DOCTOR WHO, 15.3 – ‘The Well’

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive 500,000 years in the future, literally dropping out of a spaceship orbiting a mining planet with a team of hardened space marines. It’s not long before they realise the facility’s personnel are all dead, many with mysterious broken mirrors in their quarters, and the sole survivor is a deaf single mother called Aliss Fenly (Rose Ayling-Ellis). As The Doctor and Bel investigate the five-mile-long “well” that’s bored deep into the alien planet’s surface, it soon becomes clear that something evil was released and may lurk behind Aliss herself…

“The Well” is another example of Doctor Who’s frequently used story template: the base under siege, or threat from an alien menace. These can be fun exercises in tension and claustrophobia, but they’re also now so familiar that it can be difficult to get excited by the prospect of another. It didn’t help that there are blatant overtones of Aliens (1986) and the video game Doom throughout, and how The Doctor ingratiates himself into the crew using his psychic paper didn’t entirely work  for me— he kept asking too many dumb questions everyone’s hilariously fine with, believing it’s just “a test” from a superior, while Belinda demonstrates poor medical knowledge despite being a nurse.

The saving grace came with the surprise reveal that “The Well” is a stealth sequel to Russell T. Davies’ own “Midnight” from Series 4, arguably the best episode he wrote for the show when David Tennant was still The Doctor in 2008. The connection that this ancient planet, once mined for diamonds, was formerly known as ‘Midnight’, meaning the crew had awoken a similarly enigmatic entity that The Doctor’s encountered with before, helped to elevate interest in “The Well”.

My only concern is that the entity in “Midnight” possessed humans and spoke other people’s words in unison with them, which was such a simple idea but incredibly unnerving, whereas the creature in “The Well” (only credited as ‘It Has No Name’) had a different modus operandi. It’s continually lurking behind Aliss, only occasionally glimpsed peeking around her body for Insidious-style jump scares, poised to kill those who venture behind it by instantly breaking every bone in their body.

It reminded me more of “Turn Left”, also from Series 4, when Donna Noble had an alien slug stuck to her back that nobody else could see. The idea in “The Well” of having a murderous entity permanently obscured behind your body, just waiting for others to walk behind it, was creepy but also too much of a departure. Beyond the episodes taking place on the same planet, there wasn’t very much that directly connected the two stories. It’s enough to make you wonder if “The Well” was written more in the spirit of “Midnight” by Sharma Angel Walfall — a pressure cooker drama with something otherworldly happening to people who can’t fathom what’s going on —but then RTD directly connected the two stories as a way to make things seem juicier.

A solid guest cast certainly helped smooth things over. Caoilfhionn Dunne as platoon leader Shaya Costallion was great, even if her big sacrifice ended a hero’s arc that didn’t land because it had only been communicated through a brief bit of dialogue and a quick flashback. The real standout was Rose Aylin-Ellis as Aliss, the poor woman who’s been infected with this alien and needs help. She was highly believable in the role and made an immediate connection due to being so empathetic (and yet slightly odd), making her plight all the more concerning.

It’s just a little amusing to me that nobody considered just asking Aliss to stand with her back against a solid wall, which would seem to be the ideal temporary solution to prevent people from accidentally walking behind her. At least try that and have it fail, as it seemed like the first thing you’d ask Aliss to do. It’s a fun idea to have an alien who can instantly kill you based on your location to it, but one that’s easily avoided. The big set piece where the space marines lose many of their number was slightly bewildering to me to see unfold, as everyone understood the easy rule, and yet they suddenly all started crossing behind Aliss for no clear reason — and Aliss seemed to be in no rush to do her best to keep facing them.

So, elements of “The Well” didn’t entirely work for me. I also wish the creature, which was wisely kept in shadow, did something a bit more interesting to those it killed. But this episode is a great example of tone and performances overcoming any weaknesses with the story and internal logic. If it hadn’t been a sequel to “Midnight”, I might even have enjoyed it more, but you invite the comparison in making this a definite follow-up. And it’s not as good; partly because what the alien’s doing isn’t as bizarre, but also because in “Midnight” this was happening to ordinary holidaymakers instead of battle-hardened military types (often such dull caricatures in Who). The Doctor was also at a total loss and frightened to death in “Midnight”, whereas in “The Well”, his initial worry eventually gave way to him having a good plan to defeat the alien. And how that was going to be achieved felt obvious from the start, given the conspicuous detail of so many broken mirrors around.

Concerning Series 15’s ongoing mysteries, the marines weren’t aware of the planet “Earth”, so they’re not even human. It seems the disappearance of the Earth in 2025 is something that’s become permanent, and humanity’s since gone extinct, which is deeply troubling to The Doctor. And we had another appearance of Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) as a high-ranking military official getting briefed on what happened. With the latter, it suddenly feels too similar to how actress Susan Twist kept popping up in various guises, which was only last year. It’s almost like RTD now accepts the explanation for her in “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” wasn’t satisfying enough, and didn’t make sense, so they’re just having another go at it immediately with Mrs Flood instead. But her big thing was breaking the fourth wall and appearing as herself in unlikely places, so this sudden tweak seems odd to me. I still don’t have much faith that it will pay off satisfyingly.

Overall, with its lineage going back to other space horror episodes like “The Impossible Planet”, “The Satan Pit”, and “The Waters of Mars”, “The Well” was a decent example of that type of story where paranoia and a feeling of hopelessness fill the air. The fact that it’s a sequel to “Midnight” (one of Who’s best episodes) helped reinvigorate interest in what was going on, but the two aliens only have inscrutability in common. You wouldn’t know this was a sequel to “Midnight” if it hadn’t been directly called out, and for that reason, it ended up being frustrating to reflect on. Would it have hurt the story if the creature at least exhibited some of the same elements as the entity in “Midnight”, as part of an evolution to something scarier and more physical? If you’re going to make a sequel, I think it needs to advance what we already understand from before,  as “The Time of Angels” did with “Blink” for the Weeping Angels.

UK | 2025 | 43 MINUTES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Russell T. Davies & Sharma Angel Walfall.
director: Amanda Brotchie.
starring: Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Christopher Chung, Bethany Antonia, Annabel Brook, Luke Rhodri, Gaz Choudhry, Gary Pillai, Frankie Lipman, Jermaine Dominique, Anita Dobson & Amy Tyger.