The Well

Written by Russell T Davies & Sharma Angel-Walfall

“My old friend – you have waited 400,000 years. But who are you?” 

Far in the future, on a tough, brutal planet, a devastated mining colony has only one survivor. To discover the truth, the Doctor and Belinda must face absolute terror.

Plot

Still struggling to get back to Earth on May 24th, 2025, the Doctor lands the TARDIS 500,000 years in the future. Dressing in futuristic spacesuits, the Doctor and Belinda step out onto a Lombardic dropship in orbit – and find themselves in the middle of a paradrop, along with a platoon of troopers!

They land safely on the planet below – a desolate rock, flooded with radiation, known only as 6-7-6-7. The Doctor learns the troopers are here to investigate Colony Base 15, a Lombardic mining colony they have lost contact with. With five hours to spare before the dropship returns with the TARDIS, the Doctor and Belinda join the platoon. Inside the base, they discover the bodies of nearly every inhabitant – some have been shot, while others have broken bones. Belinda notices that curiously, every mirror on the base has been smashed. In the central hall, the group discovers Aliss Fenly – the base’s cook and last remaining survivor.

Terrified and injured, Aliss claims that everyone in the base went mad and that she had no choice but to kill her friend. Aliss is deaf, and the Doctor communicates with her through both sign language and live speech-to-text built into their uniforms. As the Doctor and the platoon’s commander Shaya leave to investigate the control room, Belinda tends to Aliss’ injury but is distracted by something behind her – something she cannot see.

The Doctor and Belinda both ask their new Lombardic acquaintances about Earth and humanity but, disturbingly, no-one has any clue what they’re referring to. At the mine’s control centre, next to a large, deep well, the Doctor and Shaya discover security footage of the inhabitants, running and screaming that something had come out of the well. Shaya informs the Doctor that the base was for mining diamonds, as the planet was made of them under the light of an X-tonic star. Filled with dread, the Doctor realises that 6-7-6-7 is actually the planet Midnight – 400,000 years in the future of his last haunting visit.

As Belinda and the troopers grow paranoid about something lurking behind Aliss, they begin to surround her but any time someone steps directly behind her, they are violently thrown to their deaths. The Doctor returns to the room and, approaching Aliss, addresses the “thing” behind her. As Aliss explains that killing anyone under its influence causes the creature to be “passed on” to the attacker, the Doctor hears the entity whispering, explaining what protected Aliss from its influence: her inability to hear it. However, it remembers the Doctor – and, to his horror, it whispers his true name.

Determined to expose the entity, the Doctor uses mercury to create a reflection behind it, causing it to throw Aliss free. As the survivors evacuate, the creature pursues and causes a kinetic wave that knocks everyone to the ground. Deducing that the entity has found a new host in Belinda, Shaya shoots her, intending to take the entity for herself – and flees back to the well. Desperate to keep the entity away from anyone else, Shaya jumps into the well and down into the planet’s depths, seemingly ending its threat once and for all.

As the Doctor and a recovering Belinda depart in the TARDIS, surviving trooper Mo debriefs her superior – who appears to resemble Mrs Flood – on the situation on the planet. Leaving 6-7-6-7 behind, Mo and her fellow trooper Val share in their relief – but Val can swear there is something behind Mo. 

Concept Art

Behind the Scenes

• The plot of The Well was not originally conceived as a sequel to Midnight. As co-writers Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall developed the script, the need for a mysterious unseen enemy presented itself, and Russell suggested the return of the Midnight Entity.
• Similarly, Rose Ayling-Ellis shared in Doctor Who Magazine that Aliss was not originally written as a deaf character, but the actor’s deafness was incorporated into the role.