Mummy on the Orient Express

Dear Gary—

I have officially lost all respect for Clara. She is like a woman who dumps her boyfriend but then decides to go on one last all-expenses paid, around the world trip with him, because, hey, it’s an all-expenses paid, around the world trip.

Mummy on the Orient Express would be a perfectly fine adventure except for this fact. It has all the elements—great setting, solid guest cast, creepy monster, wonderful wardrobe, and witty dialogue. It has just about everything to make me sit back and enjoy myself for an hour. And for the most part I do. However my enjoyment is something like Clara’s sad smile. “It’s like two emotions at once,” the Doctor tells her. “It’s like you’re malfunctioning.”  That sticks in my head as I watch, and I can’t help seeing the two layers throughout; peeling back the veneer to get at the dark underbelly. There is a literal level to this that is highly appropriate as the script plays with things not always being what they appear.

“Your train awaits, my lady,” the Doctor announces as he and Clara step out of the TARDIS and into the baggage car. (“But thanks for lying.”) Moving on into the train proper the Doctor explains that this is a perfect recreation of the Orient Express with the twist that it is a train in space. The Doctor has chosen this locale for his and Clara’s “last hurrah” together, and on the surface it seems an interesting and exciting choice. The passengers are donned in their best period costumes and acting exactly as though they have been transported back in time to a Victorian world. But what is the point of it all? Just an excuse to play dress up? Other than the clothes, these people are simply riding a train to some unknown or undisclosed destination, or perhaps are merely riding in circles through space. There is no other connection to the time period or the historical train. Not even a murder mystery party going on (other than the real one that pops up much to everyone’s horror). The Doctor and Clara step out of the TARDIS to sip a few drinks while looking out at the stars, something they could do just as well in the TARDIS, and then wander off to bed. What a thrill.

At this point I’m beginning to wonder why the Doctor even wants to continue travelling with Clara. They each seem more or less bored. The Doctor alone in his berth drives home that he is not having the time of his life and he soon gets up in search of fun on his own, pointedly passing up an opportunity to rouse his traveling companion. Clara in the meantime is distractedly talking to Poor Danny Pink, her supposed boyfriend, before deciding to search out the Doctor, her adrenaline dealer. Discovering that he has lit out on his own, Clara instead follows behind the obviously distraught Maisie whose grandmother has just died. The bulk of the remaining episode has the two separated, and given the awkward tension that exists between them in the opening minutes that’s a blessing in disguise.

The Doctor picks up a new companion for the run of the episode in Perkins, the mysterious Chief Engineer who seems to know far more than he should. He’s a pleasant enough person to play a pseudo companion, but I’m glad that he doesn’t take the Doctor’s implied offer up to make his position permanent. He’s too much of a blank slate. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and in fact it could be quite interesting finding out what is behind those gaping eyes of his. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he is in league with Gus or Missy or that he is an escaped convict or any manner of bad things. Except I don’t sense any depth behind his one-off persona created for this one-off episode. He is a bit like some cardboard scenery that looks good provided you don’t get too close (apropos of my theme for the day).

Now let’s dig into this monster. A mummy of legend who appears only to its victims and allows them 66 seconds before killing them. It’s chilling and intriguing in concept and realized expertly. The mummy looks grotesquely authentic and the victims sufficiently terrified. The fact that this creature is out of phase, thus accounting for the 66 seconds (to phase-shift the victims) and its unseen nature, is plausible. But then we learn that this mummy is not a mummy (“Are you my mummy?”) but is actually a soldier. So why the mummy disguise? The soldier, “wounded in a forgotten war thousands of years ago,” has been kept alive, or at least mobile, using some sort of unexplained technology and has been bandaged head to foot. Was it a full body wound? Or is the swaddling to keep the tech inside? What exactly is under those bandages? Is there a body, brain, organs? Or is it all tech?

And OK, it’s a soldier from a forgotten war. But does this automatically make it a random killing machine? Excuse me, it turns out not to be random. But what kind of soldier goes around picking and choosing its victims based on whether they have physical or emotional scars? Was this a war against disease that has been long forgotten? Is this soldier an antibody? And how exactly does it drain the energy from a body? The tech that is piled inside of it I guess. Is that how it fought on that long ago battlefield? Two armies reaching out to grasp the heads of their enemies to drain energy? That was some war.

So this ancient soldier fights on with no real purpose. It simply goes wherever its magic banner appears and starts picking off strangers one by one based on their state of health, both mental and physical. There is the 66 second specificity to the length of time it takes to kill, but there seems to be no particular pattern in the time between attacks. It probably needs to figure out by whatever improbable tech that is crammed inside of it which person is the sickest before it acts. This guy should get together with the pirate siren from The Curse of the Black Spot.

And all it takes to stop the thing is the magic phrase, “We surrender.” Poof, it disappears in a pile of ash. No taking of prisoners; no going home to loved ones; no victory parades; just die. Soldiers are not wanted once the battle is over apparently.  

They’re not wanted by Gus anymore either. The mysterious Gus has arranged this whole improbable trip in order to harness the power of the mummy, but once the mummy goes poof Gus gives up and blows up the train. Wouldn’t he at least want to get his hands on that alien tech that was all wrapped up in the mummy’s bandages and that was the power behind the legend? No, he washes his hands of his elaborate and very likely expensive scheme with barely a whimper of complaint. Gus or whoever is behind Gus. We never get any answers about this (or these) shadowy villain(s). That speaks to the nature of this story. Like the holographic passengers, so much of it is window dressing. Blow at the wrong time, ask the wrong question, look in the wrong direction and it all goes poof.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the assorted experts are really nothing but holograms. This group of professionals and scientists and intellectuals stand around doing a whole lot of nothing. They never once speak, they never consult with each other or cooperate or discuss how exactly they are going to go about analyzing this creature they have been tasked with overpowering. They poke around at equipment and look at charts and never once ask what they are supposed to do with this equipment, who is supposed to do what, how the information they are looking at relates to anyone else’s. This has become a noticeable thing in New Who. From the aimless mobs in The Stolen Earth to the red track-suited Rattigan Academy minions of The Poison Sky/The Sontaran Strategem, New Who background extras have no direction.

These experts are extraneous anyway. The Doctor is the only one needed to unravel this mystery. I don’t know why he needs to actually see the mummy to come to his conclusions, though.  It is the scroll, the “tattered piece of cloth attached to a length of wood,” that provides the vital clue. Shame on the Doctor for not working that out long ago and telling one of the many victims to surrender.

But then we wouldn’t have much of a story. The Doctor taking on Maisie’s pain in order to trick the mummy soldier into attacking him makes for some tension filled yet hilarious moments. And like so much of New Who, everything is so action packed and fast paced that one barely has time to notice the defects.

This brings me back to Clara. “You lied to me again,” Clara accuses the Doctor, and continues, “and you’ve made me lie.” Except Clara needs no help in that area. “He’s fine with it.” Poor Danny Pink. “Danny. He’s fine with the idea of me and you knocking about. It was his idea that we stop, but he’s decided he doesn’t mind and neither do I.” The Doctor has to know that this is a lie—he was there for her major melt-down when she slammed the door on their “knocking about” relationship. Poor Danny Pink had nothing to do with that. But now she invokes his name to cover her shame. And she flat out lies to the two people she cares about most (excluding herself).

I am beginning to despise the individual Clara even while the character (thanks in large part to the actress) remains highly watchable and entertaining. Come to think of it, Gary, that about sums up my growing feeling towards New Who.