What is it with men and trains?
The train episode.
June 1968. A lorry driver is brutally killed and the contents of his lorry stolen. It is suspected that Eddie Nero is behind this, but Fred Thursday thinks otherwise.
While Thursday, Strange and Morse attend the theft and murder, George Fancy is dealing with a missing person's case. A young woman, Frances Porter, has been missing for a few days and is being reported missing by her husband and her sister.
The Robbery Squad, headed by DI Ronnie Box, is called in to investigate the lorry hijack. Fancy is seconded to them, leaving Morse to deal with the Frances Porter case. After her dead body is found at a disused railway station, Dorothea Frazil tells Morse that she believes that Frances's death may be connected to another death four years previously.
While the Robbery team causes disruption in Cowley police station in more ways than one, the unknown gang who are pushing their way onto Eddie Nero's patch are causing even more confusion and mayhem in Oxford.
This episode contains examples of:
- The '60s: The 'swinging' version of this decade, usually absent in Endeavour, makes an appearance in the form of Alice's Marmalade Cat, a hip boutique that Frances Porter worked for. Joan later tries to invoke this vibe with her house-party.
- Almost Dead Guy: Lloyd stays alive for long enough to name Cromwell Ames as the man responsible for his death. This is the first mention of the gangster trying to muscle in on Eddie Nero's territory.
- Blatant Lies: Morse, who says that his first name is George; It Makes Sense in Context.
- Call-Back: A few.
- Trewlove spots a Rosalind Calloway LP in the market; she was the murderer in the pilot episode. The fact that the cover is signed, and dedicated to Morse, enables Trewlove to figure out that it must have been stolen during the burglary of Morse's flat which happened in the Series 4 episode "Harvest".
- Win and Joan Thursday are going for lunch at Burridge's, the department store in the Series 2 episode "Sway".
- The stolen goods from the lorry were intended for Richardson's, the supermarket in the Series 3 episode "Arcadia".
- Strange is shown setting up for some trombone practice, much to his housemate Morse's evident despair. We saw him play "The Last Post" on this instrument in "Muse".
- Call-Forward: Patrick Dawson, one of Ronnie Box's Robbery team, is the younger version of a character in the original series episode "Second Time Around". By then, he's an old rival of Morse's who is revealed to have killed the man he suspected of murdering his daughter, although Morse works out that he'd actually got the wrong man. In that episode, Morse recalls a debate he had with Dawson over capital punishment at a police conference in 1969; as this does not feature in Endeavour, it may count as a mild example of a Noodle Incident.
- Contrived Coincidence: Linda Grisham's mother works as a nurse at the old folks' home where Frances and Jilly's mother lives.
- Cowboy Cop: Ronnie Box, whose approach to policing — more The Sweeney than Dixon of Dock Green — is decidedly at odds with that of Bright and Thursday. His Dirty Cop tendencies will only come to the fore when he becomes a recurring character in Series 6.
- Dead Person Impersonation: In order to muddy the waters, after murdering her sister Jilly Conway, Frances Porter pretends to be Jilly and reports Frances as a missing person, leading the police to assume that when they do find the body, it's Frances, not Jilly.
- Didn't Think This Through: When Box, Dawson and Fancy are on "obs" (observation duties), they are seated in an unmarked police car so as not to draw attention to themselves. However, they've parked on double yellow lines note , which attracts the attention of WPC Trewlove.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Fred Thursday thinks that Eddie Nero is not behind the lorry hijack because brutally killing an innocent driver would not be his way of doing things.
- Foreshadowing: Towards the end of the episode, Morse predicts that if Cromwell Ames really is making a move on Eddie Nero's territory, it will be "all-out gang warfare". Thursday worries about who will be caught in the cross-fire.
- Fictional Counterpart: Gidbury's, the Birmingham chocolate factory that Morse visits in connection with the Frances Porter investigation, is presumably the Morseverse's version of Cadbury's.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Frances Porter and Jilly Conway's relationship was like this; Jilly was their mother's favourite, and Frances grew to be very resentful of this. Especially when Jilly was put in charge of the family finances. This eventually leads Frances and her husband to murder Jilly, but to muddy the waters Frances pretends to be Jilly and they make it look as though Frances, not Jilly, has disappeared.
- Headscratchers: Given that she has to all intents and purposes faked her own death (given that she has killed her sister and is assuming her identity, thus causing her sister's body to be mistaken for her own when it is found), why does Frances Porter go out walking in Oxford, running the risk of being seen by someone who knows her, which is what happens?
- Jack the Ripoff: Jilly Conway and Anoushka Nolan were killed in such a way as to make it look like the killing of Linda Grisham four years previously. However, the killers were not aware of a vital detail about the Grisham murder that was kept out of the papers (she was strangled with her bra), prompting CID to realise that these killing fall under this trope.
- Jerkass: Ronnie Box, a Cowboy Cop who drinks on the job, is racist, insults his colleagues and Would Hit a Girl — although Thursday, Strange and Morse stop him before he can lay a hand on Trewlove.
- The Matchmaker: Joan Thursday, who's trying to set Morse up with her friend Claudine. He's rather put out by this, as he has feelings for Joan. He still sleeps with Claudine, though.
- Rail Enthusiast: Cedric Naughton, who prefers to be described as this than a "train spotter". Endeavour very much follows where Inspector Morse (specifically, "The Sins of the Fathers") led in this area — basically, any man who lives with his mother and has a model railway in the attic is Always Chaotic Evil. Lampshaded by Trewlove, with the quote at the top of this page.
- Red Herring: Don Mercer, the first victim's married lover, comes under suspicion — especially when it emerges that she was several weeks pregnant. Also, the notion that the murderer of Linda Grisham has started killing again is soon disproved. The blood on the station master's shirt cuff is a more mundane example (it seems that he was telling the truth when said he ran over a badger and shifted its body off the road), but it does worry his wife.
- Running Gag: Once again, Morse tells Thursday what's in his sandwiches when they're having lunch in the pub.Thursday: You wonder what goes on in a marriage.Morse: I know what goes on in yours. [beat] Luncheon meat.
- Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead: Subverted. What starts as a seemingly routine missing person enquiry becomes a murder investigation when Morse finds what is assumed to be Frances Porter's body; so far, so par for the course for the Morseverse ... but the body is actually that of Frances's sister, Jilly Conway.
- Shout-Out: A few.
- At the start, Cedric Naughton recites W. H. Auden's poem "Night Mail". This could be construed as Foreshadowing, given that he ends up committing suicide be deliberately stepping in front of the train carrying the night mail.
- Ronnie Box dresses like Frank Bullitt and acts a lot like Jack Regan. His advice to George Fancy — "softly, softly, son" — is a likely nod to the cop show Softly Softly, a spin-off of Z Cars.
- Morse follows up a clue regarding Frances Porter's disappearance, which takes him to a motel near Birmingham — the Crossroads Motel, to be precise. He's even seen driving through Kings Oak, the fictional village in which the motel was located. While he's there, mention is made of a cleaner called "Mrs. T" — that would be Amy Turtle, the cleaner in that show.
- Norborough station is from a 1967 episode of The Avengers called "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station".
- Don Mercer, the philandering executive from Gidbury's, could be a nod to Don Draper — drapers and mercers are both purveyors of fabric. However, his office looks very similar to that of Reggie Perrin.
- Steam Never Dies: Partly invoked. Some of the railway scenes have diesel engines (appropriate to the time), others show steam engines.
- You, Get Me Coffee: After he gets assigned to Ronnie Box's team, a key part of George Fancy's duties would appear to be getting tea and bacon sandwiches for his new colleagues.
