Following the review is a detailed recap. Both contain spoilers for 2.03, “The Well.”
The newest episode of Doctor Who, “The Well,” which was just released on Disney+, starts off with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) venturing to a planet in the distant future after the TARDIS has once again bounced off of Belinda’s timeline. Immediately it throws them in the middle of the action when they are forced to jump out of a moving spacecraft, leaving them sans TARDIS for the next five hours. Joining a rescue mission to a planet where contact was lost with a group of people mining Carbon 46, they arrive to find everyone dead, surrounded by broken mirrors, except for one woman, Aliss Fenly (Rose Ayling-Ellis), who has somehow been spared from an enemy the Doctor met a long time ago. The other problem? No one has heard of Earth or the human race.
“The Well” is classic Doctor Who creepy. How can you defeat something you can’t approach, that you can’t even see without it attacking?
I like that the story brought back an alien from a previous story, that of “Midnight,” and loved the build up of the reveal that the Doctor has met the creature before, because it was unexpected and packed a punch. As a fan, I appreciate that it didn’t feel spoon-fed to me. The Doctor doesn’t recognize the antagonist at first either. It’s only when you hear about Xtonic radiation and that the planet’s surface was once diamonds that something clicks. Where have we seen this before? The mention of carbon was there to clue you in early on from the beginning, but like the Doctor, I saw it only in hindsight, yet I knew what the original name of the planet was before Shaya (Caoilfhionn Dunne) even said it.
“The Well” is classic Doctor Who creepy. How can you defeat something you can’t approach, that you can’t even see without it attacking?
I like that the story brought back an alien from a previous story, that of “Midnight,” and loved the build up of the reveal that the Doctor has met the creature before, because it was unexpected and packed a punch. As a fan, I appreciate that it didn’t feel spoon-fed to me. The Doctor doesn’t recognize the antagonist at first either. It’s only when you hear about Xtonic radiation and that the planet’s surface was once diamonds that something clicks. Where have we seen this before? The mention of carbon was there to clue you in early on from the beginning, but like the Doctor, I saw it only in hindsight, yet I knew what the original name of the planet was before Shaya (Caoilfhionn Dunne) even said it.