The Well is perhaps the prototypical Doctor Who episode. You have an alien world, a bunch of soldiers, a well-meaning commander, a hot-head officer eager to shoot something, and a mystery tied to a lot of dead bodies. We’ve seen these elements before in innumerable episodes. What makes The Well work, however, is the execution of those elements.

Picking up immediately after Lux, The Doctor and Belinda have not yet changed out of their fab Fifties fashion when they find themselves in another time and place. Specifically, 500,000 years in the future and the planet 6767. After changing into appropriate space suits, they join up with a group of soldiers storming a mining colony.

Their mission is to find out why the mine cut off all communications. They discover dead bodies, broken mirrors, and one wounded and frightened hearing-impaired woman named Aliss. This sets into motion a tense thriller, as tensions mount when it becomes clear there is something hiding behind Aliss. Something that almost manages to stay hidden so long as no one steps behind her…

Saying much more beyond that would spoil the game. Suffice it to say that Russell T Davies (co-writing this time with Sharma Angel-Walfall) adds some honest surprises to what could have been a by-the-numbers Doctor Who episode. This is all the more ironic given the thematic ties to his earlier stories, including one people count as his best.

Davies doesn’t quite rehash the old favorites for the sake of nostalgia. Yet I can’t help but wonder how much of last week’s joke about the Doctor Who fans saying Blink is their favorite episode was born of Davies’ own frustrations born of people crediting him with stories written by Steven Moffat. In any case, The Well is everything about Doctor Who done right, even if it is a little familiar.