‘Doctor Who’ Season 2 Episode 3 Review: The Doctor’s Greatest Fear Returns

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 3, “The Well.”

We return again for another episode of Doctor Who, and it’s one that must be watched before browsing social media, as you won’t want this episode ruined for you. There had been rumours circulating for the last few weeks surrounding the possibility of a sequel to “Midnight,” an episode that was released in Series 4 of Doctor Who with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). This left a lot of fans worried that an episode which many consider a masterpiece was going to quickly get ruined by Russell T Davies bringing back an entity that should honestly just be left alone. But now that the episode has aired on BBC iPlayer and Disney+, can we really call it a mistake to develop this sequel episode, or was it a blessing in disguise?

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) venture 500,000 years into the future to recalibrate the Vindicator in hopes of getting Belinda back home to Earth. They find themselves on the planet 6-7-6-7, separated on their TARDIS and trapped with an entity from the Doctor’s past.

‘Doctor Who’s Overarching Mystery Is Making Headway

The Doctor’s number one priority is getting Belinda home, and he’s still working hard at this task. The season hasn’t forgotten that this is the main goal and continues to move this storyline swiftly, with audiences finally starting to get a minuscule idea of what’s actually going on with Earth. Doctor Who Season 2 is already a huge improvement from the last season, where we got little indication of where Ruby’s mother storyline was heading until the finale — which dropped all the disappointing reveals on audiences and expected us to simply accept them without question. Thankfully, the writing has found its groove this season and continues to provide weekly updates on the Doctor and Belinda’s treacherous journey back home.

At the end of “The Robot Revolution,” when the TARDIS dematerialized, we got a glimpse of various landmarks from Earth, such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and more. This gave an idea of what may have happened to Earth, but didn’t paint a clear picture, leaving the audience with a mystery to be solved. When the Doctor and Belinda make attempts at bringing up humans and Earth to the Platoon, they’re met with responses that hint at Earth no longer existing. And not just the idea of the world having ended, but the idea that it possibly has been removed from history. Likely, we’re so far in the future that the possible destruction of Earth has just been forgotten by time, a terrifying thought for the Doctor and Belinda, especially, who now feels even further away from home than she ever has before.

‘Doctor Who’ Season 2 Heralds the Return of the Threatening NuWho Alien

This is a horrifying episode and feels like the setting for an Alien movie. As the Doctor and Belinda join the Platoon on their mission, we quickly find out that everyone on this station has been murdered — some people with all their bones broken, and others who have been shot. There isn’t much to put together what happened before they run into Aliss (Rose Ayling-Ellis), a deaf woman sitting in the middle of a room full of dead bodies.

“The Well” is the scariest episode we’ve gotten in Ncuti’s era, and writer Sharma Angel-Walfall imbues a deep measure of fear in the audience as well as the characters. The show has yet to feel this brutal since the 60th anniversary specials, and it’s great to see a sequel to “Midnight” hold its integrity even if it doesn’t reach the same heights.

As the episode’s second act begins, we get the eerie reveal that 6-7-6-7 is indeed the planet Midnight. There’s this grand build-up as the Doctor begins to connect all the clues, such as the footage from the CCTV he watches with Cassio (Christopher Chung) and Shaya Costallion (Caoilfhionn Dunne), the mention of Galvanic Radiation, the planet’s history of being a diamond mine and finally, the reveal of the planet’s former name being Midnight. All of the tension and suspense in this scene make the payoff for the actual reveal feel rewarding. This build-up paired with the flashback to “Midnight” stops it all from being just some gimmick to gain the fans’ attention; it feels earned and reminds audiences of the horrors that we’re about to face once more.

The Entity, which is credited as “It Has No Name,” stays a looming threat throughout the episode, and there are even some surprising jump scares that may catch you when you least expect it. It attaches itself to the back of a victim, killing whoever is behind it. If the host is killed, it reattaches itself to the killer. It’s a vicious cycle that causes a bloodbath unlike anything seen in Doctor Who (without the blood). The Doctor finds himself tearing up once more, but these tears feel earned. Not only is there an alien that he truly fears killing everyone around him, but it also speaks his real name that nobody else but River Song (Alex Kingston), the Master, and Clara (Jenna Coleman) know.

‘Doctor Who’ Has Been Telling Us the Identity of Mrs. Flood All Along

Once again, Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) makes an appearance before the episode closes. After the Doctor and Belinda narrowly escape the Entity — a moment that almost leads to Belinda’s death and Shaya’s noble sacrifice — Mo (Bethany Antonia) begins to debrief the mission and the mystery of the Doctor to her superior, who happens to be Mrs. Flood. In this episode, she seems to be intrigued by the Doctor’s vindicator, which leads us to believe that the vindicator has a much larger role in the story than just being a MacGuffin to get Belinda home.

It has always been clear that Mrs. Flood has an interest in the Doctor; she knows who he is and is aware of his TARDIS and almost everything to do with him. It’s safe to say that she’s likely to be someone from his past, and specifically a Time Lord. The only sensible guess is that she’s an incarnation of the Rani; this is a theory that has been brought up numerous times in the fandom, but it’s one that begins to hold more truth week after week. With the Rani having her own TARDIS that can still disguise itself as anything, it would make sense why she’s able to follow the Doctor through space and time. The questions we need answered, if there’s any truth to this, are why she can break the fourth wall, and why she knows about the Doctor’s future?

Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 3, “The Well,” is by far the scariest episode that Doctor Who has produced in the last few years. The second season continues to be a great improvement from the last, as it experiments with how stories are told. It’s haunting, heartbreaking, and unsettling. Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall do an excellent job creating a sequel to one of the most beloved episodes of Doctor Who. It may have an ending that can undo some of the emotional beats of the story, but that doesn’t change the creepy and horrific tone of the overall episode. Similar to “Lux,” this is another episode that will remain a highlight of Ncuti’s time as the Doctor.

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