Categories: reviewsseason 8

Series 8, episode 8 – Mummy on the Orient Express

After the fight from the last episode I thought that Clara will take a break of an episode or two, especially that trailers did not included her and nor the sneak peek, and Ellis George (Courtney Woods) might have been at Doctor’s disposal if she was needed for another adventure. But no, the character took a break that laste a few weeks, between episodes, and now she embarked into the train Orient Express, in a voyage through the space between galaxies with the Doctor. With all the problems they had to solve and the fight from Kill the Moon. And the new adventure was like the rest: a creature was stalking the people from the train, killing them in 66 second from the moment they were looking at the mummy.

Don’t be very surprised if Clara looks very different than usual, the previous episodes: she’s wearing clothes in the style of the 1920’s, about the same style the interior of the train traveling through extraterestrial space looks like. At least in the beginning: the railways were through hyperspace, the train was engineered to travel through space, but in the interior they tried to recreate the original style. The Doctor got some invitation to travel with the Orient Express a while ago (He has tried to entice me here before. Free tickets… mysterious summons… he even phoned the Tardis once. Do you know how difficult a number…), but in that moment he kind ignored them – he was too busy with Amy and Rory’s wedding. The moment of the visit (in the usual style, not using the railway station and embarking as the other travelers, but with the TARDIS straight in the luggage carriage) came only when he took Clara with him. They wanted to be a separation travel, a quite one and without incidends… but that’s exactly what did not happen: people started dying in a very strange way, killed by a mummy that only they could see. In the beginning there were attacked only the old and the sick, after that the healty were following. And the worst part was that you could not run away from the mummy, you could not hid and you could not strike a bargain with it. Even if some stories said there was a special word that stopped the mummy in some ocasions, without naming it. It was the Doctor’s job to find it.

Clara and the Doctor tries to find out some answers, separately, and she get trapped into a compartment in luggage carriage along another young women, the first victim’s granddaughter, and the sarchophagus in which Gus, the computer controlling the train Orient Express, wanted to catch the mummy in order to study it further. Understanding the phenomenom, capturing and studying the mummy are the reasons Gus gathered a series of professors and doctor, experts in several domains, in one single place. And he did it for a long time: it was not the first travel with the train it was planning, and it pursued the Doctor to join several centuries before.

And when he finally did that, he also solved the problem, retrieving the technology that put the mummy in motion for over 5,000 years. The good part is that the Doctor and Clara saved again the day (during this day the Doctor had to do some difficult choices, knowing that he could not help all the people around him)… and saved a part of the travelers. Gus destroyed the train Orient Express. You will have to descover yourselves how they did it… all I can tell you right now is that, at least for the moment, the Time Lord and his companion solved their problems from the previous episode.

Director Paul Wilmshurst, writer Jamie Mathieson, producer Peter Bennett, executive producer Brian Minchin and Steven Moffat. Cast: Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald), Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink), Frank Skinner (Perkins), David Bamber (Captain Quell), John Sessions (Gus), Daisy Beaumont (Maisie), Janet Henfrey (Mrs Pitt), Christopher Villiers (Prof Moorhouse), Foxes (Singer), Jamie Hill (Foretold).

The next episode of the series 8 is Flatline, written by Jamie Mathieson: separated from the Doctor, Clara discovers a new menace from another dimension. But how do you hide when even the walls are no protection? With people to save and the Doctor trapped, Clara comes up against an enemy that exists beyond human perception.