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Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: doctor who
Doctor Who S02E03: The Well Returns to Creepy Old-School Sci-Fi Horror
Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 3: "The Well" returns to classic Sci-Fi horror with clear homages to genre movies such as Alien that inspired it.
The third episode of this season's Doctor Who, "The Well" continues this season's stronger and more confident streak of stories with a return to gothic Science Fiction Horror that the series was best known for during its peak period in the 1970s that Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat continues during the 2005 modern era whenever they could. Creepy time!
Starting right after last week's episode, The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) are still trying to use his device to hook and slingshot the TARDIS back to May 24th, 2025, never stopping to ask why they can't get there. They end up in a far-flung future on a military spaceship. While trying to blend in, they end up with a squad of soldiers investigating a mining colony where everyone is dead except for one survivor (Rose Ayling-Ellis). Paranoia grows as the soldiers become increasingly trigger-happy, and The Doctor and Belinda have to prove she's innocent before they kill her. What emerges is a monster that nobody can see that turns out to be one that The Doctor had encountered before and couldn't defeat.
"The Well" is an exercise in psychological horror where the monster is virtually unseen. The unknown is frequently more frightening than an outright "grrr-argh" monster. "The Well" is an examination of discrimination, prejudice, paranoia, distrust, and, ultimately, sacrifice. Many of the common Doctor Who tropes of old are here: distrusting, rigid and trigger-happy military officers, The Doctor as the voice of reason having to talk everyone from firing their guns at the drop of a hat, members of the party getting picked off one by one as all hell breaks loose, but updated to including more advanced technology and a better budget and FX, of course. Belinda continues to establish herself as one of the best heroic companions, holding her own as a competent, professional adult on par with The Doctor, her nurse training kicking in to keep everyone calm for as long as possible.
This type of Doctor Who made the show a classic to its longest-running fans who grew up terrified by the scary episodes in its 1970s gothic horror era. Those stories followed the structure of slasher films before they came along, with a Science Fiction twist. "The Well" recalls stories from the 1970s like "The Ark in Space" and "Horror of Fang Rock," along with the classic Agatha Christie story "And Then There Were None," which set the template for the slasher movie. Specifically, the episode is heavily influenced by the 1965 Mario Bava space horror film Planet of the Vampires. The sleek, skintight space suits in the episode are a direct homage to those in that film, which directly influenced the first Alien film directed by Ridley Scott. The episode plays the horror and suspense completely straight, turns out to be a sequel to one of Davies' own revival era episodes that fans have already figured out, and has a poignancy about it every time the Doctor witnesses a high body count. This episode is a slick horror episode that wants to show that Doctor Who can still do that.
Doctor Who is streaming on Disney+.
Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 3: "The Well"
8/10
The third episode of the second season of "Doctor Who" is a return to gothic science fiction horror in space that the series is best known for during its classic era and even the modern period, a straight-up unironic tale of paranoia and suspense on an alien outpost that pays homage to the 1965 Mario Bava film "Planet of the Vampires", which was a direct influence on the first "Alien" film.
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