Doctor Who (2023– ) episode three recap

Photo courtesy of Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons

Doctor Who (2023- ) reminds fans it is not afraid to get spooky in its latest episode, “The Well.”

*Spoilers ahead*

Doctor Who (2023– ) started a brand new season on Saturday, Apr. 12, with a confirmed run of eight weekly episodes this year. Returning for his second season as the Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa is paired with a new character, Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu. After space robots kidnapped Belinda in the season premiere, the Doctor has been on an unsuccessful quest to return her home to Earth, the day she left, May 24, 2025.

Episode three, “The Well,” co-written by Russell T. Davies (RTD) and Sharma Angel-Walfall, aired this past Sunday. The Doctor, unable to land Belinda on the day she left, uses a device to triangulate a signal yet can’t seem to calibrate the device properly. In last week’s episode, “Lux,” the pair landed in 1950s Miami, Florida.

In this episode, the Doctor stops to find a signal 500,000 years in the future on a spaceship. There are no gaps between episodes so far, meaning poor Belinda still has not slept at all since the premiere— probably the worst 36 hours of this woman’s life. Upon entering the spaceship, the pair is instructed to put on space helmets. Shortly after, they are pushed out of the ship onto an unfamiliar planet.

 When it becomes clear that they will be stuck on the planet for a few hours, the Doctor and Belinda infiltrate the squadron of soldiers, who landed with them on the radiation-filled planet to investigate a mining operation that has gone silent in the past few weeks.

Belinda voices what the viewer is wondering: the mining operation may have encountered a less-than-friendly life form underground. It is quickly established, however, that nothing could live on this planet due to the type of radiation covering it. The group then stumbles upon the dead bodies of most of the mining crew and their trashed living spaces. Some of the miners have been shot, while others have broken necks.

Only one crew member is left alive: Aliss Fenly (played by Rose Ayling-Ellis). Aliss is deaf, communicating with the troopers using British Sign Language (BSL). While the troopers have gadgets allowing them to project subtitles for their speech, the Doctor also communicates with Aliss using BSL. Gatwa learned a lot of BSL for this episode, raving about the experience in behind-the-scenes content.

With the assistance of Aliss, the troopers learn that the crew is all dead because they “went crazy.” Many of them killed each other, and all of the mirrors were smashed. But when Belinda spots something moving behind Aliss, it becomes clear that some sort of invisible monster is stalking the mining base. The last security logs show base workers screaming that something “came out of the well,” and they “don’t know how to stop it.”

Doctor Who is known for its spookier stories, and this episode sets its tone as one of that genre before the halfway mark. As the Doctor starts to talk through the facts with the lead troopers, they explain to him that the radiation on the planet came from its former sun— an Extonic star —and that the miners were there because all of the carbon (or diamonds) had been stripped from the surface years ago. It is then that the Doctor discovers he has been here before; they are standing on the planet formerly known as Midnight.

“Midnight,” a 2008 episode written by RTD, is one of the most terrifying episodes of the modern show. It stars David Tennant as the Doctor, who takes a sightseeing train tour on the once beautiful planet Midnight. When the train breaks down, mysterious things begin to happen at the hands of an invisible creature, leading to mass hysteria among passengers. It is an amazing episode and easy to watch out of context.

While the Doctor makes these discoveries, another soldier walks a full circle around Aliss, disappearing behind her back. Soon after, the soldier is yanked into the air by an invisible force and thrown to the ground, an action that effectively kills her.

Belinda screams for the soldiers not to go directly behind Aliss, as it is clear the invisible creature, the one that “came out of the well,” will kill anyone directly behind Aliss’s back. One of the troopers suggests killing Aliss, but she tells him that if he kills her, it will go behind him next.

I will not spoil the rest of the new episode, but while Doctor and Belinda (obviously) survive, they are still a little spooked. Maybe I am just a sucker for the spookier episodes of the show, but I liked this episode a lot. “Midnight” is one of the best stand-alone episodes, an overall fan-favorite, and this was an unexpected yet riveting sequel.

In terms of season plots and theories, I found it interesting that although the Doctor tells Belinda that humans still exist in this century and people should recognize the name Earth, none of the troopers have ever heard of Earth or humans. Also, this episode included the return of my number one enemy: Mrs. Flood. This woman haunts my nightmares; what is her deal? Instead of posing as a neighbor, or random old lady, she is an official reported to by the remaining squadron at the end of the episode, after the Doctor left.

The preview for the next episode looks exciting. The return of Millie Gibson as Ruby is clear, and from the details, it seems like it may be a “Doctor-light” episode— or an episode more focused on characters other than the titular —which will be interesting!