Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Christopher Chung, Annabel Brook, Luke Rhodri, Bethany Antonia, Gaz Choudhry, Gary Pillai, Franki Lipman, Paul Kasey, Jermaine Dominique, Anita Dobson, Amy Tyger, Meg Abernethy-Hope, Beyagy Demba, Umit Gozuacik.
There are episodes of Doctor Who that rank so highly that they will not be forgotten, and they all have one major thread in common, that of the near unseen ubiquitous horror that waits just out of sight or that possesses the power to control from within; all other villains of the tales from the blue box are to be feared, but they, these unseen beings that wonderfully spread dread in their wake, they are the truth of terror given the confidence of anxiety.
The 2025 offering of The Well will arguably join these chapters of Doctor Who folklore, an episode that harks back to one of the darkest, most mysterious incidents to have dogged the 10th Doctor, one that added to the overall apprehension of the last days of his incarnation, that of Midnight.
That one episode alone showed just how much can be achieved with the unseen threat, how it can disconnect the senses, and the pay off 400,000 years in the future from that event is one that will still find a creature of such disturbing strength and viciousness, and one ready to kill anyone who gets caught in its wake.
The Well utilises everything that makes the series in the modern age a spectacle of angst, from the music so subtly weaved into the narrative, from the look of fear that passes on the cast’s face, and that one person to whom the watcher feels the greatest empathy for, and in this particular journey that comes in the form of the superb actor Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss Fenly.
It is in the vulnerability of the character and the actor, one to whom one of the major senses has been denied, that empathy is drawn like a sword in the heat of battle, exactly where she has been placed as all those around her lost their minds and their lives as the creature hunted them down and used them as sport, a game, a diversion in the darkness. For this, and the continuing developing relationship between Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Varada Sethu’s Belinda, the second series of the re-energised outing is one that already is spurred on by purpose.
Every Doctor should have the opportunity to fight Daleks it is said, but they should also have the occasion in which their emotions are pushed to breaking point, to not only give a memorable speech which can resonate with the viewer, but also have them overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown. In The Well, Russell T. Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall have found that moment with a kind of brutality that rocks the senses and causes the watcher to experience the unravelling of understanding with pleasure.
A dramatic tale of the unseen threat, The Well is science fiction drama at its best.
Ian D. Hall