Episode 3 of the second season of rebooted Doctor Who opens with the ongoing mystery of Earth being off limits to the TARDIS. This is the third episode where The Doctor cannot get Belinda (Varanda Sethu) back to Earth in 2025, and it will certainly not be the last.

This episode sees the duo land 500,000 years in the future, in a mining colony where a devastating incident has left only one survivor (played by Rose Ayling-Ellis). The episode jumps too quickly into the action, leaving you scrambling around trying to find your bearings. This might be how The Doctor and his companion feel, but the jump between the dialogue in the TARDIS and the action is too quick.

The Cast Keep Elevating Season 2’s Writing

You are thrown into the action, and by the time you’ve caught up, the episode is nearly over. As soon as Belinda and The Doctor land on this brutal planet, they are parachuting into a mine. There is a lack of context for far too long, so you’ll be forgiven for being confused.

Once you catch up, you quickly meet the crew of nondescript stern soldiers. Caoilfhionn Dunne’s leader and Christopher Chung’s argumentative soldier are the only two characters you will likely remember. An issue that regularly occurs with the monster of the week format is that it’s hard to care what happens to these characters because you’ve only just met them.

Ncuti Gatwa continues an extraordinary run as The Doctor. He is an actor who doesn’t even need dialogue to convey emotions. His facial expressions do the heavy lifting towards the end of this episode. This season has fleshed out who his Doctor is a bit better than previous outings. He’s the most emotional time lord we’ve seen, but he’s also cheeky and feels very modern. He doesn’t feel like an alien and is missing the mystery that his predecessors had.

Belinda also suffers from the pacing struggles in this second rebooted season. The show is trying to rush through character development, asking us to care about Belinda far too quickly into the series. Aside from her career as a nurse, we still don’t learn much about her character. Because the show is almost in real time, every episode leading into the other, there isn’t the sense that Belinda and The Doctor have bonded off-screen. The chemistry is just not as strong as in previous partnerships in the world of Doctor Who, despite the actors’ best efforts.

Rose Ayling Ellis is a deaf English actress, and her disability is skillfully written into the story. The actress, who became a household name after winning Strictly Come Dancing, collaborated with the screenwriters to develop her character. ‘Well’ shows how future technology could make deaf people feel more comfortable and included. The writers also naturally incorporate her disability into the plot, despite her character not originally being deaf, showing how easily inclusive science fiction could be.

‘Well’ Sticks To A Well-Worn Formula

The episode sticks to a well-worn Doctor Who formula, which is disappointing considering how fresh season 2 has felt. The time lord and his companion run around a query against a hidden threat whilst pretending to be from the mysterious head office. It’s a classic, comforting tale of The Doctor getting involved in a space mission when the TARDIS is MIA. Think ‘The Satan Pit’ but with much less emotion.

The plot is thin in ‘Well.’ Unlike the previous two episodes, this goes back to basics. There are no twists, no deep messages, or satire of modern society. It’s a classic time lord on a spaceship, but with so few episodes in this run, it feels like a wasted opportunity. Perhaps something from this episode will be important in the future, but it feels like a throwaway episode in a season that doesn’t have time to indulge in the classic standalone formula.

This episode unfolds exactly as you expect it to, until it takes an unexpected turn. While Doctor Who loves to reuse old villains and make the time lord face old foes, ‘Well’ goes in a new and unexpected way. No spoilers, but there is a mid-episode callback that will catch you off guard. It’s refreshing that the showrunners remember the Whoniverse is more than just Daleks and Cybermen.

This season hasn’t yet settled into its pacing. With only eight episodes in the series, season 2 of Doctor Who is trying to rush through an overarching plot, character development, and a much larger story, while also sticking to the traditional monster of the week formula. There is just too much going on and still much left to do, it feels like there is not enough time to give the characters and the mysteries time to breathe.

‘Well’ isn’t a bad episode. It quickly gets into the action and is well-paced as a standalone story. The reveal of the one survivor on this planet is tense, but once the plot unfolds itself, the episode struggles not to become repetitive. The writing could have benefited from having a longer intro and outro, instead of a lengthy middle section. The audience is thrown too quickly into things and expected to go along with it all, and the finale is resolved far too quickly. It feels like this story could have made a decent mid-season two-parter, with fleshed-out characters and a more developed location. In this current state, the writing is just too rushed.

In the general scheme of the series, ‘Well’ is a frustrating episode. The writers keep leaving breadcrumbs about the larger picture, but it’s not enough to get your teeth into. Unlike last week’s ‘Lux‘, ‘Well’ is too reminiscent of a better episode of Doctor Who.

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