You think you're going to appeal to his nobler instincts, his better angels? He doesn't have any. The only thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is he will kill again.
The opera serial killer episode. First broadcast 21 April 2013.
July 1965. Evelyn Balfour is found murdered inside a disused railway wagon with the words un bacio ancora ("one kiss more") written on the back of the door. Morse thinks there is a connection to the Verdi opera Otello. Shortly afterwards, two more bodies show up, the manner of both deaths being reminiscent of deaths in other. A young girl is kidnapped, and the police only have a few hours to find her before she dies.
The Oxford City Police are up against a murderer who is as clever as Morse but far more ruthless. Thursday asks Bright to allow Morse to be taken off of general duties in order to help investigate the case. It's not long before Morse himself is attacked, and the trail ultimately leads to a piano recital at which someone will be forced to re-enact a scene from Tosca by being thrown off a roof (or so the killer wants them to think — he has a different death from the same opera in mind).
This episodes contains examples of:
- Alone with the Psycho: Thursday ends up trapped on a college rooftop with the killer. Luckily, Morse isn't far behind.
- Always Murder: The work of a serial killer, this time. The fact that it invariably is always murder on this show is lampshaded:Thursday: One day, I’ll send you out on a routine enquiry and it’ll turn out to be just that. But I won’t hold my breath.
- Awful Wedded Life: The Balfours; Evelyn isn't even smiling in the wedding photograph.
- Buried Alive: One of the victims is killed in this way, in order to match the heroine's death in Verdi's Aida.
- Call-Forward: A few to the original series.
- Nimmo's neighbour complains about him playing classical music very loudly — something that Morse's neighbours will have cause to complain about in "Masonic Mysteries", although as is the case here, he’s not actually responsible for the music.
- The climactic struggle on the roof could well explain Morse's fear of heights in later life; this is alluded to in "Trove", in which it's noted that he feels somewhat uneasy when looking down from a rooftop.
- We also see Morse not buying the drinks when it's his round, to Strange’s disappointment; he does this to Lewis a lot in the original series.
- Cunning Linguist: Thursday understands Italian, Foreshadowing the revelations about his war service that come out in future episodes.
- Creator Cameo: During Phillip Madison's piano recital, Colin Dexter can be seen in the audience.
- Criminal Mind Games: So very much — the killer leaves plenty of clues to taunt the police in general and Morse in particular.
- Deadpan Snarker: Thursday to Bright, when he asks for Morse to be taken off general duties to help with the case.Thursday: If you've no objection, I'd like to second Morse from general duties for the duration.Bright: Is that necessary?Thursday: Specialist knowledge, sir. It comes with this sort of thing.Bright: Very well. But for the duration of the inquiry only. I don't want him getting ideas.Thursday: That's kind of what I'm counting on.
- Dead Person Impersonation: An interesting variant — Mason Gull (the murderer) intends to kill his psychiatrist, Dr Cronyn, but steals his identity before he has actually killed him. Posing as Dr Cronyn, he gets himself involved in the investigation. When he does kill Cronyn, it is by way of pouring acid over his head, making it impossible for the police to figure out the impersonation.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: While looking for Benjamin Nimmo, Morse encounters a heavily pregnant woman who smokes.
- At one point, Morse uses the rather dated word 'Chinaman'.
- Dirty Cop: implied, and a minor example by the standards of this show; Strange wonders if Jakes, a man who never seems to be short of cash, is getting kickbacks from the press in exchange for leaking information about cases.
- During the War: In 1943, teenage musical prodigy Mason Gull attacked and killed his mother. As an American general was staying with the family (and quite possibly having a sexual relationship with the mother), the whole thing was hushed up, and it's only by chance that Dorothea Frazil finds out about it from her predecessor who saw the murder scene and took some pictures before the government put a D-notice on the whole thing.
- Friendship Moment: When Morse becomes weak following his being attached, Thursday brings him home, lets him sleep in the lounge and then has him stay for dinner.
- The Ghost: Benjamin Nimmo was this to his neighbour, who didn't see him once in the three years they lived across the corridor from each other.
- Headscratchers: How come no-one remarks that Keith Miller was also the name of a famous Australian cricketer?
- It's Personal: The killer, and Morse.
- Jerkass: Jakes.
- Last Request: In order to buy time when he's Alone with the Psycho on the college roof, Thursday asks if he can smoke his pipe. This enables Morse to get to him before "Dr Cronyn" can kill him.
- Mistaken for Junkie: The actual Dr Cronyn is assumed to have been addicted to morphine due to the amount in his bloodstream when his body is found, in addition to several syringes. What actually happened was that Gull imprisoned him in his own (isolated) house and injected him with repeated doses of morphine to subdue him until the time was right to kill him.
- Mundane Solution: Full-on defied. Jakes may give Morse's arcane opera theory short shrift after the first murder (when everyone apart from Morse thinks the victim's lover did it), but the younger man is shown to be right when other bodies start to show up.
- Never One Murder: Four of them, this time. Plus the historic one committed by the murderer when he was a child.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The murderer claims that he and Morse are the same and share the burden of being intelligent.
- Red Herring: Evelyn Balfour's husband naturally comes under suspicion after her body is found. As does Roy Adamson, her lover, who spends some time in the cells before his name is cleared. When the opera theme starts to get taken seriously, the odd behaviour of Philip Madison, a talented but highly-strung classical musician, briefly brings him into the realms of this trope.
- Even the killer gets in on the act, as the abduction of Debbie Snow turns out to be an example of this. He fully intended for Morse to solve the puzzle and find her. The idea of Faye Madison being an intended victim is also this.
- The whole Keith Miller story turns out to have been this — Gull made him up, and with the records having been conveniently destroyed (probably by Gull, although it's not stated) there is no way of proving that Miller never actually existed.
- Running Gag: This time, it's luncheon meat in Thursday's sandwich.
- Shout-Out: A few, subtle compared to later series.
- When Dr Cronyn (or rather, the psychopathic murderer who's posing as Dr Cronyn) talks of other serial killers and cases, he refers to "the bodies in the swamp at Fairvale", suggesting that the events of Psycho actually happened in the Morseverse.
- The Hitchcock references continue when Morse goes to the Bodleian Library; the two female assistants have the surnames Crane and Thornhill, the surnames of major characters in Psycho and North By Northwest respectively.
- The tense and ambivalent relationship between Morse and "Dr Cronyn" is reminiscent of the relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon.
- The way in which Ben Nimmo is killed (quite literally walled up) closely matches the fate of Alan Rokesmith in the Jonathan Creek episode "Jack in the Box" — although that was suicide, not murder. Interestingly, Robin Soans, the actor who played Rokesmith, plays the librarian here.
- The "List Song" from The Mikado becomes something of a theme after the score of this is found on Nimmo’s body. The victims are not being chosen at random; they are people who have either wronged the killer or are related to those who did.
- Significant Anagram: The Opera Phantom gives as a clue two anagrams pointing to a library where another clue will lead to a kidnapped girl. Even more significant, the name "Keith Miller" that he gives as the supposed real name of the serial killer is an anagram of "I'm the killer."
- Theme Serial Killer: The murderer uses the deaths of characters in various operas as inspiration for his murders.
- Evelyn Balfour had a handkerchief embroidered with the letter 'D' placed in her mouth after she was strangled to death. That, and the fact that the words un bacio ancora ("one kiss more") are written on the back of the door of the disused train carriage in which her body is found, leads Morse to make Morse to make a connection to the Verdi opera Otello.
- Grace Madison is killed by poison (specifically, the leaves of the detura plant) in a manner reminiscent of another opera, Delibes' Lakmé; as with the Balfour death, a line from that opera is found not far from where Mrs Maddison was killed.
- Benjamin Nimmo is Buried Alive, matching the heroine's death in Verdi's Aida.
- Daniel Cronyn has acid poured over him, causing him to (sort of) melt, like title character in The Snow Maiden.
- The intended final victim is Fred Thursday, who was to be stabbed like Scarpia, the villainous police chief in Tosca.
- Wicked Cultured: Mason Gull is a musical prodigy who was institutionalised for killing his own mother. Getting released by faking being cured (and stealing the identity of his former therapist, who he intends to be one of his victims), he embarks on a twisted killing spree, basing his murders on deaths from famous operas to create his own treble clef, EGBDF — this being the first names of his victims in the order in which they're killed. All of them are somehow linked to his incarceration — in addition to Cronyn, Nimmo was a witness to the original murder, as was Evelyn Balfour’s mother, while Grace Madison’s brother-in-law was the magistrate who signed the committal papers. Fred Thursday is the intended final victim as a stand-in for the (long since dead) arresting officer.
