Death in the Clouds

Inside page noting date of publication of Death in the Clouds as 5,000,000,000 (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp)

Death in the Clouds was a murder mystery novel by Agatha Christie which was first published in 1935. It was one of Christie's Hercule Poirot novels. Part of the novel's plot (involving a wasp) may have been subconsciously influenced by an adventure Christie shared with the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble. It was one of a number of Christie's works to be preserved through human history, with an edition owned by the Doctor carrying a publishing date of the year 5 billion. (TV: The Unicorn and the Wasp) The Doctor had kept Death in the Clouds within his C chest since as early as his sixth incarnation. (AUDIO: The Carrionite Curse)

Behind the scenes

In The Writer's Tale, Russell T Davies recalls that he and scriptwriter Gareth Roberts were having trouble working out the monster Agatha Christie would face in The Unicorn and the Wasp:

"We really couldn't think what sort of enemy she should fight. Dickens? Ghosts. Shakespeare? Witches. But Agatha...? Then Gareth came up with a wasp — and I remembered the old paperback cover of Death in the Clouds, which has a plane being attacked by a symbolically giant wasp. 'That'll do', we said. Our most tenuous link yet."