When he returned to Doctor Who as showrunner, Russell T Davies expressed a desire to park many of the series’ most notable villains, like the Daleks and the Cybermen, for the foreseeable future. It was a smart decision. If there’s one thing that can render even the Doctor’s most fearsome enemies a little monotonous, it’s overuse.
Yet in “The Well,” Davies has defied expectations by resurrecting a creation of his that’s been lying dormant for 17 years since its first and only appearance onscreen. Bringing back just any NuWho villain wouldn’t work. (I don’t think anyone is exactly clamoring for a return of the Absorbaloff.) And to make this seem like more than a desperate nostalgia bid, you need a monster that A.) makes feasible sense to revive, and B.) fans actually want to see again.
This story has both in spades. That original episode had a frenetic energy that this current era of Doctor Who, with its high budgets and slick look, will never be able to emulate. Yet the same terrifying tension building is emulated, continuing the show’s strong streak and making for the most consistent episode of season two so far.
Like its predecessor “Lux,” episode three picks up right where we left off in Miami, with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) still trying, and crucially failing, to get Belinda (Varada Sethu) back to Earth. Now, she’s getting really worried. “If we can’t get home, and the TARDIS isn’t broken, then it means, what, Planet Earth is broken? 2025 is broken?” she asks, her ever-expressive eyebrows furrowed once more. The Doctor doesn’t have many answers. All he can do is promise her that the human race will always exist.
What they can do, however, is slowly make their way home by taking readings with the high tech-looking vortex indicator (or vindicator) introduced last episode. There’s a jolt, and the TARDIS lands 500,000 years in the future, on Planet 6-7-6-7. Donning Tron-inspired bodysuits, the Doctor and Belinda exit the TARDIS and slot right in line alongside a group of soldiers. They’re ordered to wear their helmets—this was the first time a certain episode from 2008 crossed my mind—and then jump, plummeting down into the blue shadows. Once they’ve crashed amid the eerie expanse, the Doctor takes his vindicator reading, then uses his trusty psychic paper to get the lowdown on why exactly anyone would visit a place as inhospitable as Planet 6-7-6-7, where the air is thick with galvanic radiation.
The army, who hail from the planet Lombardo, are led by commander Shaya Costallion (Industry’s Caoilfhionn Dunne), a firm yet empathetic soldier. She exists in opposition to Cassio (Christopher Chung), with his brutish willingness to kill and visible distaste when the Doctor calls him “babes.” There’s a mining operation running on Planet 6-7-6-7 for a substance called Carbon 46, but 15 days ago all contact was lost. How many of the 35 inhabitants, if any, are alive is the mystery they’re there to investigate. Entering the building, the team discovers a sea of bodies. The scene is one of total distraction. Clearly, something went down here. Items are strewn across the floor, the people have all died by shooting or violent assault, and every mirror has been smashed.
Bubbling away in the background is the electronic soundtrack, building tension to an unknown point revealed when the lone survivor is discovered. A heartbeat is tracked through a door and in the middle of a large room, surrounded by corpses, stands a trembling woman named Aliss (Rose Ayling-Ellis). Shaking as she communicates in British Sign Language that only the Doctor knows (providing a fitting opportunity for Doctor Who to cover its educational bases and speak about the importance of disability accessibility), Aliss begs to be taken to her daughter. She explains that she’s the mine’s cook and has been alone for 15 days. Yes, she shot the woman next to her, but only because “she was going to kill me with her bare hands”.
It’s hard to get a read on Aliss. Is she actually innocent, or the mastermind behind this whole thing? Of course, the soldiers don’t trust her, but the Doctor is also unsure and warns Belinda to be careful while he heads off with Cassio and Shaya and leaves her with Aliss and soldier Mo (Bethany Antonia). Belinda is tending to Aliss when she jolts and gasps. She saw and heard something, a dark flash and a screeching sound, that appeared then vanished.
Only Belinda saw it, and she quickly doubts herself, but the soldiers know something’s up. Then it happens again. The others too can sense that somehow, something is behind Aliss that they can’t see. Weeping, she admits she’s seen it before too. “There’s something behind me all the time,” she sobs, her voice wavering and squeaky. “I don’t know what it is, no one knows what it is, but it can’t be seen and it can’t be stopped.”
In the central unit of the mining operation, the Doctor is confronted with the titular well, a dark, inky hole that operates as a mercury drop and runs five miles deep into the planet’s core. The trio watch CCTV footage from before the attack and hear the mine workers desperately screaming “we don’t know what it is” in their panicked final moments. And the revelations keep coming thick and fast, when both Belinda and the Doctor mention Earth and the human race to their new colleagues, who shrug, no recognition forming in their eyes. “I’ve never heard of you,” Aliss tells Belinda. Suddenly, the vision of the Earth’s debris floating in space from the end of episode one begins to make horrifying sense.
The Doctor is trying to excavate his own memory mines for clues, when a quick history lesson from Shaya brings him to the truth. She explains that Carbon 46, the substance they’ve been mining, is another name for diamonds, ones that covered the surface of this planet some 400,000 years ago. The planet, she tells him, “was called Midnight.” A drum beat builds. “I’ve been here before,” the Doctor says, and the face of David Tennant’s Doctor flashes onto the screen.
A brief refresh: “Midnight” was a bottle episode from 2008 set on the planet of the same name, which saw the Doctor heading out on a bus tour on a diamond-covered planet inhospitable to all life only to be plagued by a terrifying, unseen creature with the ability to possess others. The nameless, formless monster—known casually among fans as the Midnight Entity—has remained one of the show’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Recalling his last visit to Midnight some 400,000 years prior, the Doctor says he “met something so vile that had no face, no name, no self.” “I had never been so scared in my life,” he adds. If we weren’t frightened before, we are now.
Back in the room with Aliss, panic ensues when one of the soldiers is suddenly propelled into the air and dies on impact. On the Doctor’s return, Belinda warns them that anything that goes behind the thing behind Aliss meets a painful death. If the cook is the centre of a clock, you die when you stand at midnight. Cassio, once again thinking with his gun first, suggests they shoot Aliss, and she incredulously laughs. “You think it went for me first?” she scoffs. Kill the host, and it’ll latch onto you. That’s what happened to her.
Refusing to listen, Cassio inches closer, a bird’s-eye-view shot showing him approach the midnight clock position. But in a panic, Aliss pivots and blasts different soldiers into the air, until Shaya takes control and tells Aliss to turn 180 degrees so that Cassio is behind her. He is pummelled backwards, his head hitting a wall and killing him instantly. There is stillness and shock at Shaya’s actions. “This is what it turns us into,” the Doctor warns her. Back on Midnight, the creature convinced the bus’ other passengers to sacrifice the Doctor. Now, it’s got them turning on their brother in arms.
An escape operation is needed, and quickly, but there’s no way the “contaminated” Aliss can leave Planet 6-7-6-7 and let that invisible monster out into the world. With lush orchestration swelling around him, the Doctor crouches down and addresses the thing behind Aliss. A faint, indecipherable whispering noise is heard—although not by Aliss—and tears bloom in the Doctor’s eyes. It knows his name, he says, and then he cries for real, as though a hand is wrapped around his throat and strangling him. Gatwa has copped a lot of criticism for the frequency of his crying, but I’m choosing to judge each instance as it comes. Here, in the face of an old foe we know and fear, it doesn’t feel like an overreaction.
A steady military drum beat joins the rousing music, as the Doctor orders Shaya, a famously great shot, to take aim at the pipes and let the mercury gush out, forming a shiny surface to reflect the monster back so that it becomes the thing behind itself. It’s a concise ending but doesn’t feel rushed. The monster is blasted away from Aliss, and they all run, the Doctor pausing en route to catch a glimpse of a dark, almost dog-like beast, barely visible yet there in the shadows.
The core group makes it to the airlock, but before it can exit, the room shakes, as the thing enters the room. The Doctor knows it, and if it’s not behind Mo or Shaya or him, that means it’s behind Belinda. True horror clouds the nurse’s eyes, Belinda only able to repeat the word “no” over and over again. Sethu has already made an instant impression as the spirited yet hesitant companion, but this is the first time we’ve seen the depth of her acting talent on display, and it’s an exciting sign of things to come. “Is it behind me?” Belinda asks through shuddering tears. When she hears the thing whisper, she looks like she’s about to be sick.
The Doctor offers himself to the creature, but it’s Shaya making the soldier’s sacrifice she was born for who takes on the host role by shooting Belinda in just the right spot in her chest to hit the thing but not kill her. While Belinda is brought back to life using some space-age defibrillator, commander Shaya runs to the edge of the well and throws herself in. The Doctor’s yell of “no” echoes after her, yet it’s clear there was never an alternative. Belinda is able to recover back on the TARDIS, where she tells the Doctor what Aliss said about humans. “How could the Earth not exist?” she asks, the Time Lord lying beside her, similarly stumped.
Just as I was thinking we hadn’t seen Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) yet this episode, our great ongoing mystery is returned to in the final moments when she appears disguised as an army officer on video call with Mo, who she probes about the Doctor and his use of the vindicator. Mo hears the TARDIS fade out of existence and admits to another officer that she’s pretty confused by the whole thing. But when her colleague looks at her, you can tell she’s seen something over her shoulder. Mo turns, and we hear a whispering noise. Mo’s gulping face is the last thing we hear, as the Midnight Entity on yet another cliffhanger that still remains incredibly satisfying. What do we think? Same time again in 17 years?
Stray observations
- • Three trips in, even a reluctant time traveller like Belinda knows that looking the part is crucial when travelling the universe. What I wouldn’t give for a “what’s in my wardrobe tour,” Architectural Digest-style.
- • No fourth-wall breaking for Mrs. Flood this time! After the all-round meta madness of “Lux,” it seems like an episode free of self referencing was exactly what the Doctor ordered.
- • Didn’t see the “Toxic” needle drop coming and don’t think it really made sense, but who’s ever going to say no to Britney?
