Doctor Who (2025): The Well – A Fantastic Return To Tight, Taut Horror

This new Disney+ era of the show has had a less unanimously positive reception than Russell T Davies was perhaps hoping for, but fans have always seemed really happy whenever this era delves into horror. The eerie and freakish Wild Blue Yonder, the most purely horror-focused episode until this one, was many people’s favourite of the three 60th specials as it showed that even with the increased budget, the show can still deliver the goods that get kids hiding behind the sofa. 

However, the horror has definitely felt more in-your-face and bombastic. Whether it was the constant weird visuals in The Giggle, Neil Patrick-Harris and Jinkx Monsoon hamming it up to high heaven, or the deafening roar of Sutekh at the end of The Legend of Ruby Sunday, the era hasn’t really explored the more claustrophobic elements of the horror genre enough.

The Well is perhaps an attempt to rectify this. The budget is still on display, and the setting isn’t exactly a tight squeeze, but the brilliant direction of Amanda Brotchie gives the episode a tightness and a tautness that’s been somewhat lacking in recent years, and the script deals more in the terrifying unseen brand of horror to great effect. This has indeed received a mostly glowing response from both fans and critics, so it’s clear that this style of episode still has legs providing it’s done right.

I was a little disconcerted with the opening scene, I must admit – The Doctor and Belinda get caught up in the mission of a group of troopers who are investigating the whereabouts of a mining colony, of whom there’s been no contact from. I do like each episode so far has led right into the next, as the first time we see the Doctor and Belinda here they’re still dressed in the same 1950s attire they were last week, and the Doctor thinks the ‘vindicator’ will work this time. However it is a bit generic and the tone feels wrong given the horror later on. 

They repeat the changing of costumes shot from both Lux and The Devil’s Chord, and they also conveniently manage to dress in the exact same attire that the troops are wearing. There’s also a completely random needle-drop of Britney Spears’s Toxic in this sequence too – ignoring the fact that Russell already used this song to similar effect in The End of The World, it also doesn’t really go with the sequence. Roll Over Beethoven did last week because the costumes were 1950s themed, whereas this week it just seemed like Russell wanted a song and couldn’t think of anything else. 

Still, it’s keeping up the impressive visual flair of the era, and the shot of the Doctor and Belinda dropping out of the spaceship and skydiving is a great hook to lead into the titles. And once they’re done, this really gets going.

The script here was a joint effort between Davies and a Whoniverse newcomer, Sharma Angel-Walfall. I’m not familiar with any of her other work but she strikes me as a writer with a great grasp of dialogue and how to build tension. Much of the first half is comprised of exchanges between the Doctor and Belinda and this no-nonsense crew of soldiers, who aren’t exactly three-dimensional characters but they already felt more real in ten minutes than many stock characters feel after an entire episode. The script really gives Gatwa and Sethu a chance to act, and both of them step up to the plate. I’ve loved Ncuti since he got the role, but this might be his best performance so far.

We’ll get onto the comparisons to Midnight later, but even before the reveal this episode instantly reminded me of it due to the idea of an unknown unseen entity gradually driving everyone to turn on each other. The troops find out that the entity drove all of the colonists to go insane and kill each other, which the entity in Midnight never got a chance to do, so instantly the threat feels even more hard-hitting – and Midnight is one of the scariest episodes I can think of so that’s high praise.

The paranoid suspicions start as soon as the Doctor, Belinda and this team of troops meet Aliss, the caterer for this colony and the only survivor. Aliss is played by Rose Ayling-Ellis, who I only know as the winner of Strictly a few years back (since I refuse to watch EastEnders and you can’t make me), so I wasn’t aware of how capable an actress she was. 

This is yet another fantastic guest star performance in an era that’s given us a fair few of them, but this character is far more normal and empathetic than the more exuberant standouts of Miriam Margoyles, Jonathan Groff, Alan Cumming, etc. In just a few short scenes, we see that Aliss is extremely distressed and confused as to the situation, she desperately wants to be back with her daughter, and she seemingly doesn’t see her self-worth. It’s some of the simplest but strongest character work we’ve had for a character like this in quite a while.

The build in tension here is really remarkable. We don’t really have a reason to doubt Aliss but at the same time we can tell there’s something a bit off, and that’s revealed as our characters slowly start to have flashes of a terrifying presence directly behind her. At first Belinda thinks she’s just imagining it, then the other troops begin to see it and I started getting really on-edge. I cared enough about Aliss to not want the troops to kill her, yet the show had successfully planted a seed of doubt in my head that made me wonder if shooting Aliss would actually make the situation better and kill the thing behind her.

And we soon find out what that thing actually is. In a reveal that was heavily rumoured but still a terrifying surprise, we find out that 400,000 years in the past, this planet used to be Midnight, the same planet that the Doctor encountered a terrifying unseen presence on a passenger plane in the David Tennant episode of the same name. That episode has gone on to be seen as one of the strongest of the revival, so deciding to make a sequel to it is a ballsy move. 

Midnight was lightning-in-a-bottle as to how it came together: written last-minute to replace a Tom McRae episode that had fell through, it was a budget-saver to accommodate the ambitious series finale. 

It seems that The Well came together in a similar way, as the idea of it being a Midnight sequel came at the eleventh hour after an original idea about Nigerian spirits was revealed to be unworkable. The increased budget here had some people worried that Russell was going to try and do too much, and take away the mystique of the Midnight entity. Luckily, we needn’t have worried as while Russell has expanded on its lore a bit here, we still barely get a visual glimpse of it, and it remains mysterious. 

While I don’t think this episode takes anything away from Midnight as an episode, I am moved to wonder if The Well really needed to be a follow-up to it when the entity’s gimmick is completely different from last time. Instead of imitation and possession like last week, this time it hides directly behind its host and sends anyone who gets in its path flying. It’s still a scary conceit but it doesn’t feel as psychological as last time. You imagine what they could have done with that conceit this time – with Rose Ayling-Ellis’s character being deaf, the entity could’ve been imitating her and she wouldn’t have been able to hear. That would have been really disturbing. As it stands, it’s still a scary enemy but I’m not completely sold on why it had to be the same entity as the one in Midnight. As other fans have noted, if the rules of the beast can change between episodes, there’s no reason why the Not-Things in Wild Blue Yonder couldn’t have been the entity. If anything it makes more sense there, as they were imitating the Doctor and Donna visually as well as audibly – that would add to its lore. 

Still, even though the actions of the entity may have changed, it’s still an absolutely terrifying presence, and the reveal that it actually escaped and survived again just makes it all the more scary. 

Lastly, I want to mention how this episode contributes to the series arc. Aside from the main plot, the most interesting thing here is that neither Aliss nor the troops have ever heard of Earth or humanity. Sometimes the inclusion of arc development into an otherwise standalone episode can feel intrusive to the main story – admit it, you remember the crack in time and Rory’s death in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood before you remember anything else about it – but here these small moments didn’t feel like they were impeding on anything. 

Even the appearance from Mrs Flood at the end didn’t overshadow the preceding 45 minutes, which I think is all the proof you need that The Well stands on its own as a really impressive and exciting bit of pulp sci-fi horror. The Midnight connection might not have been fully needed but it’s nice to see a sequel episode that expands on the lore while keeping the mystery and paranoia that worked so brilliantly the first time round, and also working really well on its own. It seems to have gone down a storm, as critics label it the best episode of the era so far, and while I’m dubious to give it that honour just yet, it certainly has the potential to live on as a classic. 

Alex’s Archive – Doctor Who (2025) The Well