A lot better than it’s title.
With a title like that, I was
half expecting this episode to be this series’ “Dinosaurs
on a Spaceship,” ergo it would make me very angry that someone got paid
money to write it.
Thankfully Jamie Mathieson
appears to know how to write a script that doesn’t rely on using up the special
effects budget and being very loud. The result of this is an episode of awesome
quality right where you’d expect to find filler.
To summarise, the Doctor,
intent on taking Clara on a “last hurrah” after they epically fell out during
the last episode, takes her for a ride on the orient express…in space. As an
aside, with Jenna Coleman’s new haircut, I wasn’t immediately aware that it was
her and wondered if the Doctor had just decided to pick up a randomer to be
impressed by him.
But anyway, they quickly find
that the passengers of the Orient Express are being killed off by a Mummy,
which can only be seen within the 66 seconds that it takes to kill you.
This to what is possibly
Capaldi’s most awesome fan moment of the series as he channels Tom Baker in
order to have a conversation with himself. That along with a Jelly Babies
reference adds a nice bit of nostalgia to the episode.
Moving on, we’re getting
closer and closer to a villain with actual motivation. The Mummy in this
episode is actually an ancient augmented soldier, who’s biological parts have
died. Now he’s just the machine dragging around what’s left of the decomposing
humanoid. It kills because that’s what it’s programmed to do. The other villain
“Gus” who orchestrated the whole thing as a science experiment has the
motivation of trying to reverse engineer the technology that the Mummy uses. Since
the Doctor isn’t actually able to track down Gus by the end of the episode we’re
no doubt in for a sequel involving him, maybe even next week’s episode.
Difficult to say anymore,
going on the title, I wasn’t expecting a very good episode; well written, very well
acted and absolutely recommended.
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