This episode is really messy. I’m not sure it ever quite coheres. The references back to Midnight feel pointless and self-indulgent—this monster demonstrably does not work the same way. There’s maybe some thematic echoes, but I think it would have been stronger to just let them remain so. Also, I know this canon had been established previously, but the fact that the TARDIS translation circuits can’t handle signed languages is absurd.

And yet for all my nitpicks I admire The Well for what it’s trying to do. There is something suffocatingly claustrophobic about the whole affair (which I mean as a compliment—it’s successful horror). And I love the imagery, the broken mirrors, flowing mercury, dark landscapes, empty hallways. I like Belinda navigating this alien future; I continue to like Belinda, period.