‘I could do with an extra pillow and I’m very disappointed with your breakfast bar. And all of the dying’

If I’m being honest, one thing had been missing in this otherwise pretty great year. We hadn’t had a proper new scary monster. There hadn’t been many behind-the-sofa moments. Those spiders last week made me jumpy, but they were,in effect, just spiders. The big scary episode, Listen, didn’t have an enemy apart from fear itself, or even a monster, apart from an extra under a bedspread.

All that changed this week, with the Mummy – or rather the Foretold – picking off passengers on the replica space train. Mummy on the Orient Express lived up to its fun potential just as much as last series’ product of the random-threat generator, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. A triumph of production design matched with imagination, the Foretold’s stalking of the passengers, descending in 66 seconds, and only visible to its victims, is one of Doctor Who’s more unsettling ways of killing people off.

New writer Jamie Mathieson spins a classic period horror, owing as much to Merchant Ivory as to Hammer. But here’s the clever thing: for a series that might have sacrificed cool monsters for awkward Tardis dynamics, this actually excels in doing both. This is another Doctor/Clara biggie, but more of that below.

Meanwhile, Frank Skinner has the time of his life as engineer Perkins. Clara rocks silk pyjamas and the Doctor keeps his jelly babies in a cigarette case. The kitchen carriage gets jettisoned and it all ends with a train exploding in space. We could not have asked for much more.

Frank Skinner as Perkins the engineer, having the time of his life. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC/Adrian Rogers

‘It’s a smile, but it’s sad. It’s two different emotions at once, it’s like you’re malfunctioning’

You might remember there was a bit of a hoo-ha around the launch of this series, with Peter Capaldi saying he’d been “absolutely adamant” that there would be no flirting aboard the Tardis. And then how the BBC issued a statement that there had never been any plans for any of that sort of thing, thank you very much.

Well, what complete nonsense that was. This dripped with so much sexual tension you could make a compelling case for the DVD getting a 12A certificate. It was the Doctor and Clara’s last hurrah, him tuxed up, her in a cocktail dress, both completely impervious to what was appropriate. Clara has decided she’s had enough, and god, are they dragging it out, all loaded moments and unsaid truths. Those forlorn stares and stolen glances are not those of a man with paternal intentions. This was Romancing the Stone. It was Moonlighting. It may have just been a nod to the genre, but nobody even try to deny it – this was hot.

So Clara’s Say Anything moment happens after she herself turns soldier, complicit in this Doctor’s apparently dangerous, manipulative ways, leading Maisie to her certain death. And seeing the hypocrisy of her attitude, coupled with a punch-the-air emotive speech in which he finally opens up, forces a change of heart. Maybe it was being confronted by the drab reality of life with the increasingly tedious (after a strong start, I can’t lie) Danny Pink, but Clara’s back on the Tardis team with renewed gusto and glee.

But then she has just lied to them both, so she is effectively having an affair.

Fear factor

As awesome as the Foretold was when stalking and killing, the only downside here was that the reveal of its true nature was just a bit underwhelming. Like, Curse of the Black Spot underwhelming. An ancient soldier driven by malfunctioning tech revealed as a small fibreglass prop. Also, I would have liked for a bit more to be made of its victims confessing and plea-bargaining for their lives. And for Frank Skinner to have had his go up against it, but I’m not sure how that would have worked.

Mysteries and questions

No Missy or Seb this week, and it’s getting to the point where I’m wanting to see more of them and less of Danny Pink. It was mentioned last week, but when she says she loves him, I’m still not completely buying it. Are the victims of the Foretold also sitting there in Seb’s reception waiting room? Will everyone who has died turn up in the finale?

Time-space debris

• The club singer doing Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now was UK synthpop heroine Foxes.



• After last week’s callback to Let’s Kill Hitler, a callback here to The Empty Child and “Are you my mummy?” Meanwhile, the train-under-siege has clear echoes of Midnight and the period-thriller stuff recalled The Unicorn and the Wasp.



• “I can’t tell whether you’re a genius or just incredibly arrogant.” “On a good day, I’m both.”

• Does the Excelsior Life Extender sound familiar to anyone else?



• The chef could have at least tried to stab it.



• Was it just me, or was the Doctor coming over at certain points as a bit like Sheldon Cooper?

Next week!

It’s writer Jamie Mathison’s second go, with Flatline, an episode we don’t know very much about.