Doctor Who: The Mummy on the Orient Express

One more adventure, a last hurrah, if you will. That was the premise of the latest episode of Doctor Who. I'd like to take just a moment to go googly over how CA-FREAKIN-UTE Clara's hair was for this particular episode!! Just... too adorable. And I kinda hate it. Yeah, it's confusing being me, but I only say that I hate it because I'm totally jealous I can't pull off that hairstyle. Totally wrong face shape for it. Ah well.. we can't all be perfect.


Anyways... I admit it, I was looking forward to this episode, primarily for the fact that it gives a chance for Clara and the Doctor to play dress-up (I do love the ones where they go "in costume" so they'll fit in), but I could not have anticipated some of the particularly awesome parts: YAY MUMMIES! And jelly babies! And "Are you my Mummy?" throwbacks.

I do have ONE complaint: This steaming hot mess of "What the hell were you people thinking?!?!" Now now, before you get your hackles up... I'm not bashing the performer. I'm bashing the director of this performance. Foxes has a great voice, she has the range to carry a Queen song, easily. Hit play on this video here just for a basis of comparison.

Whatever they were thinking, having this singer come in and not use her talents in the appropriate manner, I don't know. I mean yeah I get that it was intended to be jazzy, and she's got a smoky voice enough for it, but that was just the wrong song to jazzify.

Further into the episode we learn that the dying on the train is not accidental, and that people have only 66 seconds to live once they are targeted by the "mummy", which is actually called the Foretold. There are myths and legends surrounding who and what they are, of course. It is learned that those on board the train were not there by accident or chance, they were selected. The Doctor himself had been invited some time back. He begins to do his "I'm a heartless unfeeling man" thing, and has Clara lie to Maisie to get her to agree to come to where the Doctor is. Maisie is the next target, which the Doctor has learned that the mummy targets those who are "weak" in some fashion. He hopes to use Maisie to save the others, as he had already done to two others before her. Somehow he absorbs Maisie's grief and pain and turns it on himself, so the mummy will target him instead. He figured out that the mummy was not a mummy at all, but a leftover of a bygone war, with malfunctioning technology inside it. At the last second, he stops the mummy, but the computer controlling everything shuts off the air inside the train. Somehow (it isn't explained), the Doctor "saves" everyone (or so he tells Clara), and he delivers them to the nearest planet. Clara herself awakens on a rocky beach. Clara questioned the Doctor and his motives, and he told her that "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to make a choice", perhaps a reference back to the last episode. Sometimes doing nothing is worse than making a bad choice, and sometimes one has to shut off their emotions and do what needs doing in order to make that happen. Even if it means making the one person who believes in you, think you're a cold-hearted bastard with no remorse. The end of the episode, Clara and the Doctor return to the TARDIS, and Clara gets a phone call from Danny, who by this point is concerned as to what's going on, but supportive of course. Clara chooses at that moment, at the end of the phonecall, to keep going with the Doctor, rather than let it all just go.

Overall I'm pleased with the episode, but I'm getting a bit exhausted by the on again/off again nature of their relationship. I think that there's been alot of hype made over Danny Pink for him to just be a tertiary, peripheral character, so something needs to happen to bring him into the main parts of the story arcs. I think he has alot of potential to be a great character, if he's given the opportunity to grow.