A reproduction of the famous Orient Express train has been built to travel in space along
hyperspace ribbons, offering passengers the most beautiful sights of every galaxy.
One evening, the lights of every wagon flicker, and a terrifying mummy known as the Foretold
appears in the dining car.
Mrs. Pitt sees it immediately, panicking as she demands an explanation, but her granddaughter
Maisie doesn't know what she is talking about.
In fact, nobody else can see the Foretold, no matter how much Mrs. Pitt yells for help,
and this allows the mummy to get close enough to kill Mrs. Pitt exactly sixty-six seconds
after the light flick.
Sometime later, a blue police box appears inside the baggage car.
It is the Tardis, the primary space-time vehicle used by the Doctor, a mysterious renegade
Time Lord that travels through time and space with various companions to solve conflicts
and even save the cosmos.
His current companion is Clara, who has decided she does not want to travel with the Doctor
anymore, so he has brought her to the Orient Express to celebrate "their last hoorah".
The pair makes it to the fanciest of wagons to enjoy the music and the view, although
the Doctor can not stop feeling tense and awkward around his companion.
Clara clarifies that while she did hate him for a while after the disastrous way their
last adventure ended, that is not the case anymore.
It would be impossible for her to hate such an important person in her life; the reason
she is leaving is simply that she can not do this anymore.
Now that the air has been cleared between them, the Doctor can tell some old stories
about the galaxies they are flying through and how things used to look around here hundreds
of years ago.
Maisie overhears this and calls him a liar, unable to even imagine that the Doctor is
old enough to have seen the things he is describing.
It is a very silly thing but Maisie ends up causing a scene about it, most likely because
she is going through the stressful aftermath of her grandmother's death.
Captain Quell sends his guards to take Maisie to her room so she can rest, then he apologizes
for the inconvenience.
Introductions are in order, and when hears about the Doctor, Quell can not help noticing
that most passengers today are doctors, professors, or scientists.
Quell also explains why Maisie has been so stressed, and Clara immediately thinks that
something must be going on because it can not be a coincidence that Mrs. Pitt saw a
mummy and there is one being transported by the train.
The Doctor tells her there is nothing to worry about, it must have been a dying woman having
hallucinations in the middle of dying, and Clara accepts it even if he suspiciously does
not seem very convinced of his own excuse.
He thinks they must concentrate on having a good time for their last hurrah because
they will not see each other ever again and Clara gets upset since she had thought that
the Doctor would at least visit every now and then.
Afterward, each of them goes to their respective rooms.
Clara calls her boyfriend Danny, who is waiting for her on Earth and is glad to hear her last
adventure is safe, although Clara doubts it.
Meanwhile the Doctor can not sleep because he does not buy his own excuse about everything
being fine, so he decides to go out and investigate.
The Doctor sneaks into the engine room to examine the special medical chair Mrs. Pitt
had died in and meets Perkins, chief engineer.
They discuss what a wonderful piece of equipment the chair is, confirming that it did all it
could to keep Mrs. Pitt alive.
This gives credit to the rumors of something else having been responsible for her death.
Meanwhile Clara leaves her room too and comes across Maisie, who is determined to see her
grandmother's body even if the captain won't let her.
The computer that controls the train, which calls itself Gus, explains she needs special
permission to enter the room with the body, but Maisie ignores it and destroys the lock
with her shoe.
Clara follows her inside, curious about what may happen next, only to realize they are
now locked in the room with a strange sarcophagus.
Back to the Doctor, he goes to have a talk with Professor Moorhouse, an expert in alien
mythology.
The Doctor wants to discuss the legend of the Foretold, and Moorhouse confirms what
he knew: it takes sixty-six seconds to kill you, only the victim can see it, nobody can
run from it, and a special word should make it stop.
At that moment, the light flickers and the Foretold appears in the kitchen to go after
a chef.
Scared and desperate, the chef runs to hide inside the freezer, hoping that will keep
him safe.
However the Foretold simply teleports inside the freezer too and kills the chef anyway,
exactly after sixty-six seconds have passed.
When the body is found, Quell orders everyone to say it was a heart-attack, otherwise they
shall be fired.
Determined to get to the bottom of this, the Doctor approaches Quell, who does not want
to share details with civilians.
The Doctor tricks him by using his psychic paper to make him believe he is a mystery
shopper, thus Quell accepts to talk about the deaths in private.
He explains he dealt with accidental deaths following the usual procedure, but the Doctor
will not accept any excuses and accuses Quell of being lazy because he only wanted a comfortable
desk job after getting tired of his career as a war soldier.
This hurts Quell but it is still not enough to make him believe there is enough evidence
to call murder instead of accidents, so the Doctor leaves him behind to investigate on
his own.
Outside the office, he bumps into Perkins, who has brought the train's plans plus the
lists of passengers and stops for the past six months.
Together they pick up Moorhouse and go to check the security cameras, confirming that
the light flick announces the start of the sixty-six seconds before a death happens.
The three men spend hours going over documents, trying to find some clue that could help them
kill the Foretold, to no avail.
After Perkins and Moorhouse fall asleep, the Doctor takes the chance to steal one of the
train's communicators and calls Clara to finally admit there is trouble on the train.
When he hears Clara is in trouble, he rushes to help her, but a suppression field blocks
his sonic screwdriver when he tries to use it on the lock and Gus still refuses to open
it.
Suddenly, the sarcophagus opens, the lights flicker, and the sixty-six seconds begin running
again.
Clara and Maisie are worried for a moment, but it turns out the sarcophagus only has
bubble wrap inside and it opened just because of the use of the sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor is still desperate to open the door, but he is interrupted by Quell and his
guards, who have discovered the Doctor lied about being a mystery shopper and arrest him.
In the main wagon, the Foretold approaches a guard that pointlessly keeps shooting at
it.
After the mummy kills the guard and disappears again, Quell arrives and, seeing one more
body, finally accepts something fishy is going on.
The Doctor is freed and explains to everyone the rules behind the Foretold.
By looking at their faces, he finally realizes that having all these professionals here can
not be a coincidence: someone of immense power and influence has orchestrated the whole trip
to gather a team that could analyze the mummy.
This person is watching everything they do, and as soon as they hear the Doctor reach
his conclusion, they stop the train and drop the hologram: the wagon is not a normal fancy
car, it is actually a full laboratory the passengers can use to work on the case.
At that moment, Gus speaks to everyone, asking them to research a way to stop the Foretold,
and that the only reason they managed to get it on the train had been the scroll hanging
on the wall, which the Foretold follows everywhere it goes.
The scroll is protected by another suppression field, and if the passengers refuse to work,
they will just die one by one at the hands of the mummy.
While they discuss how to proceed, the lights flicker, and the Foretold appears for Moorhouse.
Showing no sympathy for the poor professor, the Doctor asks him to describe what he sees
to help them with the investigation, this way his death will count for something.
Moorhouse describes the mummy as best as he can, but he is in a panicking state, therefore
not in the right mind for scientific conclusions.
Bargaining with the mummy does not work as the stories say, and the Foretold kills Moorhouse
when the sixty-six seconds end.
Moments later, Clara calls the Doctor to offer some interesting news.
It turns out the sarcophagus is actually a stasis unit where the Foretold is supposed
to go if they can capture it.
They have also found some paperwork indicating this experiment has been tried before and
all the other crews failed.
While the Doctor talks to Clara, Gus keeps asking him to hang up, yet the Doctor will
not obey.
As punishment, Gus de-pressurizes the kitchen room, which releases the cooks into space,
instantly killing them.
As the Doctor finally hangs up to avoid more trouble, he hears Gus say that more disobedience
will result in the death of other less valuable passengers, which makes the Doctor wonder
how such a thing is chosen.
Thinking the Foretold may not be killing at random, the group looks at the history of
the victims.
Mrs. Pitt had been very old, therefore the most fragile person on board.
The chef had a rare blood condition, the guard had synthetic lungs, and Moorhouse suffered
from panic attacks; this means Foretold picks off the weakest first.
Nervous and scared, Quell confesses he came back from war with PTSD so he is likely to
be next, which is confirmed when the lights flicker again and the Foretold appears in
the wagon.
Not caring about comforting a man about to die, the Doctor asks for as many details as
possible, even trying to get in the Foretold's path.
The mummy does not care, though, it just walks through the Doctor, and when Quell tries to
move away, the Foretold simply teleports and kills the captain when the sixty-six seconds
run out.
People around the body try to grieve, but the Doctor is obsessed with solving the case.
Sixty-six seconds is too exact to be organic, that detail plus the ability to teleport indicate
the Foretold must be some kind of tech.
Perkins calls him cold and arrogant, but the Doctor keeps brainstorming, coming to the
conclusion that Foretold has been around since ancient times because its tech drains the
energy from the living, which he confirms with a quick scan of the captain's body.
The sixty-six seconds is the time the tech needs to enter the feeding phase.
Taking into account all these details, Perkins thinks the next victim is obvious: Maisie
is going through psychological trauma after her grandmother's death.
Gus agrees and allows the Doctor to call Clara, asking her to bring Maisie over in order to
study her incoming death.
This is incredibly cold of him, but Clara sees they have no choice and lies to Maisie,
telling her she must go to the wagon so they can protect her.
Because now they are necessary for the experiment, Gus opens the lock and allows the girls to
leave; on their way to the wagon, Clara sees the Tardis and notices there is a force field
around it.
At the lab, Clara confronts the Doctor about the force field, and he confesses Gus is keeping
them from leaving because it brought them here on purpose.
The Doctor has always known this train equaled trouble and was not just a relaxing break,
Gus had contacted the Tardis multiple times to ask for his help.
Clara is furious because she was lied to again, and now she has become a liar too.
She considers telling Maisie the truth, but she is interrupted by the lights flickering
again.
The Foretold appears for Maisie, but the Doctor jumps in between, using his scanner to absorb
her grief and trauma and implant them in his own mind.
Now the Foretold thinks he is the weakest person and the Doctor can see the Mummy instead
of Maisie, which makes him very excited.
He comes closer to the Foretold on purpose, knowing he will not die until the sixty-six
seconds pass, and notices some writing under the bandages that matches the scroll on the
wall.
If the Foretold is willing to kill for the scroll, it must be something so important
that people will die for it.
The Doctor comes to the conclusion the scroll is actually a flag and the mummy is a wounded
soldier that they used for experiments.
The tech inside its body will not let the war end in its mind, thus the Doctor yells
"we surrender!"
to finish that war.
The trick works, and now everyone can see the Foretold saluting before finally disintegrating
into dust.
The case has been solved, but now they are not needed anymore, Gus is ready to kill them
all.
Determined to save them, the Doctor grabs the tech from the mummy and fiddles with it
to activate it right before the train explodes.
Moments later, Clara wakes up at a beach with the Doctor and the Tardis nearby.
The Doctor explains he used the mummy's tech to teleport everyone to the nearest civilized
planet; he also tried to hack into Gus but security measures did not allow him to track
the creator of this experiment.
Clara finally understands the Doctor had always intended to save everyone, and he lied to
her and Maisie while pretending to be heartless to avoid Gus seeing through his plan.
Afterward, the Doctor shows Perkins around the Tardis, offering him to be the next companion,
but Perkins turns the offer down because he does not like the moral issues this kind of
adventure comes with.
After Perkins is gone, Clara gets a call from Danny, asking if she'll be home soon.
Clara says she will be, but after hanging up, she lies to the Doctor and tells him Danny
is okay with her traveling some more time, and so is she.
The Doctor is delighted by this news, and together, they activate the Tardis to go on
their next adventure.