Doctor Who Is NEW!: The Well

Welcome to Doctor Who Is NEW! where I post about the latest new episode of Doctor Who.

This week finds the Doctor and Belinda in the future and on an alien world.

There may be spoilers, honey! 

The Well

by Russell T Davies and Sharma Walfall

It's 500,000 years into the future.

We've got ourselves a barn burner of an episode following classic Doctor Who tropes: the base under seige and a dwindling number of Space Marines in the face of an implacable threat.  

The mission is to investigate a mining operation on a lifeless world known as "6767".  The entire mining team is dead except for one lone survivor, Aliss, a frightened hearing impaired woman who just wants to go home. 

Aliss says the crew killed each other in a frenzy of fear and paranoia. Aliss admits she killed one herself, a crew mate and friend who was about to attack and kill her. Aliss shot her first and now she is alone.

But maybe she is not so alone?

There is something else there, something on the periphery of your awareness, perceived only as a fleeting glimpse.  

The Doctor gets really scared when he learns that this planet, before the miners stripped away all the diamonds, used to be called... Midnight.   

Uh oh.

"Midnight" from 2008 is considered one of Russell Davie's strongest and most powerful episodes.  The 10th Doctor (David Tennant) is trapped on a tour bus, isolated from help as an alien entity takes over one of the passengers and proceeds to manipulate the group into raging fear and paranoia and the Doctor barely escapes with his life.

"The Well" may not be quite as strong an episode as "Midnight" but it does a damn fine job of racheting up the tension as the unseen entity decimates the space marines and dear sweet Aliss just gets more scared.  

A tip of the hat to Rose Ayling-Ellis,  a deaf actress who portrays Aliss. Yes, she appears to be what she says, an ordinary woman frightened for her safety and the fear she may never see her family again. But since there's... something lurking behind her we can't quite see, we're not quite sure how much we can trust Aliss.  To interact with the entity means Aliss must be in the center of the shot and Rose more than holds her own.   

"The Well" resolves the central conflict with the Midnight entity very well with an action filled finale as the fear quotient keeps rising higher and higher. 

But... (sigh!) evil is defeated.

Or is it...?

Was if there was more than one entity, one that escaped with the last of the surviving space marines?

Side note relating to the ongoing sub plot of getting Belinda back home.  The Doctor assures Belinda that in the future, Earth reaches for the stars and humans are all over outer space.

So imagine Belinda's alarm when the space marines tell her they've never heard of the words "Earth" or "human".   

Uh oh! 

We're back next week for the return of Ruby Sunday.