse explains his interest in alien mythology by claiming that human myths are "dusty" and "fictitious," presumably unaware that he was speaking to Merlin himself.

Technology

 * Half of the guests aboard the Orient Express are revealed by the Doctor to be 'hard-light' holograms.

Story notes

 * This episode marks the fifth story of Series 8 not to feature Missy after Robot of Sherwood, Listen, Time Heist and Kill the Moon.
 * This isn't the first story inspired by a tale from Agatha Christie. (TV: The Robots of Death). The Doctor met Agatha Christie herself in TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp.
 * Starting its broadcast at 20:35, this episode has the latest transmission time, and subsequently, its 21:21 finish time is also the latest point an episode's aired.
 * The Radio Times programme listing was accompanied by a small colour head-and-shoulders shot of Frank Skinner as Perkins, with the accompanying caption "Doctor Who / 8.35 p.m. / Frank Skinner plays the chief engineer on an intergalactic luxury train".
 * Two scenes were deleted from the final episode due to timing reasons. The first scene featured the Doctor protesting against superstition after seeing that people had lit a candle near the scroll and were leaving trinkets and money near it as if it was a shrine. The second scene revealed that Maisie was present near the campfire on the beach in the end, explaining that when the Doctor implanted Maisie's pain and trauma into himself, he took them away from her for good.

Ratings
Overnight ratings showed that 5.08 million watched Mummy on the Orient Express.

Filming locations
Limpert Bay, Saint Athan

Production errors

 * Shortly after Perkins leaves the TARDIS, the camera cuts to Clara as she asks the Doctor if he enjoys his self-chosen role in life. In this shot only, her hair is parted on the left. In the previous and following shots, it is parted on the right.

Continuity

 * Following the wedding of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, the Eleventh Doctor received a call informing him that an Egyptian goddess was loose on the Orient Express in space. (TV: The Big Bang)
 * The Doctor manipulates Clara similarly to how he once manipulated Ace. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
 * The Seventh Doctor previously encountered trains that travel through space. (PROSE: Transit)
 * Melanie Bush travelled on a space-faring bus, modelled on a 20th century version. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)
 * The Doctor previously visited a space-travelling reproduction of 20th century Earth transport when he boarded the Titanic spaceship. (TV: Voyage of the Damned)
 * The Doctor asks the Foretold "Are you my mummy?" (TV: The Empty Child, The Poison Sky)
 * Once again, the Doctor's respiratory bypass system allows him to handle lack of oxygen, considerably better than humans. (TV: The Ark in Space, Four to Doomsday, Smith and Jones, The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe)
 * The Doctor previously encountered mummies, most recently in the Pyramid of the Rings of Akhaten. (TV: Pyramids of Mars, PROSE: The Sands of Time, COMIC: The Curse of the Scarab, TV: The Rings of Akhaten)
 * It has been three weeks since Clara stormed out of the TARDIS after the incident on the Moon in 2049. (TV: Kill the Moon)
 * The Doctor mentions how hard it is for someone to acquire the TARDIS telephone number. (TV: Time Heist)
 * The Doctor carries and offers jelly babies, as the Fourth Doctor frequently did. (TV: Robot et al.)

DVD releases
to be added

Blu-ray releases
to be added