Doctor Who Series 15 Episode 3 Review: The Well

Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who series 15 episode 3 “The Well”.

Me about 20 minutes into this episode: hmm, getting real “Midnight” vibes from this.

Me about 25 minutes into this episode: ah!

In a surprise sequel to a classic from the Tenth Doctor era, the Doctor and Belinda find themselves on an inhospitable rock hundreds of thousands of years in the future with a team of space marines. Investigating a mining colony where all but one of the personnel have been mysteriously killed, they come face to face (figuratively speaking) with an old foe…

The shocking reveal of a returning villain is a trick that Doctor Who loves to pull – though if we’re being honest, it’s rarely much of a shock. In the old days, such episodes would more than likely be called something like ‘Umbrage of the Daleks’, which slightly undercut the dramatic entrance of a Dalek at the end of part one. In the new series, these returns are more likely to be spoiled by leaked set photos or other metatextual knowledge that comes from having an engaged and very online fandom – or simply from the creators building hype.

So considering what a hoary old device it is, it’s fun to actually be surprised by it for a change. Granted, it may simply be that I’m not online enough to have seen the relevant tease or fan theory, but from that position of blissful ignorance, the reveal that we were dealing with the mysterious entity from “Midnight” was very effective.

It’s a pretty bold choice, as “Midnight” – while it has its detractors – is widely recognised as a top-tier episode from Russell T Davies’ previous tenure. A last-minute addition to David Tennant’s final season, written in an intense rush of inspiration when a previous script failed to cohere, it saw the Tenth Doctor visiting the titular Midnight, an inhospitable but stunningly beautiful planet covered in diamonds. While traversing the planet’s lethal terrain in a shuttle bus, the Doctor and a group of human tourists encountered a vicious alien presence that remained unseen – we simply heard it scraping on the outside of the shuttle, then witnessed it possess another passenger through a creepily effective tic of repeated language.

It was an intense episode, a single location pressure cooker with one of the bleakest endings in the show’s history, which wasn’t uncontroversial. Those who like Doctor Who to be a hopeful, humanistic show would find little comfort in “Midnight”, an episode where Davies consciously decided to explore the worst of humanity: a group of people who refused to co-operate with the Doctor and would willingly turn on any of their number to save their own skin.

Making a sequel to such a singular episode is a risky decision, in more ways than one. For starters, it’s a stone-cold classic, so any follow up has a high bar to clear. But part of the chilling power of “Midnight” is that it’s not really an episode you can repeat – obviously you can do variations on the basic setup of ‘Doctor and a group of rando humans encounter a scary monster’, but the specificity of the character dynamics, the bleak tone and the overall message that sometimes people are just horrible… that’s not necessarily something you can do effectively again, at least not while remaining Doctor Who.

To Davies’ credit – and that of co-writer Sharma Angel Walfall – that’s not what “The Well” is doing. It’s certainly dark, creepy and brutal. The entity remains largely unseen, as before, apart from some unsettling suggestions of something, but we don’t learn much more about it – there are just enough new details to make the episode feel worthwhile, but the creature’s particular mystique isn’t spoiled. We’re no clearer about its origins, its motivations or even what kind of lifeform it is, with any new information raising as many questions as answers. All the right choices, in horror terms, but still relatively familiar.

It’s in the character dynamics that “The Well” feels different. Things are helped considerably by a pretty uniformly strong guest cast – not something that every episode this season can claim, unfortunately. This could just be a matter of personal taste, but the production values are so consistently strong these days that sub-par guest acting seems to stand out much more than it did in bygone years, when the special effects were still occasionally ropey.

Here, though, the guest actors are all solid to great. Rose Ayling-Ellis is excellent as Aliss – she’s believably scared and sympathetic, and the character’s deafness is incorporated in a sensitive way that contributes to the drama without feeling either exploitative or self-congratulatory. Caoilfhionn Dunne is also very good as platoon leader Shaya, who manages to bring a decent amount of depth to a fairly stock character, imbuing the badass soldier archetype with a welcome level of emotional intelligence. And Christopher Chung (who viewers may recognise as antisocial computer whizz Roddy from Slow Horses) manages to make another stock character type – the soldier who doesn’t trust the Doctor and rushes to solve things with violence – feel believable and lived-in (his hilariously stiff delivery of “it’s not appropriate to call me ‘babes’” is a highlight).

These strong performances and the sharp writing help to make the character drama feel meaty – and it’s where “The Well” sharply diverges from “Midnight”. It’s not so much that the characters are all willing to co-operate with the Doctor where the passengers in the original episode weren’t – Cassio is pretty unequivocal about not trusting the Doctor (and honestly his reticence makes sense in character terms). It’s that compassion and co-operation ultimately win the day. That feels like the best way to do a sequel to “Midnight”, to show that even in the face of a monstrous, terrifying foe, we don’t have to lose our humanity. This certainly isn’t an ‘everybody lives’ situation, but every human life has value nonetheless, and nobody is regarded as expendable.

It’s not just the guest actors that elevate the episode. Both Ncuti Gatwa and Verada Sethu are on point, by turns competent, witty and appropriately terrified. Some viewers have expressed frustration at how often the Fifteenth Doctor cries, but Gatwa is very good at it, and his silent tears are particularly well deployed in the scene where he hears the creature’s horrifying whispers (effectively supported by Murray Gold’s atmospheric score).

One minor complaint, at the risk of sounding bloodthirsty – it’s hard not to wish that the creature did something a bit more visually impressive than just chucking people across the room. Not necessarily bloodier or more violent, but maybe something weirder and scarier? The Moffat-esque device of it always being behind someone is generally very effective, and exploited well by director Amanda Brotchie, so it’s a shame the alien’s method of attack felt a bit ordinary.

Elsewhere, we have the revelation that Earth and the human race no longer exist in the future, not even as a historical reference. Intriguing stuff, though I am personally getting to the point where the Mrs Flood teases feel more aggravating than enticing. Not only are they very similar to the repeated appearances of Susan Twist last season, but this is a plot thread that has been lurking in the background since 2023. Can we just pull it already?

A solidly tense and satisfying instalment all round, though. If you’re going to do a sequel to a classic, this is the way to do it. Three episodes in, and this season feels like it’s cooking on gas.

Doctor Who continues with “Lucky Day” on Saturday April 26 on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK, and on Disney+ in the US.

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