The Well, by Russell T Davies and Sharma Angel-Walfall, was largely well regarded when it was broadcast as part of Season 15 (or Season 2, depending on your preference) of 21st century Doctor Who. 

Bringing back one of the creepiest monsters of the first RTD era, the nameless and seemingly formless creature that terrorised the tourists on the planet Midnight, it added new dimensions to the sickness of the creature’s games, racked up an impressive, horror-movie body count, gave a platform for one of the season’s standout guest performances from Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss Fenly, and added a much-needed dose of hard sci-fi grit to the largely esoteric, fantastical horrors of the season.

The Good Bad News

There’s no especially easy way to say this, but the audionovelisation, written by Gareth L Powell and read by Caoilfhionn Dunne (who played troop leader Shaya Costallion in the on-screen version) beats the absolute pants off the TV episode on almost every front, with the exception of the performance of Ayling-Ellis, which would stand out for its exceptionalism against any hour of TV you care to mention.

First, it wins within the first five minutes by the addition of a prologue from the point of view of the Presence (as Powell names it).

While that would have been difficult to achieve in the on-screen version, given that the Presence is a mostly unseen malevolence in the broadcast episode, Powell makes delicious use of the freedom of the novel format to give it a purpose and a point of view, a longing and a need for more humans to play with, and in particular for what it saw and remembered of the extraordinary mind of a Time Lord.

Making the most of these opportunities is what separates great novelisers from ordinary ones, and Powell elevates himself into the pantheon by simple touches like giving the Presence a readable agenda and motivation. 

Yes, technically, part of the sheer bowel-shredding terror of the TV version is that you’re never entirely sure what the hell its game is beyond cruelty and the kind of play that gets people killed, but Powell never over-eggs his pudding. He just sets up the patient hunger of the Presence before all the malarkey of vindicators and diamond miners begins.

Heresy and Justification

Now, strap in, because here’s the heretical part.

The Well as it aired on TV was a very clever, sometimes too-clever-for-general-consumption script that delivered loads of clingy, sweaty atmosphere. 

But it didn’t actually…work.

It didn’t work for one very simple reason, which by the time The Well aired had become a signature flaw of Season 15. The main supporting cast were scandalously underwritten and underdeveloped.

In The Robot Revolution, we were told we should care about Sasha because she was brilliant and potential companion material, but we never got to see enough of her struggle to show her brilliance, and therefore the reason we should especially care when she was gunned down by the robots.

In Lux, neither the people in the movie theatre who get turned into film stock, nor the Doctor Who fans who are apparently conjured into being simply to stall the Doctor and Belinda, exist in the story as anything beyond plot devices, so they never embody the fate of real human beings if Lux is victorious. 

So, in The Well, the troopers mostly exist without any sign of their personality written in. Bar Costallion and Cassio, who themselves are largely there to provide tension in the ranks, most of the other troopers could have been hired from Rent-A-Corpse, so when a staggering number of them are slaughtered in around 25 seconds of screen time, we’ve not learned anything much about them, so it feels like their entire purpose in the adventure was to be slaughtered by the Presence. They feel like toy soldiers, their lives unknown and their deaths subsequently lacking any real impact.

How To Fix A Script In Simple Stages

Powell entirely redresses this screenwriting sin by interspersing the action of the episode with personnel files for each of the troopers who arrive on Planet 6767, previously known as Midnight.

It’s a simple device, and it could have worked on-screen to make us care about the troopers with whom we travelled (think of The Waters of Mars for an example of the technique). 

Without it, the on-screen version of The Well was clever, but ultimately cold, as it didn’t connect us to the people behind the bodies getting flung wildly around the room and killed, and so we only cared for them and their fate in the abstract way we care for any of the people who get killed every night on the news.

Powell, by adding in the details of their service records and aptitudes and even their childhoods and failures, turns the troopers into people, and people can have stakes and engage our active empathy, which they do in the novelisation, leading ultimately to a far more emotionally satisfying experience.

In particular, while the TV version pulled Costallion’s eventual self-sacrifice more or less out of the blue, the novel gives a lot more detail on her youth, her particular skills and how she acquired them, and clicks the whole thing into place as the capstone of her destiny as a life-long combat soldier.

A Broad Vocal Range

Caoilfhionn Dunne, playing Costallion in the TV episode, stripped her of a lot of emotion, channelling military veterans around the world and delivering Costallion the commander, strait-laced and largely straight-faced, resisting almost every opportunity to lighten the mood, and helping to accentuate the sense of threat, in balance with Ayling-Ellis’ hair-trigger panic as Aliss Fenly.

As the reader of the novelisation, she’s able – and in fact, required – to broaden the palette of her performance, giving authentic voice to all the characters, and while Ayling-Ellis blew the doors off the episode with her performance, Dunne does enough to render Aliss as the terrified last survivor of a madness-driven massacre, so you don’t lose enough in the reading to detract from the quality of the story.

Is this the best version of the story? 

By several country light years, yes. The additions that Powell makes to the on-screen version elevate the material, fix the flaws that deaden the impact of the TV storytelling, and make us care about the platoon of troopers ahead of their cataclysmic deaths. Added to which, Dunne is a reader with a very versatile voice, meaning most if not all of the characters are believably individual within the context of her reading.

Check out the audionovelisation of The Well. It’ll show you how the TV version could have been.

Which is to say, it’ll show you a better version. Tony Fyler

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