The shocking reveal of a returning villain is a trick that Doctor Who loves to pull – though if we’re being honest, it’s rarely much of a shock. In the old days, such episodes would more than likely be called something like ‘Umbrage of the Daleks’, which slightly undercut the dramatic entrance of a Dalek at the end of part one. In the new series, these returns are more likely to be spoiled by leaked set photos or other metatextual knowledge that comes from having an engaged and very online fandom – or simply from the creators building hype.
So considering what a hoary old device it is, it’s fun to actually be surprised by it for a change. Granted, it may simply be that I’m not online enough to have seen the relevant tease or fan theory, but from that position of blissful ignorance, the reveal that we were dealing with the mysterious entity from “Midnight” was very effective.
It’s a pretty bold choice, as “Midnight” – while it has its detractors – is widely recognised as a top-tier episode from Russell T Davies’ previous tenure. A last-minute addition to David Tennant’s final season, written in an intense rush of inspiration when a previous script failed to cohere, it saw the Tenth Doctor visiting the titular Midnight, an inhospitable but stunningly beautiful planet covered in diamonds. While traversing the planet’s lethal terrain in a shuttle bus, the Doctor and a group of human tourists encountered a vicious alien presence that remained unseen – we simply heard it scraping on the outside of the shuttle, then witnessed it possess another passenger through a creepily effective tic of repeated language.
It was an intense episode, a single location pressure cooker with one of the bleakest endings in the show’s history, which wasn’t uncontroversial. Those who like Doctor Who to be a hopeful, humanistic show would find little comfort in “Midnight”, an episode where Davies consciously decided to explore the worst of humanity: a group of people who refused to co-operate with the Doctor and would willingly turn on any of their number to save their own skin.
Making a sequel to such a singular episode is a risky decision, in more ways than one. For starters, it’s a stone-cold classic, so any follow up has a high bar to clear. But part of the chilling power of “Midnight” is that it’s not really an episode you can repeat – obviously you can do variations on the basic setup of ‘Doctor and a group of rando humans encounter a scary monster’, but the specificity of the character dynamics, the bleak tone and the overall message that sometimes people are just horrible… that’s not necessarily something you can do effectively again, at least not while remaining Doctor Who.
To Davies’ credit – and that of co-writer Sharma Angel Walfall – that’s not what “The Well” is doing. It’s certainly dark, creepy and brutal. The entity remains largely unseen, as before, apart from some unsettling suggestions of something, but we don’t learn much more about it – there are just enough new details to make the episode feel worthwhile, but the creature’s particular mystique isn’t spoiled. We’re no clearer about its origins, its motivations or even what kind of lifeform it is, with any new information raising as many questions as answers. All the right choices, in horror terms, but still relatively familiar.
