Doctor Who Season 2 episode 3 review: hello to an old enemy

Isn’t it exciting when Doctor Who pulls an old foe out of the vault? This time around, the writers have gone way back into the archives and pulled out a goodie: hello, the creepy invisible monster from Midnight. Yes, the episode where they all end up repeating each others’ words. This time, it’s throwing people at walls.

So that’s fun, but above all, this is a good old-fashioned Who adventure set on a planet far, far away. Along with the Doctor and Belinda (who are still trying to get back to Earth, with no success – again, how about just popping back in time a day or so?), we rock up on a spaceship with a crew of stone-faced mercenaries. They’re on a mission to an unnamed, unloved planet floating somewhere on the edge of space, where a mercury mining base has gone very quiet on the comms.



And wouldn’t you know it, when the team enters, it’s very quickly apparent that the answer might be because they’re all dead. Surprise! To be honest, at this point, the show doubles as a warning for drilling deep holes into forbidding bits of space rock. Anybody remember The Satan Pit? Or The Waters of Mars? In true Who fashion, these miners have apparently dug up something very bad indeed, and the only person left is Aliss (Rose Ayling-Ellis), a deaf woman whose survival is, naturally, more suspicious than it first appears.

The first act is brilliantly creepy. The Doctor waves his psychic paper around; Belinda spots a mysterious, shadowy figure lurking behind Aliss; jump scares are deployed effectively. Soldiers wave their guns about at thin air, and the claustrophobic atmosphere is ramped up to 11.

At this point, the Midnight hints become clear. We’re told the planet used to be full of diamonds, and then we’re treated to a flashback of David Tennant’s face, frozen in horror. It was enough for me to let out a little squeal – as twists go, it’s a fun one, and from there.

.. um, it doesn’t quite deliver on the premise.

The problem is that the baddie in Midnight – which is back, and has attached itself to Aliss like a malevolent spirit – was effective because it was invisible and unknowable. Really, it was unbeatable, too: not to dip too deep into Who lore, but the tourists on board the broken space shuttle only survived because one brave soul sacrificed themselves to cast the monster out into the void of space. The script tries its best to maintain that mystique, and partially succeeds.

To be honest, the action sags here. The monster seems to have evolved: it’s now playing an odd game where anybody who stands behind Aliss is thrown dramatically through the air and killed (to be honest, the throwing itself doesn’t look that lethal, but that’s a minor quibble). But of course, that means that said monster can also be defeated by its own rules.

In the episode, that means something to do with reflections, mercury, and a haphazard word salad from the Doctor that doesn’t really make much logical sense but sure sounds impressive when energetically given life by Gatwa. He and Sethu act their socks off, as per usual, and we get some nice ominous hints about the fate of the Earth (mostly in the form of the space crew going, “Humans? What are those?”). A final-act appearance from Anita Dobson (as Mrs Flood, of course) and a sinister ending redeem The Well somewhat, but it’s hard not to feel like this should have been a two parter.

Think of all the tension that we could have enjoyed then: a worthy follow-up to the oppressive misery of Midnight. Streaming now on BBC and iPlayer.