Doctor Who S2E3 The Well ★★★☆☆
I think I am holding Doctor Who to a higher standard for these ratings than I would for other shows. I am giving this one a higher rating to the last two but I have been a bit disappointed with how every episode has gone this series so far. I was pretty drawn in at the start but it lost me in the middle a bit.
It making itself a sequel to Midnight distracted me from the actual episode a bit and made me keep comparing it to that (and sets itself a really high bar to clear) and the scene immediately following that where half the squad gets chucked around the room just felt a bit silly compared the the really good building of tension and camera work just a few minutes prior.
It does regain its footing towards the end and though I could nitpick further I don’t think it does anything too bad, though I’d prefer it hadn’t tried to show a proper physical depiction of the thing at all, no matter how dark, distant and blurred. The suggestion of a flash of motion behind someone and the little shadow creeping over Aliss’ shoulder was more interesting.
Actually one last thing that was interesting and I hope was deliberate is how shitty everyone, even the Doctor, is about casually excluding Aliss, reflexively turning off their subtitles whenever they aren’t directly talking to her and the Doctor repeatedly forgetting to sign to her even when he is. But it does feel like a dropped thread and reminds me of how some people thought Belinda’s reaction to the Doctor treating her as a curiosity might be her seeing him is a similar light to Al after The Robot Revolution, which does not seem to have gone anywhere. Perhaps Davies will surprise us and have a callout of the Doctor’s instrumental treatment of people despite his outward performance of care and kindness later in the series.