Doctor Who: Season 2, Episode 3 – “The Well” (2025)

Great episode! A few details/logic things bugged me, but other than that, I thought it was a real winner. Looking forward to rewatching this one!

The Doctor and Belinda have arrived in the far future, where they’re immediately dropped into the middle of a military operation. A squad has been sent to investigate a mysterious disaster on a mining facility. On a planet long rendered uninhabitable by severe radiation, something has incited the deaths of nearly everyone in the base. Our heroes meet the lone survivor and search for answers.

Before I get into the meat of the story, I have to say: at long last, the show has made up for the Twelfth Doctor knowing how to speak “baby” and “dinosaur” but not British Sign Language! Aliss, the survivor on the base, is Deaf, and she both signs and voices throughout the episode. The Doctor signs a portion of his dialogue to her, and the soldiers also have nifty wearable devices that provide holographic real-time transcription for Aliss. Plus, Aliss is surprised that Belinda doesn’t sign. “A nurse who can’t sign? That’s against the law!” she exclaims. Belinda kindly replies, “Well, we have different laws. But you’re right, it should be the law.”

I still have a few quibbles on this front. While I’m thrilled that the Doctor can sign at last, it kind of bums me out that the TARDIS apparently still can’t handle sign language. The Doctor even explains the translation circuit to Belinda at the start of the adventure, but there’s no evidence that it helps them communicate with Aliss. I would say it’s because the TARDIS isn’t in the immediate vicinity, but it’s heavily implied that the soldiers aren’t speaking Earth English, and that translates for the Doctor and Belinda just fine. It’s only BSL that the TARDIS seems to have trouble with. Additionally, the transcription devices are cool: they’re highly accurate, and a soldier can even relay the transcription of their words to another soldier’s device if Aliss isn’t looking at them. But throughout the episode, characters play fast and loose with turning them on and off. Much of the time, they only turn them on when they’re speaking to Aliss directly, repeatedly forcing her to depend on lipreading to understand what’s going on. Why? Once it’s turned on, the device can stay on. It takes more effort to turn it off and on again. What’s the point of using technology to gatekeep Aliss access to people’s speech? That definitely feels ableist to me, and unfortunately, even the Doctor and Belinda do it.

As for the adventure itself, it’s a good one. Classic base-under-siege story, only in this case, almost everyone on the base is already dead. It’s cool and creepy, drawing on previous show lore in satisfying ways—the planet and the mystery was pinging for me early on, and I was happy to see my theories play out. The mystery is creepy, and the oneshot characters are drawn well. Major stakes, nice rendering of the main baddie, and I like the solutions the characters find over the course of the episode.

I like that Belinda is getting more into the swing of things as a companion. Her nursing instincts are still quick to kick in—when one of the soldiers first discovers a body, her immediate reaction is to try and help, thinking they might still be alive—and she contributes to the investigation in important ways. In addition to noticing a key clue early on, she’s the first one to realize how the baddie operates, even if the Doctor has to fill in the blanks on some of the mechanics.

Love the Doctor in this. He’s compassionate and reassuring, with both Belinda and Aliss. At the start of the episode, as Belinda worries again about the TARDIS’s ability to get back to her time, he pulls her into a hug, kisses both her hands, and promises that he’ll find a way to bring her home and meet her parents. With Aliss, the fact that the Doctor signs has an instant calming effect, and I love that he continues to sign some of his dialogue to her even after he’s given a transcription device to wear. In a room full of nervous soldiers with itchy trigger fingers, he does everything he can to urge calm and focus, being protective of Aliss as they seek to blame her for the horrors that have happened on the facility. Besides that, he shows off some techy skills, he drops past Doctor knowledge, and he dances while wearing a spacesuit. What’s not to love?

Further Thoughts on Echo

*A few spoilers.*

I liked Echo quite a bit, and when it comes to Deaf representation, the series already has one over on Hawkeye in that Maya’s dialogue is filmed so much better. I really enjoyed Maya’s introduction in Hawkeye, but I kept yelling for the camera to pull back—why put Alaqua Cox in so many close-up shots when a lot of her performance is on her hands? Echo films with way more medium shots, which offers a better showcase for Cox’s work.

Another thing I liked about Maya’s role in Hawkeye is that the show doesn’t ignore the implications of having a Deaf character—Maya doesn’t just magically understand what everyone is saying, and one of the other Track Suits frequently interprets for her. Echo takes this even further, and we see different ways that she communicates. She gestures or use her phone to write notes to someone when ASL isn’t an option, and it’s clear that lipreading doesn’t tell her everything. When Fisk steps in as her surrogate father after her dad is killed, he hires interpreters for their “family dinners,” and later in the series, he pops up with some special technology he’s had developed to interpret for them, superimposing signed images of his speech in Maya’s vision and turning her own signs into spoken words in his earpiece.

But when Maya’s mission to take over Fisk’s operation brings her back home to Oklahoma, we discover that everyone in her family can sign: her late parents in flashbacks, her grandparents, her uncle, and her cousins. Because Maya’s mom was Deaf as well, I get the impression that her grandma probably started the whole thing. When Taloa was young, I imagine that Chula and Skully decided to learn how to sign, so by the time Maya came along, she was born into an already-signing family. And that is huge. 90% of Deaf people are born into hearing families, and so many of those families don't learn their Deaf child's language.

Now, it's true that none of them are especially great at it, but that makes sense to me. I think it’s realistic that some of Skully's lines get really simplistic/stilted, because he can’t remember how to sign a particular sentence more fluently. And when Henry brings in a mortician to help patchy Maya up following an injury, he tries to interpret for her, but there’s a moment when the mortician rattles off some medical jargon and he just shrugs.

And keep in mind, Maya has been living in New York for 20 years. There's no mention of video chats with the family members she was still in touch with, and yeah, the time apart probably contributes to the rustiness. Still, everyone has kept up their signing for literal decades even though Maya wasn't around anymore. Think about the hope inherent in that—none of these family have seen Maya since she was a kid, but they don’t want to stop signing because they’re still waiting for her to come back.

This is in contrast to Fisk, who, again, pays for interpreters and pays for the development of fancy interpreting software. He does care about Maya in his own effed-up way, but that care doesn’t extend to putting in the time to learn how to communicate with her in her language. After all the years she spent under Fisk’s influence, it’s probably a little overwhelming for Maya to come back to Oklahoma and be surrounded by family members who’ve kept up their signing in her long absence.

And I love that, besides the main benefit of being able to build a meaningful relationship with their granddaughter/daughter/niece/cousin, this knowledge helps them out in other ways. Skully covertly rags on Biscuits in front of customers in ASL when he's interfering at the pawn shop. When Fisk’s goons lay a trap for Maya at the skating rink, Henry warns Bonnie off by discreetly signing at his side so they won't notice. And after Bonnie is captured, she pretends to interpret for Maya with Fisk's goons but really communicates with her in secret so they can figure out how they're going to escape. While it’s not quite as dramatic as the family in A Quiet Place, Maya’s family is able to get ahead of a dangerous situation more than once, just because they all know how to sign.

Echo (2024-Present)

*Premise spoilers, which include a couple spoilers from Hawkeye.*

I enjoyed meeting Maya Lopez in Hawkeye and looked forward to seeing her in her own series. On the whole, I liked Echo—this whole cast of characters is nicely introduced and work well together, with Maya at the center.

On Hawkeye, Maya was one of Wilson Fisk’s trusted lieutenants, until she discovered that Fisk ordered her father’s death. In retaliation, she shot him. Now, five months later, she’s still intent on blowing up his empire. Her single-minded mission takes her back to her hometown in Oklahoma—Maya hasn’t been home in 20 years, and despite her efforts to get in and get out without her family knowing, she’s forced to confront her past. It’s time to decide what means more: her family or her revenge.

Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of Marvel heroes come from self-interested beginnings, including some who’ve started as outright villains or who do horrible things for self-proclaimed righteous reasons. But I think Echo is the first time we’ve gone into an MCU property where the title character is still firmly in an antagonist role at the start of the story. While Maya is definitely aligned against Fisk, she’s less interested in dismantling his criminal enterprise than in taking it over—with Kingpin out of the way, she thinks it’s time for a queen. When she seeks help from her Uncle Henry, knowing he has too has a criminal background, he tells her he won’t be part of bring a war to the people he loves, but Maya is too single-minded on her own goals to pay attention.

But even if Maya has further to go in her growth than a lot of MCU heroes, it’s compelling to watch her get there. She’s a young woman who’s been carrying around a lot of hurt and anger for a long time, and finding a way to let go of all that isn’t easy. Back in Oklahoma, she’s surrounded by reminders of a life she left behind, avoiding some family members so she won’t have to deal with their hurt feelings while avoiding others because she’s still hurt from being cast out in the past. But the more she’s able to let them back in, either willingly or being forced together through outside circumstances, the closer she comes to discovering her real potential.

As Maya, Alaqua Cox is a strong lead—her action scenes are killer, and she shows us the vulnerability behind Maya’s toughness. She’s the MCU’s first Indigenous and first Deaf lead, not to mention the first amputee played by an actual amputee. I think the representation is mostly well done, with the different parts of Maya’s identity contributing to the overall picture of who she is without any single one defining her. Lots of great Indigenous actors in this show, including several familiar faces from Reservation Dogs: Devery Jacobs, Graham Greene, and Zahn McClarnon (Big!!) all make appearances. Of course, we also get Vincent D’Onofrio back as Wilson Fisk, along with a brief but cool cameo from Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock.

Warnings

Violence (stronger than the usual MCU fare—more in line with Daredevil,) language, drinking, and thematic elements (including ableism.)