‘Doctor Who’ Recap: There’s Something Evil in ‘The Well,’ Actually

Previously, on Doctor Who: Fifteen and Belinda went to the movies in the past, and met another god from the pantheon.

This week: A side-quest 500,000 years in the future brings some horror vibes to the mix. And I’ve got a theory… Brace yourself for yarn-walling and spoilers!

Fifteen’s satnav doodah needs some more reference points to try to get back to May 24th, which seems like a mission doomed to fail because no one’s heard of Earth or the human race in the future. Bodes well. Their current spot is a barren planet where a squadron of starship troopers are on a mission to investigate a potential incident at a mining colony. 35 colonists have gone radio-silent, and when the team enter the base, they discover that everyone has apparently gone bonkers and killed each other. A single survivor, Aliss, is desperate to go home, but hang on a minute, what’s that behind her?

This is a jump-scare-tastic episode that ramps up the tension, which makes sense as it’s a follow-up to the brilliantly low-budget horror episode ‘Midnight’, with Ten and Donna. Both stories feature this same mysterious, chillingly evil entity that latches on to people, toys with them, and makes them turn on each other in a confined space, because it can. In ‘Midnight’, the entity is bundled out of the vehicle by the stewardess and presumed dead. Maybe this is a descendant, or maybe it’s the same evil, juiced up even more by thousands of years of radiation.

This entity hides behind its host and kills anyone who goes behind them. If you kill the host, it goes behind you. It’s such a simple premise and you can imagine this turning into a playground game — get stuck behind whoever is ‘it’ and you’re out. The entity peeks out at people occasionally but seems to have a horror of being seen; it’s smashed up all the mirrors in the base. (You’d think this would just create lots of teeny tiny mirrors and a lot of bad luck…)

A lot of the troopers fall because they don’t buy Belinda’s theory about the entity, but once Fifteen realises which planet they are on, he’s fully horrified. He’s not just ready to get the hell out of there, he wants to nuke the planet from high orbit. That’s how blooming scary this thing is.

But this is Doctor Who, so they don’t leave poor Aliss behind. Fifteen forces the entity to take a long hard look at itself in a mercury leak. By making a reflective surface behind it, they put the entity behind itself which should therefore kill it. Or at least scare the jeepers out of it. Something dramatic happens that propels Aliss forward, so they all leg it and don’t stop to check the small print. The first half of the survivors gets out of the airlock, but the entity appears to have recovered and attached to Belinda. Boss Lady Trooper shoots Belinda to take on the Dark Passenger herself, and then throws herself (and presumably it) in the well. Belinda is patched up and they escape. But what’s that? Back on the ship, there’s a glimpse of something creepy… Maybe there were multiple entities all along, or the main one tricked them into thinking it was behind Belinda and it was behind Mo who took it with her to the main ship. However, when troopers 7 and 9 and Aliss escaped in the airlock, the sensor showed four people, so maybe there are two entities out there now, playing Evil Murder Peekaboo across the stars…

Guess who’s the boss of all the troopers, and asking questions about Fifteen’s satnav doodah? Oh yes, that’s Mrs Flood.

Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff: The Pattern Emerges…

RTD is playing with us and it’s time to dive in to theory time. I’ve a feeling we’re not just doing callbacks anymore. What if the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff is actually The Point after all?

Consider the following:

-The Doctor’s second companion (of their era) is a medical professional.
-The Doctor takes his companion on their first trip to the future, and we hear ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears. There’s no Earth anymore, but Britney endures. Huzzah!
-It’s episode three and the Doctor’s companion nearly dies!
-There’s something horrifying behind you that you can’t see.
-There’s a mysterious woman with a water-themed name, who knows the future and is quite mischievous about that.
-There’s a mysterious woman of a certain age making a cameo appearance every week.

All of these are true of ‘The Well’ but also link back to Martha, Nine and Rose, Ruby, Donna, River and the army of Susans. The visit to the planet formerly known as Midnight this week underlines that we are seeing a repeating pattern. We had a whisper of Ten’s soundtrack this week, after a nod to Eleven’s in last week’s episode, plus we get a quick cameo flashback to Ten’s last visit. Apologies for getting all Battlestar Galactica on you, but all this has happened before and will happen again.

What does this all mean? No idea. It’s not a single time loop though we’ve had that before as well! It’s more of a glitch in the matrix … Maybe we’re dealing with the god of deja vu, or of Easter Eggs, or of epic trolling. But keep your beady eyes out for more of these shenanigans, because darn it, RTD is up to something, and I will sniff it out.

Next week: Oh look, Ruby’s back! INTERESTING, HMMM?