Mummy on the Orient Express (TV story)

Mummy on the Orient Express was the eighth episode of series 8 of Doctor Who.

It picked up a hanging plot thread posed in the Eleventh Doctor's era from TV: The Big Bang – a phone call placed to the TARDIS which initially appeared to be a request for help, but carried a sinister subtext veiled beneath a front that would draw out the Doctor into a trap.

Mathieson was approached to write the script while working on Flatline. He was given the title, chosen by Steven Moffat, which led Mathieson to look to Agatha Christie for inspiration. 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
After their previous trip to the moon ended on a sour note, the Doctor decides to take Clara on a final trip in the TARDIS - "our last hoorah!" The destination? There have been many trains that took the name Orient Express, but there's only ever been one that traverses space!

However, they find their luxury trip may take an unexpected turn when they discover there's 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 a jazz version of 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, apologising for 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. Visibly distraught, she is gently ushered back to her room by guards. Clara asks Quell, the Captain, what happened and he explains Mrs Pitt's sudden death, before escorting Maisie out.

Later, while sharing a nightcap outside their cabins, Clara and the Doctor debate whether or not there is anything suspicious about the old woman's death. Clara begins to have doubts about leaving the Doctor when he makes her realise that when this, their "last hurrah", is over, she is unlikely to ever see him again. During the night, the Doctor ponders the story of Mrs Pitt's death and the mummy which only she could see, becoming increasingly 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 and goes to the Doctor's door. She knocks, but not being there he, of course, does not answer.

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.

Having changed back into her dress, Clara again exits her room. She 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 has sought out a passenger named 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", and that only they can see the creature when it does appear to them.

At that moment, in the kitchen, one of the chefs 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 - using his psychic paper to masquerade as a mystery shopper to get information out of him - but Quell does not believe him. Perkins then gives the Doctor a large number 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.

Maisie and Clara get into the room, but Mrs Pitt's body isn't there. The door has closed and locked behind them. Trapped, for now, they enter into a conversation about why Clara is leaving the Doctor; Maisie doesn't believe Clara's claims that her friendship with the Doctor is over. "You got on a train with him," Maisie points out. 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 - he's called Head Office, and there's no mystery shopper.

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 turns into a white laboratory, and most of the passengers disappear - 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. Specifically; "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". 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, and Gus warns the team that he will do this to another, random, car if someone disobeys his orders again. The Doctor ends the call.

After looking at the medical history of the previous victims, they figure out that the Foretold is targeting weaker passengers first: Mrs Pitt was over a hundred years old, the chef had a blood disorder, the guard had replacement lungs, and the Professor suffered from post-traumatic stress after a car accident. Quell reluctantly tells the Doctor that he too suffers from post-traumatic stress following war service, and the Doctor confirms to him that 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, like the others, in 66 seconds. Perkins realises that the reason it takes exactly that long is because the creature is in phase, and it takes "about a minute" for something to come out of phase. Therefore, the Foretold has some kind of technology allowing it to do so.

Perkins reports to the Doctor that Maisie is probably 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 has agreed 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 reluctantly, to lie to Maisie and claim that the Doctor can help her.

When Clara brings Maisie to his car, she realises that the Doctor had been hoping for trouble - Gus had tried to entice him on board before - and she is, naturally, furious after having trusted him to take them for a simple holiday. At that point Maisie screams and points, the Foretold is 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 those same emotions on himself, the Foretold now believes that he is Maisie.

The Doctor sees the Foretold and Perkins starts the clock. The Doctor deduces that the scroll is actually a flag which the mummy is protecting and that the mummy itself is actually an ancient soldier augmented with stealth technology to allow it to kill only its victims by pulling them out of phase. The Doctor realises that the Foretold is killing the passengers because it believes the war it fought in is still going on and with one second left, the Doctor shouts; "We surrender!"

The Foretold suddenly stops, the tech inside it deactivates and it comes out of phase. With everyone now able to see it, it wearily raises its arm in a salute. "You're relieved, soldier," says the Doctor quietly. With that, the Foretold shrivels into dust, and the Doctor picks up the tech that powered it from the dust. He starts to fiddle with it. 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. Clara and the other humans collapse. From space, the train is seen exploding.

Sometime later, Clara wakes up on a rocky beach covered with a picnic blanket, with the TARDIS nearby. The Doctor, writing in the sand with a stick, greets her. He says that he was able to teleport all the passengers into the TARDIS, using the Mummy's animation device. He then tried to hack Gus to find out who had created him, but this triggered a security measure, causing the train to blow up so no evidence could be discovered. Then he dropped everyone off safely here, on the nearest civilised 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. 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. He states that if that plan also had failed, he would have gone on to the next passenger, and then the next, and so forth 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 compliments the Doctor on his ship and tells him that a couple of the drive stacks need replacing. The Doctor implies an invitation for the train engineer to travel with him, so he can replace the drive stacks. Perkins politely declines, stating "that job could change a man," to which the Doctor agrees. He 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 receives a call from Danny, and he asks her if it that last adventure of hers is over. Clara, having decided to forgive the Doctor, lies to Danny and tells him "mission accomplished". She then tells the Doctor that Danny just told her that he is fine with them travelling 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. The two pull the dematerialisation lever together.

Cast

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

Uncredited crew

 * Choreographer - Ailsa Berk

Millennium FX

 * Prosthetics Effects Producer - Kate Walshe
 * Creature Supervisor - Dave Bonneywell

Music

 * Queen's song "Don't Stop Me Now" is performed on the train, in a jazz theme.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor keeps jelly babies in a cigarette case about his person.

Technology

 * Half of the guests aboard the Orient Express are revealed by the Doctor to be hard-light holograms.
 * Mrs Pitt's chair is fitted with the Excelsior Life Extender to help keep her alive.

Planets

 * The Doctor mentioned three planets when looking out at the Magellan black hole, which according to him used to be "planets as far as the eye could see". One of these was the planet Obsidian which was in perpetual darkness.
 * Another of these planets was one made completely of shrubs, to which the Doctor later offered to take Clara.
 * The third was the planet Thedion Four, which had constant acid rain. The Doctor said that he "had a lovely picnic there once, wearing a gas mask." It was destroyed a thousand years earlier.

Story notes

 * Prior to this story, the televised stories The Robots of Death, Terror of the Vervoids, and The Unicorn and the Wasp used elements from the works of Agatha Christie, with the latter also featuring the author as a character.
 * Starting its broadcast at 20:35, this episode has the latest transmission time of a Doctor Who television story.
 * 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 at the end, explaining that when the Doctor implanted Maisie's pain and trauma into himself, he took them away from her for good.
 * Following the episode's first broadcast on BBC One, the BBC released an official music video of Foxes' complete performance of "Don't Stop Me Now," including clips from this episode, plus footage of Foxes performing the song not included in the episode, but also past and future Series 8 episodes. This is the first time the BBC has issued a formal music video for a song featured in Doctor Who, notwithstanding videos based upon the Doctor Who Theme created for a DVD release. Foxes herself uploaded a second video consisting solely of footage of her performing the song on the set, without any cutaways and featuring the mix heard on screen as opposed to the more robust mix used for the main music video.
 * This episode marks the first time since the 1996 TV movie that the Doctor has offered anyone jelly babies on screen, though he makes no vocal reference to them. They have been offered/referenced twice before in that time by in TV: The Sound of Drums, and the Eleventh Doctor's ganger as it ran through the Doctor's previous incarnations in TV: The Almost People.
 * The Doctor's description of how he dealt with the situation on the Orient Express bears very strong resemblance to the pragmatic medical technique known as, appropriately fitting a character who refers to himself as "the Doctor", and the Twelfth Doctor's own pragmatic approach at handling a crisis.

Ratings

 * 7.11 million (DWM 480)

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.
 * After the Doctor berates Clara about smiling sadly, the singer is heard singing, "I'll make a supersonic woman of you," but her mouth moves to, "I'll make a supersonic man out of you".
 * When Clara takes a call from the Doctor on her mobile phone, the interface for the phone's image gallery appears over the call.

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)
 * 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 manipulates Clara similarly to how the Seventh Doctor once manipulated Ace into no longer believing in him in order to allow the Ancient Haemovore to kill Fenric's host body. (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
 * Clara's caller ID photo for the Doctor is a picture of a stick insect with a top hat. She had previously called the Doctor "a big grey-haired stick insect." (TV: Listen)
 * The Seventh Doctor previously encountered trains that travel through space. (PROSE: Transit)
 * The Doctor asks the Foretold "Are you my mummy?" (TV: The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, The Poison Sky)
 * 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 has previously encountered mummies, or mummy-like beings. (TV: Pyramids of Mars, The Rings of Akhaten)
 * The Doctor mentions how hard it is for someone to acquire the TARDIS telephone number. (TV: Time Heist)
 * The Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams previously encountered hard-light holograms. (COMIC: Spam Filtered)
 * This is at least the second time the Doctor has rode a space train. The Eleventh Doctor took Amy Pond and Rory Williams on a different space-faring train than the Orient Express, the Orion Express. Unlike the Orient, it was not a nostalgic throwback and had a modern, ordinary design normal for space trains. (COMIC: Trouble on the Orion Express)
 * The Doctor again considers taking on a new companion when it appears possible that Clara is about to leave him. (TV: The Caretaker)

DVD releases

 * Doctor Who: Series 8 Boxset

Blu-ray releases

 * Doctor Who: Series 8 Blu-ray Boxset

Digital releases

 * The episode was released on Google Play, iTunes and Amazon Instant Video in HD or SD, also available as part of the Series 8 digital boxset. The digital boxset contains various features: trailer, interviews, The Ultimate Companion, The Ultimate Time Lord, Inside the World Tour and Doctor Who Extra episodes for each episode.
 * In the US, the series was released through digital streaming services Hulu and Netflix with a subscription.
 * It is now available on the UK Netflix.