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The Faceless Ones

8TH APRIL 1967 - 13TH MAY 1967

(6 EPISODES)

The Faceless Ones is, in my view, one of the strongest stories of the Patrick Troughton era. Sadly though, with four of the six episodes missing, this serial is one that

was for a long time overlooked by fandom. However, in the last few years the commercial release of the existing episodes and also the complete serial’s soundtrack has helped the story to become much more widely known and appreciated. Even so, The Faceless Ones still lacks the lofty profile that missing serials such as The Evil of the Daleks and both the Yeti stories enjoy, despite it being every bit as good.

Doing my usual trick of watching the existing episodes and then cobbling together a primitive telesnap reconstruction on my PC (using the soundtracks of the missing episodes narrated by Frazer Hines in conjunction with the telesnaps available on the BBC website), I was able to get a good visual feel for this story - a story way ahead of its time in terms of visual effects. Judging by the telesnaps, the ‘switchblade’ Chameleon Tours plane looks superb, as do the RAF sequences.

Better still, right from the word go The Faceless Ones is a captivating story, at each and every turn doing exactly what Doctor Who does best. I mean, what better start could you

have for a story than the TARDIS materialising on the runway of Gatwick Airport, right in the path of an incoming jet?

The story works beautifully on two fronts. First off, the Doctor Who part of the plot is brilliant. Like a lot of the best stories, it borrows from a lot of classic horror movies. The Chameleons with their blank, inhuman faces are absolutely chilling in themselves, but the fact that they steal people’s identities makes them all the more disturbing, as does the sheer scale of

their plan – 50,000 abductions! As the story progresses though, the writers allow the Chameleons to win our sympathy somewhat; their entire race lost their identities and faces in a planetary disaster and are dying out. Malcolm Hulke is particularly good at creating

alien menaces that the audience can sympathise with, and even understand. Would we not do the same in their position? It’s a recurring theme in Hulke’s work, but one that never gets old.

Of course, the Chameleons having stolen the identities of many airport personnel results in a textbook ‘who can we trust’ scenario, with the Doctor put in the familiar position of having to try and convince the powers that be of the Chameleon threat. This brings me to the second aspect of why I like this story so much – the characters. Hulke also has a knack for creating very real, very sympathetic characters, but along with co-writer David Ellis he truly excels himself here, creating not only very believable supporting characters but also very amusing ones. The script simply sparkles – the first few episodes in particular are electric; the

scenes between the Doctor and the Commandant (brought to life wonderfully by Colin Gordon) had me in stitches. The second Doctor is always good at playing the fool and lulling his enemies into a false sense of security, but at times in The Faceless Ones the innocent look on the Doctor's face as he takes the Commandant’s sarcasm perfectly literally is wonderful to watch; hilarious stuff. It is also very rewarding to watch, as in the first episode the Commandant wants the Doctor locked up for being completely mad, and by the end of the final episode he trusts him implicitly with the fate of the world.

Another thing that really makes this serial stand out above many of its contemporaries is its setting. I don’t know exactly how expensive this story was to make, but on screen it certainly looks like it might have eaten up more than its fair share of the season’s budget. The extensive location shoot at Gatwick really gives the story a unique sense of atmosphere and, even in the studio-bound indoor scenes, aircraft noises etc have been added to the sound-track to really hammer home the location. Moreover, in shifting the action to a space station in the last couple of episodes the story really sustains itself well across the six episodes. There are not many six-parters out there than can hold my attention throughout in just one sitting, but this is one of them.

The only real criticism I have of The Faceless Ones is how the companions are handled. Any story where two companions go missing for nearly four episodes is bound to suffer, although in fairness due to both Michael Craze and Anneke Wills leaving the show having their absence in the middle of the story with a brief ‘goodbye’ cameo at the end is preferable to Dodo’s inauspicious exit in The War Machines – “oh Doctor, Dodo says bye” – and also Ben and Polly’s disappearance does lend a sense of urgency to the Doctor and Jamie’s search.

In the absence of Ben and Polly, Ellis and Hulke come up with a makeshift companion in the form of Samantha Briggs (Pauline Collins), who from watching the serial looked like a dead-cert replacement for Ben and Polly. Sam is a feisty young scouse girl who takes a definite shine to Jamie. There is a lovely chemistry between them that I thought would bode well for future stories – they even have a quick snog as Jamie picks her pockets and steals her plane ticket! For some reason though, Sam lost out to Victoria (who is introduced in the next story) so we will never know what might have been. Instead, we have a quick, understated goodbye to Ben and Polly, and then the Doctor and Jamie are off in pursuit of the stolen TARDIS, leading us into probably he most highly-regarded story of Doctor Who’s black and white era…

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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