In The Well, the Doctor walks back into a haunting from his past and finds out the terror’s evolved. Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 3 is a chilling sequel that tests the limits of survival and trust, and I went into it cold. I know there are folks out there who hear rumors and this and that. I knew nothing.

It picks up right where Lux left off, and I mean literally. You could go directly from watching Lux into watching The Well. When your screen says next episode, hit next episode and poof, you’re immediately in, because they’re wearing the same outfits and everything. Then they do the whole changing outfits thing again, which I kind of dug, to be honest. I think it’s clever, and it’s one of those things I hope they keep doing.

Half a Million Years Out, on a Planet That Went Silent

The Doctor and Belinda find themselves half a million years in the future. The TARDIS lands in a specific slot in a specific place. They get dressed, they put on their space suits, they step out, and they’re magically dressed like everybody else. Other people step up, there are two helmets waiting for them right in front of the TARDIS, and they’re going down to a planet.

Specifically, the planet is 6767. It’s funny, I think I actually had a phone number back in high school that was 6767. I don’t know, whatever.

It’s a mining colony, and according to the lady in command, Trooper Shaya, the colony went silent, so a military squad’s been sent in to investigate. We don’t really know whether it’s the company or the corporation or whatever, because that’s how they always do these things. I was half expecting that to be where it ended up going.

The environment of the planet and the mine is really claustrophobic, almost eerie, and it really enhanced the suspense and the atmosphere, for me anyway. It reminded me of past episodes like The Satan Pit. I remember thinking to myself, wow, this is that Doctor Who feeling. If you remember anything from the RTD era and the eras after it, the creepy stuff was creepy and the funny stuff was funny. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was. This one definitely fell into the creepy. I was sitting there going, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

One Heartbeat, and a Future With Subtitles

There are no survivors. Or are there? About midway through searching around, they catch a heartbeat. They track it down into this large open area, and there’s a survivor.

Her name’s Aliss Fenly, and she’s played by Rose Ayling-Ellis. She’s the sole survivor, she’s deaf, and you find out she was the cook. The fact that she’s deaf adds a really unique dynamic to the story, one I wasn’t expecting. She communicates through sign. The Doctor does too. But what’s really great is they’ve got these little devices. You pin one on yourself, you hit it, and it immediately projects what you’re saying right in front of you. I thought that was brilliant. It’s like having your own walking, talking subtitles. As additions go, it was a smart one for sure.

One of the reviewers I watched said it’s the perfect form of an accessible future, and I thought to myself, that’s kind of brilliant. It’s true. So much so that there’s an actual medically trained person in the squad talking to Belinda, and Belinda says she can’t sign, and the reaction is, really? I thought it was illegal for doctors and nurses not to be able to sign. If you’re going to help people physically, you need to be able to speak most languages, or some version of that.

I did think it was interesting they didn’t get specific about what type of signing survives 500,000 years into the future. Either way, it’s a conceit, whatever. The TARDIS can translate, and as far as I’m concerned that means they can do what they need to do.

Part of me wondered about this, and I’d love to have the discussion with you. Had Belinda just wiggled her hands, would the TARDIS have translated that into sign? That’s a crazy thought. If the TARDIS matrix can translate, and it’s pretty darn intelligent, I’d think yes, that’s exactly what would happen. I like the fact that it was a thing at all.

“What Did This Planet Used to Be Called?”

Almost immediately you start getting the backstory, and Aliss is very cagey about giving them too many details. Then Belinda sees something. Almost out of the corner of her eye, except it’s more like when you see something just behind someone, you go to look, and you’re startled. They did actually show it to us. You can freeze frame it, and there’s behind the scenes of what the thing looked like.

I’m not burying the lede. You guys know this, clearly. It shares similarities with the entity from the 2008 episode Midnight, and the moment the Doctor finds that out is one of the most brilliant reveals I’ve seen in Doctor Who in a long time.

He’s doing what the Doctor does. He’s doing the math. What is this place? How long has it been? The answer comes back that it was a mining colony. What did they mine here? Diamonds. They’re describing this galaxy and something’s niggling at the back of his mind, and he literally says his head is so old. I love whenever they write the Doctor like that. Then he asks what this planet used to be called.

Midnight.

Boom. And you get this terrified moment. Everyone’s calling it RTD one era stuff, and there are videos and memes out there going, if this had been done in the RTD era. It’s the idea that this Doctor briefly sees a memory from a previous Doctor, and I loved that. I thought it was wonderful.

The Thing Behind Her

Whatever this entity is, it’s attached itself to Aliss, and it’s killing anyone who stands behind her, which creates this constant sense of dread. Really, it’s the paranoia they explore that’s causing a lot of this. Remember, the reason Aliss hasn’t gone crazy herself is that she’s deaf.

There’s a moment, once the Doctor understands what’s going on, where he gets up really close and he can hear it. Obviously the Doctor’s telepathic and all this other stuff, he’s a walking MacGuffin, so he can hear the whispering of the creature. At one point the creature even says it knows his name.

I thought that was wonderful, because RTD was always really good at exploring the idea of the Doctor’s name. Him and Moffat both. To me it’s one of those aspects of the show that’s been special and also not special, but they actually made it a thing, and I dig that.

The Leader We’re Always Shouting For

Trooper Shaya is my favorite. She’s played by Caoilfhionn Dunne, who I believe is an Irish actress, and I could be wrong. What a great character. She’s the kind of leader we’re constantly shouting at the screen for.

When some idiot on the team (and by the way, you have one of those) is being a jerk to the Doctor, and we’re all sitting here going, oh my God, just listen to him, she listens to him. True, he uses the psychic paper and the whole bit. But at the end of the day she realizes she’s out of her depth and he clearly knows more than she does, which automatically puts him higher up the food chain regardless of the situation, and makes him capable of making decisions, or at the very least informing the ones being made. I really love that character.

Belinda Stops Arguing With the Driver

Belinda leaps forward in terms of growth. She’s facing a life-threatening situation and it tests her resilience. I’d say it tests her trust too.

Now, I do think there are issues with how quick she is to reach this place. But it’s like what Rose said back in season 1 in 2005, something like her mate used to say, don’t argue with the driver. I feel like that’s sort of Belinda’s viewpoint. She could continue to be staunch, but there’s clearly more at work than she can control, so she needs to throw herself into it. The only way she’s going to live is to be party to everything going on. And that’s what happens. You see this growth happen fast, maybe a little faster than makes sense, but, you know, whatever.

Looking Into the Void

The episode’s definitely walking that Doctor Who horror line. Darker colors, a much more mature tone, a lot less jokiness about everything. There weren’t jump scares the way you might think, but there was definitely psychological stuff as well as visceral stuff. We get to see bodies strewn about. You get to see the troopers going around trying to figure out what’s happening, let’s see behind her, let’s see above her, and the entity’s throwing them around.

We also get some interesting allegorical things about isolation and, ultimately, trust. I feel like these episodes work best when Doctor Who is exploring the nature of the unknown. When you think of space travel, it’s the epitome of I’m looking into the void and the void looks back. This run of seasons is, I’d say, unique for that, because that actually happened with Fourteen, I guess. I love when this show does that.

At least when it’s written well, the show asks good questions and doesn’t give you good answers. By that I mean you have to come up with your own conclusions. It’s thought-provoking. It’s why we’re talking about it.

Mrs. Flood and the Mystery Box

The ongoing mystery of Mrs. Flood. I don’t know if she’ll show up again at the very end of this thing as the supervisor or whatever else. She asks very particular questions and she’s somewhat ambiguous.

Someone asked online, how concerned are you about Mrs. Flood? I’m not in my 20s. I don’t care. I feel like mystery boxes are a lazy writing tool, and that’s strictly from a cynical place, because nobody truly does them well anymore. I don’t even know if they’ve ever really been done well, let’s be fair. Maybe they’ve been done better, if not well.

I have a feeling it’s going to be satisfying, because when I’m in the mode, I’m very much a Doctor Who fan like everybody else. I’m sitting there watching the show, and when the time comes and it’s revealed, I’ll go, all right, right on. Unlike when I was much younger and I was like, that’s what the four knocks meant, oh my God. I don’t have that mentality anymore. I’ve got a very different outlook at this point. We’ll see.

The Verdict

Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 3, The Well, earns a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It really does. It’s masterful storytelling. It’s got this atmospheric tension that works, and it hearkens back to some of the better episodes, memory-wise for me, of the RTD era and the Moffat era after it. The character development is a standout. A little fast in points, but ultimately I think it does the job. And I think it’s going to resonate with both the longtime fans of this 2005 revitalization of the series and the new people who are just now getting into Doctor Who.

Did it live up to the suspense of Midnight? I don’t know. I think that’s a tall order.

That’s three. This is a banger season as far as I’m concerned. As someone who didn’t like the first season much, I’m really excited for this one. I feel like Doctor Who is back in a big, bad way. Even if we get a slump episode coming up, I hope it just keeps on chugging and this becomes one of the most solid seasons, especially in light of the talk of Ncuti Gatwa stepping out, which means we could be looking down the barrel of a new Doctor. I don’t know how they’re going to handle that, or whether the BBC’s going to take a break or not. We’ll see.

Did The Well live up to Midnight, or does it carve out its own path? And if Belinda had just wiggled her hands, would the TARDIS have turned it into sign? Your mileage may vary, and I’d love to know what you think. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.