A desolate planet, an abandoned mining rig, only one person left alive, and another stop for The Doctor, Belinda, and the Vindicator. Episode three of the latest season of Doctor Who titled ‘The Well’ is a tense chamber piece that pushes The Doctor to his limits in a way that he hasn’t been since a certain episode in 2008, which this episode shares a connection with. As Russell T Davies continues to reckon with Doctor Who’s legacy as well as his own this episode becomes a distillation of the showrunner’s return, and real marker for what Doctor Who is in its current form.
In The Well, The Doctor and Belinda get thrown into the action straight away as they walk in on an army crew about to drop onto an abandoned planet. As they land The Doctor takes the vindicator reading, but they find out they won’t be able to get back to the TARDIS for five hours. Considering Belinda is still fresh onto the TARDIS and isn’t exactly a willing traveller, it’s a simple enough reason for them to be stuck in the narrative. They soon learn that the crew they are with has been sent to investigate an abandoned mining colony after the entire crew died mysteriously.
The Doctor, Belinda, and the crew then bump into a lone survivor, a deaf crew member called Aliss Fenister (Rose Ayling-Ellis). She discusses with The Doctor what had happened in the base and why she was the only one left alive. The Doctor and half of the crew go further into the colony to investigate further, whilst Belinda stays behind to tend to Aliss. It’s at this point where the tension starts to build in the room with Aliss and Belinda. Belinda starts to see things in her peripheral vision. The unknown becomes the greatest enemy against the group as they discuss between each other what might be occurring. The terror reaches its peak when one of the soldiers walks behind Aliss and gets flung into the air, killing them instantly. Doctor Who is always more fun when it leans into horror, and it does here with finesse. The screeching score, moments of silence, and terrorised performances make for some intense sequences.
The Doctor, and the audience, then promptly find out what they are really facing as it is revealed that The Doctor and Belinda have found themselves at Midnight. To jog your memory, we last came to this planet in the 2008 episode titled the same. David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor came up against an invisible enemy that pushed him and the people around him to their absolute limits. It is by far and away one of the best Doctor Who episodes of the 21st Century so it is no surprise that Davies wanted to come back to it.
The entity, which we didn’t see at all in the original episode, has had thousands of years to evolve and now operates in a different way. It can now just latch onto people and it uses direct line of sight to attack its victims. It’s a far cry from its original process of doling out terror amongst the masses, and honestly gives it more of an action feel. Taking away that intimate horror feel from the entity does make it lose some of its charm as a top notch Who villain, but it still makes for a terrifying watch.
The Well is the first episode since last season’s queer Bridgerton-esque romp Rogue that hasn’t been entirely written by a previous showrunner. Sharma Angel-Walfall acts as a co-writer on this episode alongside Russell T Davies. You can’t quite help the feeling that Angel-Walfall came up with an original idea here that Davies retroactively placed a legacy sequel to one of his most popular episodes from his original run onto. If you take away the Midnight entity then you have yourself an incredibly tense, character driven, monster-of-the-week episode which fits into the Doctor Who canon beautifully. It leaves you asking why Davies decided to thread it into the story, and that the episode would have been just as good without the connection dragging it down.
This era of the show seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, in that it is taking some bold original strings, but can’t quite shake off everything that has come before it. If you consider Doctor Who ten years ago, explicit celebrations of what came before were often left to big anniversaries like the 50th special in 2013. Davies’ original run may have used a lot of monsters from the classic series but the stories felt fresh and new. The stories in this era that use villains and monsters again seem far from it. The sting of this episode feels harsher due to the original episode being so strong. It doesn’t necessarily ruin it, but it does lose a special glint it had as a solo untouched story. As for The Well, it stands as one of the better episodes in recent years, but would work better as its own thing instead of stuck as a legacy sequel.
Doctor Who, Season Two is now streaming on Disney+.
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