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purplecatI'm behind, so sue me.
The Well presented itself in style, its call back to Midnight, and in the surrounding publicity, as a horror story. Arguably much of Doctor Who, grounded as it is in "Monsters", is horror of one kind or another, but much of Doctor Who is not actually that scary once you have reached your teenage years. There are exceptions though, such as Midnight, which want to be scary for adults as well, to have unseen or unknowable monsters, jump scares and plenty of tension. Unfortunately the monster in The Well, once we know its basic schtick of chucking people around if they stand behind Aliss, is not that kind of scary, and we learn its basic schtick fairly early in the story. The twist at the end pulled it back into scary-to-adults territory but it was too late to really make a difference and confused the already rather muddled information we had about the monster, its abilities and motivation.
Lots of people loved this, and I've nothing against it. It was stylishly done, even though I don't think it was the kind of story it wanted to be. But for the third time in as many weeks I felt it was a story that didn't quite fill its length and boiled down to a pretty simple plot with relatively few beats.
The Well presented itself in style, its call back to Midnight, and in the surrounding publicity, as a horror story. Arguably much of Doctor Who, grounded as it is in "Monsters", is horror of one kind or another, but much of Doctor Who is not actually that scary once you have reached your teenage years. There are exceptions though, such as Midnight, which want to be scary for adults as well, to have unseen or unknowable monsters, jump scares and plenty of tension. Unfortunately the monster in The Well, once we know its basic schtick of chucking people around if they stand behind Aliss, is not that kind of scary, and we learn its basic schtick fairly early in the story. The twist at the end pulled it back into scary-to-adults territory but it was too late to really make a difference and confused the already rather muddled information we had about the monster, its abilities and motivation.
Lots of people loved this, and I've nothing against it. It was stylishly done, even though I don't think it was the kind of story it wanted to be. But for the third time in as many weeks I felt it was a story that didn't quite fill its length and boiled down to a pretty simple plot with relatively few beats.