The Well Notes
The Doctor and Belinda are trying to get back to 5/24/25
after just one vindicator reading. That
seems optimistic, but it is a good way to remind audience of the basic setup of
‘stop and take readings.
Belinda is very methodical and logical. Good skill set for a
nurse.
Belinda: Have we been invaded? Or hit by a meteor? Or
swatted by a giant moth?
The Doctor: Oh.
Imagine a moth that big!
I love how healthy Belinda’s relationship with her parents
is
*** I will meet your mum and dad. And I will make your dad
laugh. And your mum can whistle at my behind. And I will sing. I will do the singing. That is a promise.
So a second triangulation reading from the vindicator
500,000 years in the future
She’s asking good questions and it’s allowing the Doctor to give his standard ‘humans are awesome’ shtick,
but is also very cleverly letting them slip in the required ‘The TARDIS
translates’ explanation.
OK, I am officially in love with their joyful run to the
lower door to go change and immediate exit out the upper door changed. I hope they do it every time.
Toxic again
We’ve never seen the doc and co just walk directly out into
a line and get caught up in it, have we?
Really lovely sense of claustrophobia in the directing
Shaya: And jump, jump, jump!
The Doctor/Belinda: What??
Excellent lead in to the credits
They did just enough setup to explain that it’s all
automated to make the sequence work
The visuals in this episode are just gorgeous
Nice that the soldiers have now noticed that they don’t belong
there with them
Toxic and the psychic paper. They’re trotting out the
classics
This really is how the psychic should be used. Just clear
away necessary plot hurdles so they can get to telling the story
Belinda’s really getting the hang of just jumping in and
lying. Like mystery shoppers indeed. Russell’s used that one before.
How are they going to get them back to the ship?
The old ‘this is a test’ gimmick
Have we heard of Galvanic radiation?
They have a clock of five hours before the TARDIS
arrives. That works nicely for the
structure
OK, looked it up. It was the beam that UNIT had that The
Toymaker used to kill the 14th Doctor.
Colony base 15. Mining with a mercury drop line. This is all
SO Aliens, not least the drop in and all the visuals
They’re mining Carbon 46. Lost contact 15 days ago.
They’re flipping between calling them colonists and miners
Helpfully introducing a machine that scans for heartbeats.
That’s so going to come up in the third act, isn’t it.
Shaya: Hope is irrelevant
God, the visuals are so beautiful. Very well directed and
shot
The framing of the troopers outside the enormous building
with the enormous star filled sky communicates so much and is so well done.
Troopers 1-3. Taking off helmets and the Doctor and Belinda
take their armor off as well.
Belinda’s clever with her first guess that maybe the miners
woke something up underground.
Cassio: You should stay suited
The Doctor: Oh, I’m just not loving
the look, babes. I come in peace.
Cassio: It’s not
appropriate to call me babes.
The Doctor: Okay, hon.
First corpse had a broken neck and a broken everything.
This feels a lot like The Naked Time
Really nice job on
the camerawork keeping it claustrophobic.
The kids drawings on the wall of their quarters is a nice
touch. They’ve put some thought into
things
Why did they break all the mirrors?
Half of them were shot and the other half beaten to death
Cassio is in favor of just nuking the place from space
Heartbeat detector again. Conveniently mentioning that it
can detect that it’s a single heartbeat
Belinda: It could be a survivor.
Shaya: It could be the killer.
The Doctor: It could be both.
Really lovely use of the visual of the one woman survivor
alone in the center of a gigantic room to underscore that she’s the lone survivor
I adore that the Doctor can sign and it’s no big deal.
Here’s the AI quote about the signing issue, and I love everything
about it - No, the language used in the "The Well" episode of Doctor
Who is not American Sign Language (ASL). The episode uses a fictional
language, "Deaf". This language is a blend of sign language and
lip movements, and is intended to be easily understood by viewers who know ASL
or other sign languages.
The episode was created with the assistance of the Deaf
community and a sign language expert to ensure that the Deaf characters are
represented accurately and respectfully.
Of course The Doctor is going to approach Aliss to comfort her.
And I really like when The Doctor and Aliss carry on their conversation purely
through sign
Of course, in the interest of security Shaya can’t have that.
The text discs things are a fun invention
The Doctor: It doesn’t matter the year, signing still makes
some people paranoid
Sal was Aliss’ friend and Aliss killed her. Traumatic.
Aliss: I’m just a cook. I’ve been here for 12 months and I
cooked for them and that’s all. But it’s not even cooking, I just open a flat
pack protein and add some salt. And that’s what I do every single day. But I
had to kill my best friend.
It’s a nice detail that Belinda doesn’t automatically know how
to use the text disc. And I love the detail that in the future it’s illegal to
be a nurse and not know how to sign. Belinda’s right, that should be the law.
Aliss has been alone 15 days
The Doctor: Bel, be careful of her.
Aliss: I can still lip-read.
Of course Belinda wouldn’t know how to use future space
medicine packs.
Similin! Callback to Robot Revolution
Aliss’ expression is unreadable.
Another huge room for them to look small and vulnerable in.
Seed-well.
There should really be a safety railing.
This well runs five miles deep beneath the planets crust.
How does that compare to The Satan Pit, The Racnoss, or Inferno, I wonder.
They’ve shut down the system by putting a restraining bolt on
it. That was what was inhibiting C3PO and R2-D2
Shaya is a good shot, which allowed us to hear about her
being from Lombardo which had something bad happen on the day she turned 14
that the Doctor is aware of, which allows us to organically get to the
information that Earth is supposed to be part of a union with Lombardo at this
point, but no one has ever heard of Earth or Humans
Foundation
The Doctor: Earth
Shaya: Never heard of it.
Cassio: Stupid name for a planet
Similar, Belinda mentioning the bad luck for 13 leads to her
also finding out that no oone has heard of the human race or Earth
So is the thing oriented 180 degrees from where Aliss is
looking?
Mo is nice
The miners wiped all the data. But the Doctor sonic’d it
back into existence
** It came from the well.
It came out of the well and we don’t know how to stop it!
They just confirmed that Aliss is the only one left alive.
Aliss is right to complain that they’re leaving her out of
the conversation.
This is staged really well. One woman in the center of a
great big room with maybe a threat behind her. So now they’re going to try
walking out of Aliss’ line of vision to double check
This is how it started before for Aliss 15 days ago
Hanno
We don’t know what it is.
Grey star
Xtonic star – like midnight
OOOOOO. This is s sequel to Midnight! That was 400,000 years
ago
Carbon 46 is diamonds.
They stripped all the diamonds off the surface when the wars came. Weren’t
there Earthlings in Midnight?
As soon as Hanno was completely behind Aliss she was
attacked
So Aliss has known that it’s the something behind her all
the time
The Doctor: If it was a clock face, you die at midnight.
Great overhead visual of that
If you kill the current victim, it jumps over to you
It hides behind your back and it stays there forever
Love Aliss’ you think it went for me first??
Cassio is a prick.
Red Code
And Cassio just got everybody killed
Shaya used the situation to kill Cassio and good riddance
So they’re just going to leave and leave Aliss behind?
Don’t turn your back on me has multiple meanings there
The Xtonic star leading to diamonds leading to Midnight
revelation is so well scripted
He’s talking to it just like Tennant talked to it
Alss survived because she can’t hear it. Dammit, why couldn’t
she just be deaf and valid without it being a plot point?
There’s something behind the thing behind the thing?
They shouldn’t have unsuited
Shaya is a great shot and needs to fire twice
Mercury is reflecting it to itself splitting it from Aliss
for just long enough
They weren’t fast enough and the thing is in the airlock
with them
The slow burn realization that it’s behind Belinda is done
well
Nice circle back to the Doctor’s promise to keep Belinda
safe
Shooting Belinda in the chest to save her life. That’s new
Shaya took it back into the well
Yeah, now we get to the implications of them never having
heard of the Earth
And now Mrs. Flood is the head of alien space military and
is particularly concerned about thw Vindicator?
And it attached itself to Mo anyway, so they’re all screwed.
Unusual downer of an ending
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