Doctor Who (2023) 2-03: The Well

Episode:

887

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Serial:

315

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Writer:

Russell T Davies & Sharma Angel-Walfall

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Director:

Amanda Brotchie

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Air Date:

26-Apr-2025

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's another brand new episode of Doctor Who, called The Well. Not the most interesting or memorable title in the world, but at least it's straightforward. Years of excessive Doctor Who reviewing has left me able to type Praxeus, Tsuranga Conundrum and Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos off the top of my head, but I always have to stop and check afterwards that I spelled them right. Not a concern this time.

Okay, Russell T Davis is back writing for the third story in a row, Amanda Brotchie is back directing (because both this and Lux were produced in the same block), but this time Sharma Angel-Walfall is also credited as a writer. That's a new name that I have not heard of. Probably not one I'll need to remember for future episodes, considering how rarely Who writers return for another story these days, but who knows. I hope she's good at writing!

There will be SPOILERS below, for this episode and perhaps earlier episodes too.

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The episode begins with the Doctor for once, we're not getting a sneak preview of the villain he'll be facing first. He and Belinda are still wearing the same outfits they were wearing in Lux, so I don't think they've actually slept since the end of The Robot Revolution. In fact I'm not sure the Doctor's slept since he was the Fourteenth Doctor.

This scene is a bit of a retread of stuff we already got in earlier episodes. They can't get to Earth, they're worried about what's happened, Belinda has parents that we still haven't seen etc.

In fact it's so much of a retread that we basically get the same scene of them disappearing into a corridor and then coming out of the wardrobe on another floor with today's outfit. Both this and Lux were directed by the same director in the same production block, so it does make sense. They probably filmed everything in the '50s outfits on the same day.

Oh, plus it plays Toxic by Britney Spears, which was the ironically ancient Earth music playing during Rose's first trip to the future in The End of the World. 20 years later it really is ancient Earth music.

There's something about this scene I didn't like though, and that's the Doctor making imaginary ray gun hands when he comes out in his space suit. The Doctor doesn't use guns!

Actually the thing I don't like is that they put on space suits without helmets and then walked out into a corridor where a platoon of Lombardic space marines from the year 500,000 had the exact same suits and two spare helmets.

I don't mind that the TARDIS parked in a doorway so it looked like they were coming in from another room to anyone who didn't spot the anachronistic doors. I get that it always takes them where they need to be and all that. But it doesn't dress them.

It wouldn't have been so weird if they were wearing the iconic Sanctuary Base 5 suits that were still being used as late as Thirteen's last story Power of the Doctor, but these are brand new costumes.

Do I really care about this completely minor little problem that has no impact on the rest of the story? A tiny contrivance designed to give viewers an exciting teaser as the heroes are immediately dropped out of a spaceship?

Yeah I think I do care. It starts the episode on the wrong foot, which is especially awkward for a serious horror story.

Also this is all we ever get to see of their spaceship!

OPENING CREDITS

The view! I love it when the camera tilts up and shows us what the characters are seeing. Much more immersive than just showing us the quarry. Give me more shots of people looking up at the alien sky or out of the windows of the spaceship.

This mission this season is to set up the vindicator at each destination and do a thing, which hasn't been any trouble at all so far. Definitely less work than collecting the Key to Time was for the Fourth Doctor and Romana.

I feel like I've put The Expanse on by mistake (which is never a mistake). They're definitely not doing '50s retro in this episode, this is very modern sci-fi. Though it's clear that the visors in this show haven't been added with visual effects as I can see them misting up.

Platoon Leader Shaya Costallion immediately makes a bad impression as the Doctor's never keen at military folks pointing guns at him. It's a bit harsh, seeing as they introduced themselves before the drop! But the Doctor immediately whips out the psychic paper and claims a position of authority. The kind of authority that allows them to test her with stupid questions like 'can we go back to the blue box in your spaceship now?'

Shaya explains that this is planet 6-7-6-7 and the atmosphere is charged with galvanic radiation. I couldn't remember where I'd heard that before, but it turns out that the weapon that caused the Doctor to bi-generate in the The Giggle was a galvanic beam. Oh plus it was mentioned in Midnight.

The music sounds a bit more Segun Akinola than Murray Gold here, no bombast or whimsy here, and that was the correct choice.

This is planet 6-7-6-7 and the platoon is here to check on mining facility Colony Base 15 which went dark 15 days ago. 35 people stripping Carbon 46 using a mercury drop-line. It's all numbers today, which gets tricky when the characters are called Trooper 1, Trooper 2 etc.

Once they're through the airlock the heroes stop to take their suits off. They chose these outfits themselves because they wanted to dress up but now the Doctor's not loving the look! Trooper 1 would prefer he left the suit on, and he'd also prefer he stopped calling him 'babes'. So the Doctor calls him 'hon' instead. It's a hint of that asshole Peter Capaldi side that he's mostly got under control this incarnation and I'm not mad that he's being a dick. Though it definitely would've played differently if Trooper 1 had been a woman.

Okay I'm just going to look up their names, because it's going to be awkward to remember them otherwise. Trooper 1 is Cassio Palin-Paleen, Trooper 2 is Kai Sabba, Trooper 3 is Mo Gilliben, Trooper 4 is Hanno Yeft... and those are the only ones I need to know. They all got last names though, so you can tell that they matter.

I knew two things about this episode before watching and one of them was that this bunk room would show up. It was in the episode title reveal trailer. It got me thinking about Fallout's underground vaults full of dead people and mystery, and we're definitely getting something like that here. Though they're only in the set for a moment before moving on!

Seems like half the people here were shot and the other half were crushed, and all the mirrors were smashed too. If this was a video game they'd have to continue down until they found a log entry explaining what happened. Actually that'd be true if this was a Star Trek episode as well, though they would've already gotten to this point by the end of the teaser. (You may be surprised how many starship crews go mad and kill each other).

I've already been here and done the creepy walking around the empty base bit countless times before so it hasn't entirely captured my interest yet. I'm 10 minutes in and still waiting for the episode to get started. Aliens, that's something else the story is inspired by, as the colonial marines use a handheld sensor to track down the only life form they can detect. Also Cassio wanted to nuke the site from orbit from the start, which is a bit premature!

They open a door and find a deaf woman sitting next to a corpse. She's in the middle of a circle, which is a bit of a red flag if you've seen anything with demons in, though she's doing everything she can to appear sympathetic. Her first words are "Can you take me home?" Hey that's where Belinda wants to go! Then she talks about having a daughter she wants to get back to, so that's that box ticked. 90% of RTD stories feature a mother and it's possible I'm just mis-remembering the other 10%

The Doctor replies with sign language, which he was surprised he couldn't do when he was the Twelfth Doctor in Under the Lake. (He claimed to have deleted it so he could learn semaphore, because the Twelfth Doctor was a dick). It could be a different sign language, she is an alien, but I doubt it.

As Cassio talks to her his speech is displayed as text projected from the device in the centre of his suit. At least it used to be in the centre in the last scene, but now it's moved over to near his shoulder.

The manifest confirms that she is Aliss Fenly, 28, with a daughter. So I guess that's why their projected subtitles all spell her name correctly when people say it. Or maybe that's just how it's spelled in this part of the galaxy. Either way these diegetic subtitles are a nice effect.

Aliss claims that that everyone went crazy and she had to shoot her best friend Sal Van Hyten in self defence. (She didn't use her full name, I got that from the end credits. The corpse on the floor got a credit). The Doctor asks if there was a noise or a gas, two things she wouldn't necessarily be able to perceive, but that doesn't mean someone else wouldn't have made her aware of them. Plus it's an opportunity for her to mention other things of a similar nature that might be relevant.

Belinda gets another chance to be a nurse and treat Aliss's wound, which means she has to admit being clueless again. Though she does recognises simolin, which she used on Missbelindachandra One. This means Trooper 3 (Mo) gets to help out and endear herself to us. She's so much better than Trooper 1 and Trooper 2.

Though first Aliss has a line about how nurses are required by law to know sign language, which seems like a weird rule in a world with subtitle projectors. Personally I've never thought about the subject, but I feel like nurses probably have enough to do without having to learn a language on top of that. Though maybe I'm just saying that because I'm terrible at languages.

Aliss is really distraught by this whole ordeal... or at least she seems to be. She does give a suspicious look at the end of the scene.

The Doctor, Shaya and Cassio head to the titular well and it's giving me Impossible Planet vibes. The Doctor ended up jumping into the last pit, but he seems satisfied to stay dangerously close to the edge this time.

Shaya shows off her sharpshooting skills by sniping the restraining bolt on the system without putting a hole in the roof and the Doctor's more impressed than you'd think. He's not usually a fan of soldiers or guns. She gives us some backstory about how she grew up in the wildlands and she's been doing this since she was six.

The conversation turns to the subject of Earth, which confuses Shaya as she's never heard of it. Back in the other room, Belinda also realises that no one's heard of humans. It's a bit annoying that they're only now catching up to what we learned two episodes ago, but it serves a purpose in the story as it takes our mind away from the main plot so the episode can hit us with a jump scare.

Unfortunately it also took my eyes away from the screen (I was writing notes) so I missed the monster peeking out for a second! Though it's so subtle you could stare at this screencap and still miss it.

I like how the soldiers are all alerted by Belinda's reaction even though they didn't see anything themselves. A lot of the time in situations like this someone will see something and not tell anyone, or they'll tell everyone and the others don't believe it. Here Belinda is trying to dismiss it as being nothing, while they're talking it seriously.

Aliss herself isn't volunteering any information, she's just being very innocent in the centre of her circle. I've noticed that when a character has a disability in these episodes they tend to end up in the middle of things, with lots of attention being drawn to their situation and what they have to deal with.

Trooper 2, Kai Sabba, decides to go around the side to have a look for sneaky aliens, but there's nothing. Well, nothing he can see anyway.

Kai was played by basketball player Gaz Choudhry and he's not a major character in this at all. The episode draws no attention whatsoever to the fact that the character and actor has an artificial leg. Doctor Who can do subtle, it's just harder to notice.

Back at the well, it turns out the logs have been erased, but the Doctor fixes that in a second with his sonic and calls it magic. Cassio really isn't impressed by the Doctor's antics at all, but Shaya tells him he has to put up with him, so we're definitely being encouraged to like one and not the other.

Unfortunately the log isn't much use. Something came from the well, that's all we get. Then the episode pulls the exact same trick twice, with Belinda asking Aliss if she's met any humans and getting another jump scare.

It kind of works though.

I'm more bothered by the way the episode is dragging out the Doctor and Belinda's revelation that humanity isn't around anymore like it's something I should be shocked about. I saw Robot Revolution, I know this already! Also the season isn't going to end with Earth being gone, as without it where would all the young relatable female modern day companions come from? RTD's not going to give us the next Leela, Nyssa or Romana.

Incidentally I mentioned this before, but the set design in this story really reminds me of The Impossible Planet from RTD's original series 2. Except with more of a budget.

Doctor Who (2005) 2-08: The Impossible Planet

Colony Base 15 has the same kind of worn out sci-fi look as Sanctuary Base 6, the same kind of colour scheme, the same doors with hand wheels on. It even has the big pit with a monster in it.

Which makes it kind of ironic that this is the story that the Doctor doesn't bring out the iconic orange Sanctuary Base 6 spacesuit. It's been worn by Ten, Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen over the years, but hasn't been seen at all in this new era.

Man this place is looking run down. It doesn't seem like paint technology has improved at all over 500,000 years. At least, it didn't for the Lombardics.

The troopers are getting a bit concerned now, despite Aliss doing a twirl to prove there's nothing on her back.

Kai is the one giving the orders while Shaya and Cassio are away and it seems like he's the kind of guy who's better at dealing with threats than with people. He even tells Belinda to be quiet or else she'll be considered a threat herself! And they're a unit so even though they're keeping it together, everyone's following his lead.

Back at the well the Doctor does his "I'm really old and I'm struggling to remember something from a past episode" routine. It helps when Shaya gives him further information... the sun used to put out x-tonic rays, the surface used to be covered in diamonds. And the planet is called Midnight.

OH SHIT IT'S THE MIDNIGHT PLANET FROM THE EPISODE MIDNIGHT!!

Okay to be honest I already knew about the twist as I stumbled into a spoiler a day or two earlier, so this shocking reveal had zero impact for me. I had the same reaction that people do to Harriet Jones while telling her "Yes, I know who you are".

Though at least I get the reference! All the new fans this run was supposed to be pulling in have no idea what Midnight is, and there's been none of the set up that the 2005 run did to make the Daleks and the Master a big deal before their first appearances.

We get a quick flashback to the episode and, oh hey it's the Tenth Doctor! It's always the Tenth Doctor in these flashbacks. Or sometimes the Fourth Doctor. They should flash back to the Eleventh Doctor era someday, those episodes are all HD!

No one on planet Earth is curious how the original scene looks in comparison, but I'm gonna show you anyway!

Doctor Who (2005) 4-10 - Midnight

It turns out that the Doctor's eyes and teeth weren't actually blue. Which is funny, because I remember the 2000s being the time that 'teal and orange' colour grading was at its worst. You can't tell without clicking on the screencap to view it full size, but the footage hasn't been AI upscaled or processed to make it look like a memory.

It's funny how they're back here again, as it's the third 'M' location in a row: Missbelindachandra One, Miami, Midnight. Though I definitely prefer it to when every location began with an 'L': London, London, London.

Anyway, the three of them race back. Meanwhile the others are still looking for that monster, with trooper 4, Hanno Yeft, performing a complete orbit of poor terrified Aliss.

And Hanno suddenly get launched into the air like she failed to tell you the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Sorry, my mind went straight to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and that isn't helping me take any of this seriously. I know that they've got a budget to spend now but it might have been better if she'd just dropped on the spot with a crunch sound.

This time the episode hasn't taken the time to introduce all the characters as it's focused on the growing division between Cassio and Shaya. The others will fall in line with whoever's in charge. Midnight is all about an entity driving a group of regular people to turn on each other out of fear and paranoia, while this is about how a trained military squad responds as a unit. It's the Aliens to Midnight's Alien.

Unfortunately Cassio was already aggressive and the death of his friend Hanno hasn't helped his mood.

Shaya tells Cassio to listen to the Doctor, but the Doctor says listen to Belinda! The dude loves explaining things to people, but he also likes to learn and she's the one who's realised what's going on here.

I'm not sure the episode explains this clearly enough even with Belinda's scale model for everyone to get it on their first watch, but here's how it seems to work: There needs to be two people on exact opposite sides of Aliss before someone gets killed by the creature, and it's always the person behind her that gets launched. The Doctor mentions that if they were the hands of a clock they'd be killed at midnight, but really with two people it's more like 6 o'clock.

Cassio wonders what would happen if they just killed Aliss, which encourages her to reveal some new information. If you kill the host, the creature jumps to you instead. That's why everyone died, they killed each other to get rid of it. So Aliss knew what was going on the whole time and decided to keep it to herself to protect her own neck.

Cassio's managed to learn crucial information by doing his own thing, he's not being all that restrained by Shaya or the Doctor having authority over him, but he ain't happy. The Doctor keeps being weird and saying things like "I was here 400,000 years ago", and Shaya keeps listening to him, so he's declaring a Red Code and taking command! It only takes one other person to back him up and Kai is quick to volunteer his support.

I get that the Midnight entity's whole deal to screw with people until they turn on each other, but I don't feel like this is a guy who's been pushed far enough to turn against his commander. Or pushed at all really! It's a bit of a flaw in the episode for me and that's a problem as this is the division the story was building to.

Cassio's plan is to make the creature visible by putting everyone else behind Aliss while he walks in front. That way they'll be able to see it when it makes a move!

Personally my plan would be to make her step backwards until she's against a wall, and then I'd go off and make everyone a cup of tea.

As soon as Cassio moves so that Aliss is in front of Kai the chaos starts. If they'd just stood still he would've been the only casualty, but the big drama music starts playing as everyone stumbles around and goes flying everywhere. We even get some shots looking up at the CGI ceiling as they go sailing by, which I appreciate, though it doesn't make people getting thrown up into the air look any less funny.

Shaya decides it's time to retake command of this mess. It's already been established that they can broadcast subtitles to another device if Aliss isn't looking at them, and she uses this to tell her to spin 180 degrees. Then she steps in line with Cassio, using the creature to murder him.

Man, that was ice cold and everyone has the appropriate amount of yelling when it happens, but no one's giving Shaya a lecture afterwards. Something had to be done to save her team and she did it. Sad thing is, Aliss was the only one who could be counted on to follow instructions or else she could've just told Cassio to sit on his ass and not move.

There are two moments here that feel like they're trying to tie Aliss's deafness into the plot more. First she gets upset when the Doctor turns his back and she can't read what he's saying anymore. Then the Doctor goes to speak to the entity directly and says she must have survived because she can't hear the whispers. No explanation for what that means!

Whatever it's whispering it's making the Doctor cry. Also it mentioned his name, which is a big deal in Doctor Who.

Though to be honest this scene didn't really work for me because a: the Doctor cries once an episode, it's just a thing he does and b: the entity is already digging up enough trauma and terror for the guy, they didn't need to add a cherry on top.

But the Doctor notices something behind Aliss and the fantastic Fifteenth Doctor theme starts playing. He's going to have a big hero moment in this story! That's something I wouldn't mind happening more often. I feel like I've been saying that since the start of the Thirteenth Doctor era.

There's just one problem: it seems too early in the story for a win.

The Doctor has Shaya shoot the mercury pipe running across the room creating a mirror! This means that the thing behind the entity is itself, and Aliss gets thrown forward. But in a safe way that doesn't crush any bones.

So shooting guns saved the day! But now they've got to run, especially as the Doctor and Belinda will need to get suited up.

Here's what's weird about the episode though: I don't recall anyone mentioning any kind of time pressure. The Doctor and Belinda could've gone off, put their suits on and then came back. They could've brought a suit for Aliss to wear too.

Anyway they've released poisonous mercury in here so they really need to be anywhere else immediately. Though out in the corridor the Doctor does something really stupid: he stops to look at the monster. He just has to know what it looks like.

Well I hope that was worth it Doctor. Now we know what the Midnight entity looks like. It's... a smudgy low resolution shape in the shadows. Especially if you're watching the iPlayer version.

Funny thing is, this isn't out of character for the Doctor at all. He did the same thing with the werewolf back in Tooth and Claw.

Troopers 7 and 9 are sent into the airlock first to get Aliss out. So she's gone from the story now. This leaves the Doctor, Belinda, Shaya and Mo.

Then there's a close up of the airlock panel revealing that there are four occupants. This seems a bit unnecessarily cruel to me, considering how the episode ends. The monster has apparently escaped the pit by latching onto someone and this time there's no Rose around to eject them into space.

But then room is hit by something and the heroes realise that the creature got in there with them. The creature that was chasing them that is, not the one that left in the airlock.

So now we get an opportunity for some proper The Thing-style paranoia as the heroes each try to convince the others that they're not the host.

Except the episode doesn't do that. Everyone's very reasonable, they each correctly determine that the creature isn't on their back and they don't accuse each other of lying about it. So they soon figure out that it has to be Belinda and shockingly the Doctor offering himself in her place does not work.

The only way to get the creature off is to kill her. Or go back to a mercury pipe, but that's effort. I suppose they could have someone bring a mirror here from the ship.

Yeah it's unambiguously behind Belinda, you can see it there for a moment.

So like her descendant Mundy Flynn, Belinda has to get non-lethally shot to trick the villain. Fortunately Shaya is such an excellent shot that she can aim directly 3 millimetres above her heart, or whatever. I like that after all the times Belinda has asked if alien physiology was similar to human, now someone else is asking it about her, though I'm not sure human bodies are similar enough to each other to pinpoint a person's heart that accurately.

Anyway, what Belinda was scared of in episode 1 actually happens: she gets shot on one of the Doctor's adventures. But she'll survive until they can get her treatment, assuming all the air in her suit doesn't leak out of the hole.

Shaya's hair is blown around, indicating that the creature's gone to her now (or someone next to her at least), and she starts running.

And then we get this weird sequence where Shaya delivers a voice over while we see her running as a kid.

I understand what the episode is doing, but I don't think we needed to see Shaya's backstory to appreciate the heroic sacrifice she's making. She talks about how she joined up to help and protect and bring hope, which I guess shows she's had a bit of an arc as she was talking about hope being irrelevant at the start of the episode.

But this only managed to take me out of the moment. You can get away with giving a side character the ending narration if you're smart about it, like how Forest of the Dead ends with River Song's narration after she sacrifices herself. But we didn't get a flashback to River's adventure with the Doctor before she did it, as it wasn't necessary. The hostess in Midnight didn't get a flashback before sacrificing herself either now that I think about it.

I could start listing other people as well, as every episode this season has had someone sacrificing themselves at the end. Belinda and Al blew themselves up in The Robot Revolution, Reginald Pye blew himself up in Lux, and now Shaya is diving into a well.

Afterwards Mo reports to Mrs Flood, who is very happy to hear that the Doctor is using a vindicator. Interesting that she knows that name seeing as the Doctor just coined it in the TARDIS and hasn't told anyone else but Belinda.

I know I mentioned earlier that they were taking this sci-fi setting seriously instead of giving it an exaggerated retro look, but that control panel back there is very '80s. In a good way though, it looks great. And the corridor outside is very Aliens. Speaking of which, the Doctor agreed with Cassio in the end: the site should be nuked from orbit.

And the episode concludes with a stock horror movie ending where one of the troopers thinks that she sees something behind Mo, and we get the whispers to confirm it. It reminds me of Sleep No More, and I don't appreciate it when things remind me of Sleep No More.

Though things could be worse I guess. It seems like the episode really did go full Aliens and had multiple Midnight entities, but if the airlock revealed four occupants then there was only one bad guy in there. Also Mo might have something on her back, but the Doctor and Belinda seem to be clean. So only two Midnight entities escaped and the rest got nuked.

Did Shaya's heroic death help at all? Maybe! Who knows.


CONCLUSION

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It's not really helping my credibility to be so harsh to episodes everyone else on the internet loves, but I'm not going to lie and say this one had me gripped from the start. I can't pretend that I found Cassio's conflict with Shaya well motivated or compelling.

But it's a bit of a mystery why this didn't entirely work for me, as on paper it has everything I want from Doctor Who. It doesn't just look great, it looks like a high-budget version of The Impossible Planet, one of my favourite episodes. It takes itself seriously without any implausibly retro sci-fi designs or fourth wall-breaking weirdness, and the fantasy elements are well within Doctor Who's version of reality. It has some good characters performed by good actors, with Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss being a stand out. The Doctor is very Doctory, Belinda uses her skills as a nurse. Murray Gold's soundtrack is exactly as it should be.

I think what it comes down to is that I had a long wait between things I found interesting. Other cosmic horror episodes like The Impossible Planet, Midnight and Wild Blue Yonder took their time to set the scene and establish the threat as well, but they had people having conversations in the meantime. The Well focuses more on building tension, which I guess I spoiled by looking down at my notepad during all the jump scares. Plus when it finally gets to the bit where the Midnight twist is reveal and troopers start losing their cool and Cassio declares a Red Code, two minutes later and the survivors are calmly working on rational solutions. Then there's the scene in the airlock, and then it's over. That's the episode.

It probably didn't help that the Midnight reveal was wasted on me, as I'd got spoiled. That's not the only thing that's been leaked about this season, but I've avoided everything else... so far. Though I'm not sure the Midnight connection really helps the episode, or helps Midnight for that matter. I'm not one of those people who wants monsters to remain unexplained, I'm a Star Trek guy, give me a full scientific report of everything and then tell me how we can make friends with it, but I can see how others would be annoyed that RTD couldn't just leave a great episode alone.

I suppose my scientific report about this creature would be along the lines of "Does something entirely different this time around, basically unrecognisable in its behaviour and we never learn if it was actually hurt by the mirror or if it was just screwing with people as part of its game". I mean if I was an invisible entity who attaches to a host and I wanted to escape a planet, I'd teach their rescuers a fake trick to get rid of me and then when they thought they'd won I'd walk away with the host.


RATING

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Doctor Who episodes that begin with "The" have a higher rating on average, but this one was a bit of a disappointment to me. In fact I was going to give it 5/10, but I'm going to bump it up because the scene where Shaya takes out Cassio was great. Also the episode didn't really do anything that would drag my score down. Well, aside from the spacesuit bit at the start. And Shaya's voiceover flashback scene as she runs at the end. So the episode gets:

6/10

I thought it was worse than The Impossible Planet, Silence in the Library and Wild Blue Yonder, but better than 42 and Sleep No More.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it looks like we're going into a high-tech underground bunker in series 1 Doctor Who story Dalek!

But before that, do you have anything you feel like saying about The Well? Am I being way too harsh with my scores?