Trivia / Doctor Who S34 E8 "Mummy on the Orient Express"

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• Actor-Inspired Element: According to a Reddit AMA with Jamie Mathieson, a scene where the Doctor offers a cigar case to someone he's interrogating only to reveal it's full of jelly babies was Peter Capaldi's idea.
• The Cast Showoff: Promoted Fanboy Peter Capaldi is known for his ability to impersonate past Doctors such as Tom Baker (according to Rachel Talalay, director of some of his episodes, he is even known to rehearse using the voices of other Doctors!). Here, he gets to immortalize his Tom Baker impersonation.
• Deleted Scene: Two scenes were cut for time. One where the Doctor was annoyed about superstitions, and another revealing that Maisie was at the campfire in the end, as the Doctor had taken her trauma and put it into himself.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Frank Skinner, who plays Perkins, is a long-term fan of the show^note even lamenting that he wasn't able to land a role in the 50th anniversary special beside Billie Piper in The Graham Norton Show and had previously appeared as a Dalek operator in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. He also had a cameo as a soldier at the end of "Eyes of the Master".
  • The fact Peter Capaldi is a promoted fanboy is well established, but this episode gives him two dream scenarios as a fan: he gets to offer someone jelly babies (the first time the Doctor has done this on screen since the 1996 TV movie), and he gets to perform a scene in which his Doctor appears to converse with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.
• Stunt Casting:
  • Frank Skinner, known primary as a comedian, with little prior experience of acting and none of dramatic acting, plays the major guest role of Perkins. Nobody has ever been happier about being stunt-cast then Skinner, a long-time fan of Doctor Who, was in this episode.
  • Pop singer Foxes appears and sings in this episode.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jamie Mathieson lists some ideas that failed to make the cut: There was a beat where the Doctor figured out how to reveal the Foretold, pulled a switch... and twenty Foretold faded in. And there was Clara seeing the Foretold, and hiding inside the sarcophagus, which was then revealed as actually being a Foretold making machine, wrapping her in bandages...
  • Apparently, there is a version of the scene where the Doctor asks Perkins to come with him and he says yes. According to Frank Skinner, they shot this in case they want to bring him back as a future companion.
  • In 2016, a script excerpt was posted for a sequence in which the Doctor walks along the outside of the train to get between cars. The scene was cut as being too expensive to produce.
  • The tour guide aspect of the Express originally had a bigger focus, with the "Seven Wonders of the Universe" being a part of the story, before being trimmed down for pacing.
• Word of God: While it might not be necessarily evident just from watching the scene/could be taken either way, Coleman has confirmed in a number of convention appearances — on one occasion after being asked by an interviewer who noted it himself — that the suspiciously loud "I love you" in the phone call at the end wasn't primarily intended for Danny, but for the Doctor, whom she deliberately looks at while she says that (and the director holds on the Doctor for a suspiciously long time afterwards). Make of that what you will, but, from this episode forward, she begins lying to Danny and begins de facto cheating on him with the Doctor.
• Write Who You Know: Jamie Mathieson based Perkins on a friend of his a "train buff" from whom he acquired information about the Orient Express.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Mrs Pitt had her life force drained by a mummy. Last time, it was vampires. Although, as Perkins points out, it was this time too, in a way.
  • Christopher Villiers (Professor Moorhouse) had previously played Hugh.

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