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, in recognition of the time constraints, this was removed.

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." 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, 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 a room deep into the train. He steps out with Clara. "There were many trains to take the name Orient Express," he tells her, "but only one in space!" Clara is dressed in a 1920s outfit, and the Doctor in a tuxedo. There is a singer in one part of the dining hall as the Doctor ushers his companion inside. As the singer performs Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now," the Doctor and Clara meet Maisie, who is being ushered along by guards.

"What happened?" asks Clara. Quell, the Captain, introduces himself and says "You really don't know?" He briefly explains Mrs. Pitt's sudden death, then goes along with Maisie.

During the night, both the Doctor and Clara get out of bed at the same time and go to see each other. Clara, instead, gets sidetracked by Maisie, who is coming down the hall with a hammer. She asks the computer for access to a room, and the computer replies, "Call me Gus. Only authorized personnel are allowed inside this room."

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 a hammer and the door slides open.

The Doctor goes to check on Clara, who obviously isn't there. He 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 introduces himself as Professor Moorhouse. The Doctor asks him, "What is the most interesting thing about the Foretold?" He's asking about the Mummy that Mrs. Pitt appeared to see before she died. Moorhouse tells the Doctor various bits of information about the Foretold, including his catchphrase saying: "Those who bear the Foretold's stare have 66 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 throws knives at it, and when that doesn't work, he locks himself in a closet, 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 closet. As the clock ticks to 1 second, the Foretold wraps its hands around the chef, who collapses.

After Maisie and Clara get into the room, finding Mrs. Pitt's body isn't there, Gus locks them in. The Doctor calls Clara, who tells him that there's a strange sarcophagus at the front of the room...

The Doctor and Moorhouse 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 Doctor deduces that he must be seing the Foretold. He advises everyone to back out of the way as the guard dies.

In the room where Clara and Maisie are trapped, the sarcophagus is opening, but there's nothing in there. In the Doctor's cabin, the computer's voice comes over the speakers. It tells them that the Orient Express cruise isn't real, and, to make his point, stops the train. The inside of the corridors turn into a white room, and most of the passengers disappear. They were holograms, says the Doctor, to make up the numbers. In the kitchen, the room starts to shake and the walls start to fall apart.

Perkins shouts and points at the window, and the Doctor and the remaining passengers, who are actually scientists, see the lifeless bodies of the kitchen crew floating in space. Gus reveals that the whole Orient Express cruise was to find out more about the Foretold. "Your goal is to acidate the Foretold," explains the computer.

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.

Captain Quell tells the Doctor that Moorhouse suffered from panic attacks, having been in a car crash a year ago. He then reluctantly tells the Time Lord that he suffers from post-traumatic stress. "Your next," concludes the Doctor. It isn't loong before Quell sees the Mummy, too. He dies in no time flat (actually 66 seconds) and Perkins is right again on the time.

Someone reports to the Doctor that Maisie also has a mental illness, 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 Gus tells him impatiently to terminate his call.

When Clara brings Maisie to his car, she screams and points, the Foretold staring at her coldly in the doorway. Perkins starts the clock, and the Doctor fiddles with Maisie's mind and scans her for Gus' influence. When he implants that same influence on himself, the Foretold now believes that he is Maisie.

With 5 seconds to go, the Doctor starts to talk to the Mummy. With 4 seconds, the Doctor tries to persuade it to let them help it. With 3 seconds, the Foretold starts reaching for the Doctor. With 2 seconds, Perkins becomes alarmed. With 1 second, the Doctor shouted, "We surrender!"

The Foretold suddenly stops. It rigidly raises its arm in a salute. "Good work, soldier," said the Doctor. With that, the Mummy shrivels into dust, and the Doctor picks up a faulty animation device from the deep inside of the Foretold. He pockets it, right before Gus' voice comes over the speakers again, telling them that no survivors are needed. "Typical," the Doctor mutters. As Gus starts to let the air out of the cabin, the Doctor fiddles with the device.

Later, Clara wakes up on a rocky beach. The Doctor greets her, and says that as soon as he beamed everyone into the TARDIS, Gus blew up the train so no evidence could be discovered. He dropped everyone off at the nearest planet.

Back in the TARDIS, Perkins tells the Doctor that he fixed one of the power couplets, and the Doctor even invites the train engineer to travel with him. Perkins politely declines. "Next up!" the Doctor tells Clara. "A planet made entirely of...shrubs!"

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, but 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.

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.
 * Half of the guests aboard the Orient Express are revealed by the Doctor to be holograms, specifically 'hard-light' holograms. This a reference to the sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf, where the holographic character Arnold Rimmer advanced to a hard-light mode, allowing him to interact with solid matter.
 * Clara has Jiminy Cricket as the caller picture for The Doctor.

Ratings
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Filming locations
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Production errors
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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. He indicates that this was just another trap by Gus. (TV: The Big Bang)
 * The Doctor manipulates Clara like he manipulated Ace in The Curse of Fenric (TV story) and the last scene is almost identical to the last scene of that story, making himself seem deceitful.
 * The Seventh Doctor previously encountered trains that travel through space. (PROSE: Transit)
 * The Doctor previously visited space-travelling reproductions of 20th century Earth means of transportation, most recently the Titanic. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen, TV: Voyage of the Damned)
 * The Doctor asks the Foretold "Are you my mummy?" in remembrance of The Empty Child ' s Jamie, an allusion that he previously made in 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, TV Smith and Jones, TV: 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)
 * This is the second time a monster favours victims who possess ailments, just as the Siren did in The Curse of the Black Spot (TV: The Curse of the Black Spot)
 * 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)
 * When the Doctor was talking to himself about what the Foretold death reminds him of, he puts on an accent of the Fourth Doctor. He also offers Perkins a jelly baby, just like the Fourth Doctor. (TV: Robot et. al.)

DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
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