Doctor Who’s Timeline Mystery Just Dusted-Off an Old Formula — With a Twist
Reality has been changed. Again.
The reality of the universe and the definition of humanity are suddenly in question — again. In the third episode of Doctor Who Season 2 — “The Well” — the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) have returned to a familiar planet, first visited by the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) way back in the 2008 episode “Midnight.” But the details of that episode are oddly less impactful for the overall season-long arc. Instead, the bigger story for Who right now seems to be a bit of a reboot of a 2010 storyline from the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) era.
Because throughout this episode, one mystery pervades all the other questions, and the surprise ending could indicate that there’s a mastermind behind the manipulation of the entire Who timeline.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 3’s “The Well.”
Doctor Who, Season 2, Episode 3 Ending, Explained
Belinda discovers Earth no longer exists in “The Well.”
At the very end of the new episode, “The Well,” it's revealed that the elusive Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) is indeed aware that the Doctor and Belinda are trying to get back to Earth. 500,000 years in the future, she’s posing as an official who was overseeing the rescue of the mining operation on the planet “Midnight.” Up until this point, since her first appearance in 2023’s “The Church on Ruby Road,” much of Mrs. Flood’s demeanor has been creepily cheerful, and often directed at the audience specifically.
But here, she’s cold and calculating, which seems to indicate that she herself might be behind the reality-altering events that the Doctor and Belinda are facing. And while the mysterious reappearance of Mrs. Flood vaguely echoes the set-up for Missy (Michelle Gomez) back in the 12th Doctor’s (Peter Capaldi) first season, the changing of the timeline feels very 2010.
How the Doctor Fixed a Broken Timeline Before
Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor in "The Big Bang."
In Season 5, the 11th Doctor started noticing that Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) didn’t remember certain key events from Earth’s past, particularly when it came to the more spacey events involving Daleks and Cybermen. That season culminated in a version of Earth in which the stars ceased to exist, in a kind of alternate pocket universe, which required the Doctor to utterly reset everything with a second Big Bang.
In “The Well,” history is repeating itself a bit, but this time, Belinda remembers everything perfectly, while the universe itself seems not to. In this episode, nobody seems to understand or remember the existence of Earth, or even the human race. Now, these people all look humanoid, which is a common trope in science fiction. In big epics like the Dune books and Foundation, Earth itself is largely forgotten, or rarely spoken of, despite humanity dominating the stars. Ditto Battlestar Galactica, which focuses on a lost tribe of humanity, who regard Earth as a kind of myth.
Last time, it all ended with a big bang.
Doctor Who Season 2 is taking all those various related tropes, but upping the stakes in a different way. Here, it seems that humanity itself has been blurred out of the shared memory of humanoids in the far future. Clearly, Mrs. Flood is one of the forces behind this conspiracy, but unlike previous versions of this trope, it does seem possible that this time, Doctor Who could actually rewrite a ton of its own future history.
