Mark Harrison | On 26, Apr 2025

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations. For more on Doctor Who, see our Whoniverse channel.

“It came out of the Well. And they said it was laughing.” In the weird and wonderful mix of Doctor Who stories Ncuti Gatwa has had so far, the one thing missing is the fear factor. We’ve had chills and thrills, but nothing quite like the sci-fi horror story we get in The Well, a deep, dark journey into terror.

Bouncing from the 1950s to a planet 500,000 years in the future, the Doctor is no closer to getting Belinda (Varada Sethu) home, but from almost the moment they step outside the TARDIS, the two are caught up in a dangerous space expedition on Planet 6-7-6-7. There’s a mining base full of dead crew members, a hole five miles deep, and only one survivor – a young deaf woman called Aliss Fenly (Rose Ayling-Ellis), who’s sat all alone in an empty room when the Doctor and the crew arrive.

Not for nothing, this is one of the episodes that Davies warned viewers would be best seen as soon as possible to avoid spoilers. We’re keeping things spoiler-lite before we go deeper, but if you haven’t seen The Well yet, it’s a good’un, and you should watch it before you read any further. That said, if you did hear whispers in advance, this story still has a few surprises in store.

At this point, it’s easy enough to pastiche the Alien franchise. Early on, you can’t fail to notice those allusions in its close-knit space crew who say things like “nuke the place from orbit”, never mind the suspenseful tone built by director Amanda Brotchie, composer Murray Gold and a game guest cast.

With scripting experience spanning from Hollyoaks to Netflix’s Supacell, Sharma Angel-Walfall is exactly the type of new writer you want on Doctor Who, and her script gets to the lived-in dynamic of the Nostromo crew – or, the Colonial Marines. In a show that’s sometimes too pacey for its own good, this has a real handle on how best to use its big cast of characters.

For instance, while Belinda the nurse gets to grips with medical kits half an aeon ahead of her time, the Doctor goes looking for answers – and seeing them work separately for the first time gives Gatwa and Sethu more to play. The plot of the week is doing different things in each of their scenes, but there’s a smart subplot that works well for both characters.

That’s partly down to the other guest stars – most notably, Caoilfhionn Dunne as hard-as-nails commander Shaya Costallion and Christopher Chung as her cavalier second-in-command, Cassio. We’ve seen exactly these archetypes in countless base-under-siege episodes before but, again, the script provides more for those actors to chew on.

Nevertheless, Ayling-Ellis is the clear standout – Aliss wasn’t originally written as a deaf character, and RTD reportedly rewrote the script for her when she was cast. A lot of the episode’s suspense rides on her vulnerability and all the things she might not be saying (or signing) and she’s superb from start to finish.

The rewrite distinguishes the episode too, not only making it more inclusive but also raising everyone’s game in a story that’s basically about communication. Gatwa learned British Sign Language for the episode and, visually, there are some ingenious uses of futuristic holographic subtitles. 60 years in, Doctor Who is always in danger of repeating itself or others, but here, representation truly distinguishes it.

The Well looks great, sounds great and might just be considered one of the greats of this era. In a story that could easily have felt like Doctor Who dashing back to the figurative well in one way or another, we get a confident chamber-piece, full of suspense, stunt-work, and some grisly grace notes. And after a couple of high-concept outings, this is straightforwardly scary enough to keep us on our toes.

 

 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– “I’ve been here before.” The script is mischievous with its sequel-ising too. In the build-up, the base’s smashed mirrors might suggest Weeping Angels, while Aliss’ hidden arm and the shape of her wound might remind older fans of the Mara from the Peter Davison era. Instead, Planet 6-7-6-7 is the planet formerly known as Midnight, last seen in the 2008 episode where David Tennant and Lesley Sharp repeated each other a lot. That story’s unseen monster (and still unseen by us, at least) was awoken when the planet was converted from a diamond mine to a mercury mine.

– There’s something more calculated to this than Midnight, a last-minute script replacement that Davies wrote in just a few days, almost a post-Blink response to what last week’s episode conceded was the once-and-future fan favourite. The Well isn’t quite as simple or striking, but then the original set a high bar. Its “clock-face” gag is almost too far, a bit that would be better left as a visual Easter egg than explained out loud, but this isn’t like bringing back the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Weeping Angels – the lack of iconography forces a more creative sequel because it needs a new idea.

– “Please don’t turn your back on me.” Again, Rose Ayling-Ellis is excellent in this and even as a late rewrite, Aliss’ different ability feels intrinsic to the story – she trusts the Doctor easily because he signs to her and includes her in conversations, which makes it hit harder when the stakes become more desperate, and he starts excluding her. Better yet, it also chimes with values that should always be part of Doctor Who – never turn your back on those in need.

– “He tried his best.” How awful that even in the future, the bar for a woman getting a commendation at work is pulling off an impossible trick-shot to save Belinda’s life then Alien 3-ing herself and (apparently) the monster into a hole five miles deep to save everybody else, while the worst guy on the mission apparently gets equal recognition. Shaya and Cassio are not the same!

– Despite the Doctor giving his standard reassurances about the indomitable human race, we learn that in the future, no one has even heard of planet Earth. It’s material to the season arc rather than the story, but as mentioned, it’s well paced enough to bed that in without a great big honking cameo at the end — but it throws that in anyway as Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) vamps about the Vindicator in the closing scenes.

– They’re making the most of that big TARDIS set, but the opening scenes in the console room are the sort of thing that New Who used to skip over to get the story moving. We get a rerun of that wardrobe change transition, but at least the dialogue sets the tone and keeps that character tension cooking throughout the episode. On a lighter note, it’s always funny to me when sets are designed to have a space just big enough for the TARDIS to park in, as on the marine crew’s drop-ship – if she fits, she sits…

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