Doctor Who: Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-It Clue Feeds Theory About the Monster in “The Well”

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

The first time the Doctor survived the malignant entity on Planet Midnight, he wasn’t able to truthfully tell Donna Noble what it was, or whether it was still alive. Hundreds of centuries later, after his second encounter with the alien force in new episode “The Well”, the Doctor told Belinda categorically that it had gone and that they were safe.

Yes, the Doctor lies, but perhaps here, he simply wasn’t paying enough attention to know that he was wrong. One tiny, very-easy-to-miss detail in “The Well” reveals a secret about the “Midnight” monster (listed as “It Has No Name” as played by Who creature actor Paul Kasey on IMDb), namely: there’s more than one of them.

We know that the creature attaches itself parasitically to a host, and when that host is killed, it jumps to the killer. That’s how colony base cook Aliss (Rose Ayling-Ellis) ended up with the entity permanently behind her back, after she murdered her infected best friend in self-defence. The Doctor’s mercury-reflection plan got the monster off Aliss’ back without killing her, after which point we understood that it chased the gang and attached itself to Belinda, who could hear its malevolent whispers at her ear.

Troop leader Shayla (Caoilfhionn Dunne) heroically volunteered to ‘kill’ Belinda with a tricky shot through the heart that, if carried out with enough precision, would prove non-fatal, and thereby attract the creature to attach itself to her. The plan worked and Shayla sacrificed herself by jumping with the monster into the miles-deep mine shaft, killing them both. Job done?

Partially. Just before Belinda’s infection was discovered, a tiny detail suggests that one of the creatures had already escaped. Look at the lift panel when Aliss and Troopers Seven and Nine are inside ready to be transported to safety. Shayla ordered two troopers to accompany Aliss, meaning there are only three people in the lift, but the panel counts four.

Is one of those Troopers infected with an invisible creature that the lift weight system is able to detect? (Aliss can’t be infected because the Troopers are standing directly behind her, which would make them vulnerable to attack.) Are they unable to hear its whispers because of their hi-tech space helmets, just as Aliss being deaf made her unable to hear it on the colony base?

In the episode’s closing scene, after Trooper Mo (Bethany Antonia) has been debriefed by Mrs Flood disguised as a space mining corp leader, Mo’s colleague appears to see a flash of something indistinguishable behind her back, just like Belinda saw behind Aliss. That suggests at least one creature left Planet 6-7-6-7 after Shayla’s sacrifice. If one already went up in the lift piggybacking on a Trooper, then there could already be two out there.

Unless, you know, the lift panel reading is just a production error caused by brain freeze due to the extreme cold of the episode’s Welsh quarry night shoot, but surely that would have been fixed in post by now? If there was a creature in that lift, let’s hope that Aliss really did get home safely to her daughter…

Doctor Who continues with “Lucky Day” on Saturday May 3 on BBC One and iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ around the world.

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