“Doctor Who” Team On That Surprise Sequel

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR “DOCTOR WHO” SEASON 2, EPISODE 3 – “THE WELL”

While last week’s “Lux” episode had a slightly surprising callback to prior episodes of Ncuti Gatwa’s run in “Doctor Who,” this weekend’s “The Well” dropped a far bigger surprise by revealing itself to be an unexpected direct sequel to one of the show’s finest hours.

“The Well” has turned out to be a follow-up to 2008’s fourth season episode “Midnight”. That Tennant-era bottle episode often ranks towards the very top on many lists for the best modern-era “Doctor Who” episodes.

Taking place almost entirely within the cabin of a transport, it is an exercise in psychological horror using only sound and speech to portray an unseen, malevolent entity able to latch onto people and manipulate others – in the process bringing out the worst in humanity.

“The Well” takes us back to the radiation-soaked diamond planet, albeit some 400,000 years later and going by another name, as a team of commandos finds a liquid mercury mining colony having seemingly slaughtered each other. The only person left is a deaf cook (Rose Ayling-Ellis) who is seemingly innocent, yet people keep seeing something behind her – a shape of some kind that hides when spotted and kills when directly seen.

Showrunner Russell T. Davies had teased the new season would boast an unexpected sequel, fans suggesting it could be a “Midnight” follow-up after the episodic teaser for the episode included a clock striking midnight. In the new ‘Making Of’ episode video, Davies spoke about his choice to do a follow-up:

“It’s the sequel no one ever expected, and it’s the kind of episode you should never do a sequel to. So…that’s where we went, frankly, right to that. The elements kind of said to me, like, it’s a mining planet and it’s deserted and it’s deadly and it’s poisonous and there’s something hidden, people have disappeared.

All those scary things are in place. So that all just kind of…in the end, just kind of demanded… It said, actually, don’t try to pretend this is something else. This is the same planet.”

The result appears to be the most well-received episode of the season so far, with reaction praising the hour’s sustained creepiness and tension. While a few reviews say it pales in comparison to its predecessor, there are plenty of compliments from even the most stern ones about the amount of restraint here with regards to the creature.

Visual reveals are the barest of fleeting glimpses – shadows, shapes in darkness, etc. – the nature of its appearance and intent decidedly unclear and deliberately ambiguous even as it is a more physical beast this time out. The episode itself is now up on Disney+ everywhere.

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