The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Nyssa to a vast pyramid, floating in space. A tomb ship — the last resting place of the God-King of the Arrit, an incredibly advanced and incredibly ancient civilisation, long since extinct.
They're not alone, however. Another old dynasty walks its twisted, trap-ridden passages — a family of tomb raiders led by a fanatical matriarch, whose many sons and daughters have been tutored in tales of the God-King's lost treasure.
But those who seek the God-King will find death in their shadow. Death from below. Death from above. Death moving them back and forward, turning their own hearts against them.
Because only the dead will survive.
Tomb Ship contains examples of:
- The Alleged Car: In the story's final moments, the Doctor exploits this tendency of the TARDIS by setting the coordinates specifically for Hannah's home time period, knowing that the unreliable ship will take them anywhere else and ensuring Hannah sticks around for further adventures.
- BFG: Hannah borrowed one of Mr Whitlock's rifles before she stowed away on the TARDIS. It gets put to great use against the Arrit-Ko.
- Big Damn Heroes: Hannah appearing from absolutely nowhere to save Nyssa with her gun.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Virna is incapable of comprehending the idea that the Arrit culture has a different definition of 'treasure' than the material wealth she was expecting to find; the Doctor speculates that she's operating on a mistranslation of the term "prize" as a description of what can be found in the tomb-ships.
- Call-Back:
- Virna comments that the Arrit-Ko remind her of the Wirrn.
- The TARDIS' Hostile Action Displacement System is once again utilized.
- Hannah broke into the TARDIS and stowed away in the previous adventure "Moonflesh", though that wasn't shown in that story, making her appearance here that much more surprising.
- Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: The hologram fresco regularly spouts instructions in the form of riddles to all those who come aboard the tomb ship in search of its treasures.
- Death Course: Whoever said reaching the fabled treasure of an ancient god king would be easy?
- Doesn't Like Guns: At the end of the story, the Doctor will only let Hannah join the TARDIS crew on the condition that the gun gets left behind.
- Evil Matriarch: Even her own children know that Virna "always looks out for number one". She essentially raised her children to be a convenient, disposable army, and considers the deaths of some of them necessary "for the good of the family".
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Hannah, being from 1911, has a bit of trouble getting her head around the whole spaceship thing.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Years spent as the only survivor on board the ship has had this effect on Jhanni. With the Doctor's help, she does get a bit better by the end.
- Higher-Tech Species: Given how many millennia the Arrit have been dead for, the level of tech on board the ancient ship is incredibly impressive. The Doctor notes that, had they survived, the Arrit could well have rivaled the Time Lords themselves.
- It's All About Me: Virna has most of her children convinced that everything she does is for the good of her family, but all she really cares about is herself and the Tomb Ship's treasure, and she doesn't care who gets hurt or killed in her quest for it.
- Karmic Death: Virna dying for the non-existent "treasure" she sacrificed so many of her children for seems particularly apt.
- Long-Lost Relative: Jhanni is Virna's last surviving daughter, left behind after a previous mission to infiltrate the tomb ship.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Virna has at least thirteen sons, most of whom are dead by the time the story starts. She also had several daughters, one of whom still survives. Her exact age is not made clear, beyond her stating that she's not "old enough to retire", but she's clearly been either pregnant or raising children for most of her long life. It has notably not improved her personality.
- Sanity Slippage: It's clear from the start that Virna is more than a little paranoid, but she becomes fully deranged by the end. During the final moments, she accuses the Doctor of stealing the treasure for himself. and when he agrees that he has done to try and get her to go to safety, she turns right around and accuses him of tricking her. She's right, but her logic is as flawed as everything else in her brain.
- Secret Test of Character: The Tomb Ship is rigged up to put anyone who comes on board through one of these. What the test is actually trying to determine is part of the mystery.
- Stars Are Souls: The Arrit believed that their "God-Kings" became stars, and indeed they do, but through advanced technology rather than any real godlike power.
- Temple of Doom: The tomb ship has a lot of the hallmarks, despite being, well, a spaceship.
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Unexpected Character: Hannah was conspicuously absent at the end of "Moonflesh", setting up her stowing away on board the TARDIS and popping up at the midway point of this story in a Big Damn Heroes moment. - The Voice: For the first few episodes, this is how Jhanni taunts Virna.
