Doctor Who Wrings New Horror From an Old Monster

An eerily empty space ship or space station where Something Terrible has happened is a classic trope of sci-fi horror—as is the addition of one shell-shocked survivor discovered by the next team to stumble into that very bad place. Doctor Who has fun with that premise in “The Well,” written by Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall and directed by Amanda Brotchie, and further winks at fans by referencing a 2008 episode crafted in the same sci-horror vein. Not only is it the same vein, it’s the same planet, albeit several hundreds of thousands of years later. The show visited the irradiated collapsed star we see in “The Well” during the Tenth Doctor’s fourth season, but don’t worry if you haven’t watched 2008’s “Midnight” lately. “The Well” gives us a quick explanation (complete with a glimpse of a wide-eyed David Tennant), but the main takeaway is that the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) has encountered this murderous entity before. It just takes him awhile to realize that fact, because thing ... Read full article.