It’s been nearly four and a half years since we first heard of the Orient Express in space, Eleven seemingly hurried off with Amy and Rory in tow at the end of The Big Bang to take care of an Egyptian Goddess who had escaped her obelisk. Surely it can’t be the same train having a similar crisis with an Egyptian mummy on a murderous rampage can it, that would a huge coincidence. Perhaps it’s the kind of phenomena you come to expect when you name your space locomotive after one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels? Thankfully, Twelve is on hand to solve the case by using his ‘little grey cells’, along with some help from a stand in companion in the shape of Frank Skinner.
The guest stars are impressive this week, and there’s plenty to choose from too. Foxes croons her way through a jazzed up version of a Queen number as the episode neatly sets up the ambiance of the luxurious setting on board the train near the start of the episode. David Bamber is as magnificent as ever as the beleaguered Captain Quell whose list of troubles just keep piling up...with a mystery shopper on board, guests falling like flies and then he goes and loses his best guard, will his day never end! John Sessions returns to Who (his last outing being the 2001 audio
Death Comes to Time with Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy) to voice Gus, the Orient Express’ cheery, and occasionally truculent, on board computer system.
Then there is the aforementioned Frank Skinner, playing Chief Engineer Perkins, not that we see him do much engineering as he spends most of the episode with the Doctor wandering around the train. He’s a slightly ambiguous character, maybe a little too helpful at times, but Skinner obviously has a lot of fun with the part and I’d happily see him return any time. He and Capaldi are fabulous as they take on the personas of Hastings and Poirot solving the case together; the sparring back and forth between the characters is sharp and nuanced, with Perkins asking the pertinent questions, even though the answers he gets may not be the ones he was expecting.
Writer Jamie Mathieson is no stranger to bringing the undead to life having proved his worth with his previous Being Human scripts, so it’s no surprise that the Mummy itself is fantastically realised - with one shot in particular that may give some of the younger children a few shudders and squeals of either delight or sheer horror. He has also penned the following instalment,
Flatline, and if the next time trailer is anything to go by then we are in for a visually dramatic and intriguing story there too. Over all this is a solid story, with good mid-episode twist and a pretty decent pay off at the end which feeds into the overall arc of the season.
Mummy on the Orient Express airs on Saturday 11th October at 8.35pm on BBC 1 and BBC 1 HD in the UK, and at 9pm on BBC America. Below are a few dialogue teasers to see you through until then. Don't forget to come back to vote in our poll after the episode and let us know what you thought.
"My enemy’s enemy is my friend"
"Now there’s a question that’s never asked often enough, let’s say intestinal parasites"
"I will be your victim this evening, are you my mummy?"
"I know when I find a man fiddling with the chair that someone died in, it’s best to play my cards close to my chest"
"It turns out it’s three, the amount of people that have to die before I stop looking the other way"
"Well frankly that would an absolutely astonishing guess if I did know"
"We apologise for any distress you may have just experienced, grief counselling is available on request"
"A man just dies in front of us; can we not have a moment?"
"Keep talking, don’t waste this chance"
"You expected to be a cushty desk job where you could put your head down until retirement"
Trailer Teaser
"They’re trying to understand us, trying to understand...three dimensions"
About the Author - Sandi
Sandi is part of the Senior Staff at SpoilerTV having been a contributor from back in the Lost days of DarkUFO, and who now writes previews for Banshee, The Musketeers, Atlantis, and other BBC shows. She also enjoys watching and commenting on other shows such as Sons of Anarchy, Hannibal, Game of Thrones and Elementary.
