The Faceless Ones

“The Faceless Ones” is, in my opinion, one of the strongest stories of the Patrick Troughton era. Sadly, with four of the six episodes missing, this serial is one that is often overlooked by fandom. In the last few years, the release of the existing episodes commercially (initially as part of “The Reign of Terror” box set on VHS, and then more recently on the Lost in Time DVD) as well as the release of the complete story’s soundtrack from the BBC Radio Collection, has helped the story become more widely known. Even so, it still lacks the lofty profile that other ‘missing stories’ like “Marco Polo,” “The Evil of the Daleks” and the Yeti stories enjoy, despite “The Faceless Ones” being every bit as good.

Doing my usual trick of watching the existing episodes and then cobbling together a primitive telesnap reconstruction on the PC (using the soundtracks of the missing episodes narrated by Frazer Hines in conjunction with the telesnaps from the BBC website) I was able to get a good visual feel for the 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. Moreover, right from the word go, “The Faceless Ones” is a captivating story, at every turn doing exactly what Doctor Who does best. I mean, what better start could you have than the TARDIS materialising on the runway of Gatwick Airport, right in the path of an incoming jet?

For me, the story of “The Faceless Ones” 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 combined with the fact that they steal people’s identities they are even more disturbing, as is 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. 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 Doctor Who stories, but it isn’t one that ever gets old.

Of course, the Chameleons having stolen the identities of many airport personnel, this 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. Malcolm Hulke has a knack for creating very real, very sympathetic characters, but along with co-writer David Ellis he excels himself here, creating not only very believable supporting characters but also very amusing ones. The script 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 his face as he takes the Commandant’s sarcasm perfectly literally is wonderful to watch; hilarious stuff. It’s 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 episode six he trusts him implicitly to save the world. Fantastic!

Another thing that really makes this serial stand above many of its contempories is its setting. I don’t know exactly how expensive this story was to make, but on screen it certainly looks like it had 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 soundtrack 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. There aren’t many six-parters than manage to hold the viewers’ attention throughout, 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 almost bound to suffer, though 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 give a sense of urgency to the Doctor and Jamie’s search. I just can’t work out how they got Polly’s hair back to normal after “The Macra Terror”…?

In the absence of Ben and Polly, Ellis and Hulke come up with a makeshift companion in Samantha Briggs (played by Pauline Collins, of “Tooth and Claw” fame), 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’s a lovely chemistry between 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’ll 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 possibly the most highly-regarded story of Doctor Who’s monochrome era…