You’ve got to feel a little sorry for ‘The Underwater Menace’. Here is a story that is never quite hated, but then again it is never really respected. It’s a story that is treated with acceptance rather than anything else: “It’s there, it was made, now deal with it!” Why is it then that I happen to rather enjoy it? Also, why is it that my enjoyment of it is marred by a sense of ‘I know I shouldn’t like you, but I cannot help it…’; why is this a guilty pleasure?

Perhaps it’s the fact that it is shameless in its stupidity, that for the most part it’s never trying to be anything other than fun (only the occasional educational fact popped in changes this), or maybe it’s because I have a secret love for B-movies: this is just that- ‘Doctor Who’ does B-movie.

Taking even a brief look at the plot is surely enough to confirm this. Under the sea in the world of Atlantis, genetically engineered Fish People go about their every day business. Despite being surrounded by salt, food cannot be preserved (silly, I know, but there you have it) and so things are on the unhappy side of things. But all is not lost- the world renowned Professor Zaroff has vowed to raise Atlantis from the seabed onto the surface… but is that really his plan, or does he simply wish to cause a massive explosion that will destroy the planet, thus earning him fame for life? Well, obviously the latter. Thank goodness the Doctor and his merry crew are at hand to save them all, with the help of some Zaroff-hating people and a hefty dose of common sense that seems to have avoided the good people of Atlantis. Throw in a false goddess (Amdo), a fish revolution and the Doctor dressing up as a Sailor (apparently- looks more like a sixties’ groovy Gypsy to me) and there you have ‘The Underwater Menace’ in all its glory.

It’s daft, but at least it’s fun and daft.

As mentioned above, the moments that briefly halt it from being totally silly are when they attempt to inject educational moments into the story. We get a short piece on Robert Burns in Episode 1 and a brief Science Lesson in Episode 2, both of which jar a little with the rest of the story, though the latter is needed to convince people that Zaroff is as ‘mad as a hatter’.

One of the things that makes ‘The Underwater Menace’ as strangely enjoyable as I find it to be is its dialogue. There are so many memorable lines throughout the story, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous:

“I could feed you to my pet Octopus!”

“May the wrath of Amdo engulf you!” / ”I’ll take my chance!”

“Look at him- he ain’t normal is he?”

and then, of course, we have the famous ending to Episode 3: “Nothing in the world can sop me now!”

It’s a line so good, we get it delivered in a different way at the start of Episode 4, but nothing quite matches the insanity of the first time.

Amongst all the madness too, there are some truly nice moments, especially in Episode 3, which at the time of writing is the only one to exist in the BBC archives. A throwaway line concerning the madness in Zaroff’s eyes in Episode 2 is carried on over briefly into Episode 3; there is a nice part where the Doctor, Ben and Jamie pop up from behind a stone, each wearing a Fish Mask to disguise themselves; the Market scene in this Episode also looks great. Considering how poor crowd scenes can sometimes look in ‘Doctor Who’ stories owing to budgetary restraints, poor Directing and lacklustre set design, the Market looks brilliant. Julia Smith brings the Market place to life with lots of talking, animated citizens and a general feeling of claustrophobic busyness. Another visually stunning part of Episode 3 is the sequence with the Fish People swimming to tell one another about a forthcoming rebellion. Again, Smith uses Jack Robinson’s excellent set design to full advantage, making these moments really impressive. There are two things, however, that let this part down: firstly, it is simply too long, which is party forgivable due to how nice it looks but despite this is still a problem; secondly, the Fish People themselves vary in quality. Those in full Fish-garb look brilliant, but they are sadly overshadowed by the fact that several of the actors are blatantly just wearing goggles and some plastic ‘gills’.

There are some other disappointing moments; Zaroff’s escape in Episode 3 for example makes the TARDIS crew look very foolish indeed, especially Polly, fooling as they do for the age old ‘pretend-you’re-ill-and-collapse’ trick. Also, in Episode 3, I’m amazed that the Doctor and Ramo were able to flee the sacrifice, considering how noisy they are when making their escape. Episode 2 suffers from the overlong and rather dull sequences in the mine, with the only value to the overall story being the introduction of Sean and Jacko, two supporting characters that are rather fun but not as likeable as either Ramo or Ara. The worst Episode of them all is the final one; Episode 4 is very slow compared to the rest of the story and also quite dark. The death of Zaroff by drowning is visually impressive but rather at odds with everything else seen in the story; also, the ending is surprisingly dull, with the TARDIS crew leaving without any real farewells to the rest of the cast. In short, it comes across as a bit rushed and boring.

The acting on the whole is good here; the regular cast play everything well. Patrick Troughton is never anything less than great and he plays the Doctor here with a real sense of fun; Michael Craze and Anneke Wills also impress, sustaining the thus far enjoyable pairing of Ben and Polly. Frazer Hines as Jamie is also great; when considering how this is only his second story in the part, it is impressive to see just how comfortable Hines is in the role; there is no sense of him finding his feet or seeming decidedly new. Instead, he comes across as if he has been doing the part for a far longer time than he had been- a sign, if nothing else, of him being a really good actor.

The supporting cast are also quite strong; as Ara and Ramo respectively, Catherine Howe and Tom Watson give their roles everything they’ve got. As Thous, Noel Johnson is also good, as is Peter Stephens as Lolem, though I couldn’t watch him or listen to him without thinking of his performance as Cyril in ‘The Celestial Toymaker’.

However, all of these actors are overshadowed- and rightly so- by Joseph Furst as Professor Zaroff. Taking the script at face value, Furst invests a remarkably large amount of energy into the role, playing it totally over-the-top and exactly as it should be played. He takes the stereotypical Mad Scientist role and plays it with all the eccentricities and craziness that it warrants. He is, easily, the highlight of the story, and it is a pity that he never returned to ‘Doctor Who’.

‘The Underwater Menace’ is not as bad as everyone makes out. Sure, it’s very, very silly indeed and is certainly a little lacking in parts- the ending is out of place compared to the rest of the story for example- but it is on the whole a fun affair. Zaroff is a great creation, and Furst plays the role superbly; everyone seems to having a lot of fun and Julia Smith’s Directing is excellent. Geoffrey Orme’s script is not going to win any awards, but it fulfils the fun-but-flawed category amply.

So daft it encourages you to laugh along with it, and so B-moiveesque that Ed Wood could have written it, ‘The Underwater Menace’ isn’t bad at all. It’s just a bit silly.

‘The Underwater Menace’ is an absurdity. The Discontinuity Guide describes it as Doctor Who’s equivalent of Plan 9 From Outer Space, but fails to note that Plan 9 From Outer Space is a much loved turkey with a cult following, whereas ‘The Underwater Menace’ is a story rarely mentioned and discussed with stunned disbelief on those rare occasions.

The plot of ‘The Underwater Menace’ is ludicrous. Professor Zaroff wants to destroy the world and everyone including himself along with it (for the recognition that this achievement will bring him – no, really) because he is mad. He intends to achieve this aim by drilling a hole through the Earth’s crust and emptying the sea into it magma, producing steam that will make the planet explode. And not in any way simply produce an undersea volcano, which are a common phenomenon. I think this all speaks for itself really; what is most alarming about Zaroff’s plan is that the Doctor believes that it will work, so either he knows something we don’t, or he’s suffering from delayed post-regenerative trauma. It doesn’t help that Zaroff has absolutely no motivation whatsoever that we learn about, he’s merely a clichéd B-movie megalomaniac mad scientist who is obviously a nutter but suffers from no discernable actual convincing mental illness or personality disorder that exists in real life. As preposterous as this plot is, ‘The Underwater Menace’ could save some face by having superb characterisation and marvelous production values. Sadly, it does not. 

The Atlanteans are all your basic Superstitious Primitives, one or two of whom Zaroff has trained in scientific disciplines but most of whom are either stupid enough to trust a blatantly raving lunatic (stand up, King Thous), or spend their time sacrificing strangers to a giant fish with rather unsubtle frothing religious mania. Some of the Atlanteans are stupid beyond words, the scene in which Ben and Polly trick Lolem armed only with amateur ventriloquist skills in particular of note. Still, at least it distracts the viewer from the almost terminally wooden acting of Paul Anil and P. G. Stephens as Jacko and Sean, respectively, the latter exhibiting the least convincing Irish accent in television history. Then there’s the costumes and set design. Listening to episodes one and two spares the listener the sight of these until the fully surviving episode three, when it transpires that the costume designer thought that hanging fake clamshell bathroom ornaments on the actors would be a good idea. The Atlanteans look ridiculous, especially Lolem, who appears to have modeled himself on Christopher Biggins in full panto dame mode and is wearing the most preposterous headdress ever seen in the series. At least this extravagance compensates for Zaroff however, who is dressed in a white boiler suit, although his status as a lunatic compels him to don a cloak. The sets on the other hand are rather good, especially the water-filled home of the Fish People. 

In the midst of all this twaddle, surely we can turn to the regulars to salvage the story? Only to an extent; Troughton could act in his sleep, and he rises to the challenge of the script of ‘The Underwater Menace’ admirably, although why exactly the Doctor decides that wearing a large pair of shades will make him look inconspicuous in Atlantis in episode three is anyone’s guess. In addition, there is some witty dialogue, including his scene with Ben, when his companion, posing as a guard, argues of his “prisoner”, “blimey, look at him – he ain’t normal, is he?” On the other hand, it stretches credibility that Polly, let alone the Doctor, would fall for Zaroff’s transparent heart attack trick. Another problem is that of Ben and Jamie. Whilst I like both companions, they both vie for the same role in the Doctor/Companion dynamic, a problem of which the production team is clearly aware and for which at least Geoffrey Orme can’t be blamed. Consequently, they spend most of the time paired up here to very little effect, suggesting that Jamie has been crow barred into the script at the last minute and given half of Ben’s action and dialogue. Worse still, they are then teamed up with the functionally equivalent Jacko and Sean, which leaves them with even less to do; had Ben or Jamie been the one to rouse the Fish People to rebellion for example, it would have been a far more appropriate use of their characters. Polly provides the cliffhanger to episode one, but does little else save fall for the line “allow me to stand by your side, so that I may feel ze aura of your goodness”, about which less said the better. 

So is ‘The Underwater Menace’ totally unsalvageable? Actually, no: almost in spite of itself it is bizarrely entertaining. Joseph Furst as Zaroff is totally over the top, but given his character’s complete lack of scripted motivation and deranged B-movie plan, he probably realized that this was the only way to play the part, and he seems to be enjoying himself immensely, especially in his scenes with the Doctor. The infamous “Nothing in the world can stop me now!” line at the end of episode three has passed somewhat surprisingly into fan consciousness and is certainly memorable. Troughton too, perhaps recognizing the paucity of the script, throws caution to the wind and acts with mania, as witnessed in the daft chase scene in episode three. The Fish People too are notable, since the fully transformed ones look quite good. The notoriously pointless scene of them swimming about in episode three is indeed superfluous but is well staged. 

On the whole, ‘The Underwater Menace’ is rubbish, but it is mildly diverting rubbish.

Despite being the first of several rip-offs of The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase is dynamic fun from a consistently high-quality period of the show’s history. It is a glimpse of Troughton before he injected the humour into his characters, and is one of the few stories featuring Ben and Polly that have any notable amount left in the archives. That, and it sees the Cybermen at the peak of their design. While it has its critics, it’s essential viewing.

The handy thing about having a decent amount of material left is that it becomes quite easy to visualise the missing stuff in my head. The turbulence in the TARDIS at the beginning is particularly easy to see, since it’s the kind of thing that’s been done several times elsewhere – but then this is a Pedler / Davis story, and nobody milked successful ideas quite like them. Like many opening scenes this one is slightly stiff, although even without visuals it’s plainly obvious that Troughton is at his menacing best and out-acting everyone in the room. It’s as if only he knows how to play the scene properly.

The film-recorded lunar surface looks brilliant (although it’s hardly a complex set) as does the model work of the moonbase itself; however, call me a cynic but those comedy sound-effects do not bode well for how the scene may have played out. As it is, it just sounds as if they’re being attacked by a giant Clanger moving in slow-motion. It is helped though, as is the story in general, by some excellent stock music. The audio-only episode is helped a great deal by the ambient sounds of the moonbase; the whine of the Gravitron and the peaceful breathing sound of the sick-bay (which you can first hear in The Keys Of Marinus, trivia fans!), which serve to spoon ambience onto the story.

While I mention the Gravitron: it’s a seriously pulpy idea I grant you, but simplicity doesn’t have to be a bad thing as long as the episode doesn’t try to be complex in other departments that then clash with it. This episode makes no claim to be particularly groundbreaking: it removes all unnecessary material in favour of tension and action. I wouldn’t like it if the programme was like this all the time, but every so often it’s great.

The actors sound appropriately worn out by the problems they are facing; their complete lack of horror when one of their members is struck down by the virus is disconcerting to the viewer, who is not so familiar with what is happening at this stage. The revelation that something is monitoring the humans sets up a nice bit o’ mystery for me; people who read my reviews will be sick of hearing me go on about mystery, but it’s what I love the most about the early stages of episodes. Hobson dismisses what he sees as fantasy; he is well played by Patrick Barr who manages to make him a practical and sceptical man without being pompous or narrow-minded. 

The first scene in the sickroom is charming, as Poly is a much underrated companion. The Doctor noting the importance of Jamie’s beliefs is a good moment of characterisation, helped by the fact that it’s just a quick sentence rather than a great soliloquy about All Getting Along. In general, the dialogue in this story is very naturalistic, although in the second half the Cybermen’s comes across as simply functional.

The scene in the food store falls a bit flat, tension-by-numbers. You can feel Mark Heath waiting a set number of seconds before jumping and crying “who’s there?”; the effect is that you think “this is tense” without actually feeling it. However, the simple but dramatic special effect of the Cyberman weapon firing may have helped.

The time-cycle sequence in the sickbay is a nice idea (adding to the realism), but is let down by the Doctor explaining it exhaustively; the exposition is probably the main failing of the story. It’s a natural enough inclusion in the script, but it goes into so much unnecessary detail that it just ends up patronising the audience. However, like most of the episode’s problems it has a mitigating moment right alongside it, in this case the Doctor quizzing Polly about whether she’s making fun of him. However, Evans’s cry of “the silver hand!” spoils things a bit; it tries too hard to be enigmatic and come across as merely an unlikely thing to scream out (why just the hands?), which dents the episode’s realistic feel for a moment.

Polly’s scream as she sees something, and the subsequent tension, is made all the more effective by the ever-peaceful sound of the sickbay; this episode works extremely well on audio. The cliffhanger, assuming it’s the same as the reprise (sometimes they were re-recorded), would be great.

The fact that we can see the second episode properly doesn’t dent its atmosphere, as happened to some when Day Of Armageddon was found. This is a very tense episode, focussing on the mystery virus; the Cybermen add to the tension by only appearing fleetingly, and not having any lines. They look so good here that it’s difficult to believe that there are only three serials separating this from The Tenth Planet.

The Doctor’s much-quoted “some corners of the universe” speech is brilliantly delivered by Troughton, but does express a rather simplistic moral code; this is something given to him by Pedler and Davis, as the line that best sums that attitude up (“evil must be destrooooooooyed!”) comes from their next story The Tomb Of The Cybermen.

The Doctor claims to have received a medical degree from Lister in 1888; the Doctor’s changing qualifications have been controversial, but I explain them by feeling that the Doctor, when pressed, just tells whatever story is convenient to him. After all, it is his supposed medical qualification that is keeping him on the moonbase.

The long scene of trying to get the Gravitron under control is let down by excess technobabble, although Denis McCarthy does a good job as controller Rinberg, a laconic politician with no idea of the reality of the situation. I shouldn’t be churlish, but a big tickertape computer is funny in a story set in 2070 (almost as funny as Terry Nation writing in a tape recorder in a story set in the year 4000). The sight of the Doctor going round stealing specimens is priceless, as is his later scene of bluffing Hobson into giving him more time.

The Cybermen, although amazingly dramatic when they’re not speaking, do spoil the mystery a bit (“Who’s responsible for this virus? What, them? Oh, alright then”). The killing of the spacewalkers could have been much better; the shadows falling over them have the makings of a great shot, but it’s cut away to some very crudely edited “action”. Also, isn’t putting the virus in the sugar leaving things to chance a bit, plot wise? You could pass it off as the Cybermen not fully understanding human custom, but even so it seems a bit of an unlikely scheme for these perfectly logical creatures. The scene where the Doctor realises that a Cybermen is in the room with them is amazingly tense, but the sight of a huge pair of boots sticking out from under a sheet is unintentionally funny. One thing I want to know: how do the Cybermen tie their bootlaces with only three fingers?

Their voices, though, are amazing; probably the programme’s best ever sound effect after the TARDIS. Peter Hawkins suffered for it, but nothing that came afterwards could compare to the inhuman drone that you here in this story. The best part of it is that it has no human element at all; later voices had a tendency to sound like someone talking into a modulator. However, its lack of emotion contrasts with some of their dialogue, particularly the baffling “clever, clever, clever”.

The pacing of the third episode is a bit crude with Jamie making a miraculous recovery right at the start of it. Polly explaining about the nail-varnish remover is another example of the plot being explained to the extent that it sounds childish. This contrasts with the thought that the Cybermen can manipulate their victims’ nervous systems and pilot them around by remote control, which is a very adult, horrific concept when you think about it.

The Doctor’s internal monologue is interesting for its novelty value, although I suspect it sounds better than it may have looked. The Cybermen’s different-weakness-each-time cliché begins here, and it would have been less obvious if their previous weakness to radiation hadn’t been mentioned.

The companions get to play Macho Man and Girly Girl witch each other for a bit; gender stereotypes seem to be a prerogative of the Pedler / Davis team, as it wouldn’t be until the David Whitaker-written The Wheel In Space that a woman appeared in a position of authority in a Cyberman story. I suspect that Davis is more to blame for this – in Revenge Of The Cybermen, for example, Sarah is the only female character.

I can imagine that the action scenes may have looked fairly good if Morris Barry’s work on The Tomb Of The Cybermen is anything to judge by; he’s not bad when it comes to spectacle, and the scenes with Benoit on the moon’s surface (film-recorded, don’t forget) could well have been fantastic. The third episode has another impressive cliffhanger, at least in concept.

The fourth episode sees a brief recap of the plot, showing a fairly crude grasp of the episodic format; this is worrying since Gerry Davis was script editor at the time. The sight of the saucers on the moon’s surface is not impressive, which is a shame as the visuals in this story are on the whole quite accomplished.

Is it me or is the Cyberman that operates the control box shorter than the rest? Alan Rowe is impressive in his limited role as a zombie, and the very realistic sound effect of him clubbing Sam to death is a rare moment of violence in Doctor Who that genuinely makes me wince – ironic in a story with a mortality rate of just 33.3%. Marching zombies seem a bit out of place in this episode, although they are well presented. However, it’s unlikely that nobody would notice Evans sneak through the control room, and when he gets to the ante-chamber he puts his hat on backwards.

The deflected rocket is a horrible idea, a slow and inevitable death; it contrasts with the more lightweight aspects of the story. “You’ll never get inside” – “We are inside already” is a cool exchange, followed by the brilliantly shot sequence where the dome is punctured; the Cyberman’s bazooka is also a high-quality special effect. However, the movement of the Gravitron to deal with the Cybermen is drawn out and slow, a moment of padding right when there should be a dramatic conclusion – which eventually consists of the Cybermen drifting away doing little dances, which is a shame. The time-scanner, right at the end, is a cheap excuse for a cliffhanger but it’s so minor I won’t complain about it much.

Despite slowing down in the second half The Moonbase is a strong, exciting story that shows the Cybermen at their best in design terms if not in writing. It is a worthy Cyberman episode, bettering any colour episode featuring them, and does not let the Troughton era down.

“The Moonbase” is an absolutely cracking little serial, and of all these missing stories, this story has such a wealth of photographic and audio material still existing that one can enjoy the story almost as it was originally intended. As with “The Crusade,” the Lost in Time DVD contains both existing episodes and the soundtracks to both the missing episodes, making the BBC Radio Collection CD virtually redundant. I say virtually, because I managed to get an extra bit of mileage out of mine, using the soundtrack with Frazer Hines’ narration in synch with the telesnaps on the BBC website to create a decent little reconstruction of Episodes 1 and 3!

I actually rate this story above both “The Tomb of the Cybermen” and “The Wheel In Space,” and although I prefer “The Invasion” as a story, this is definitely the best ‘proper’ Cybermen story of the Troughton era (the Cybermen we later see in “The Invasion” are overshadowed by Tobias Vaughn and UNIT. They barely even speak.) Surprisingly for a television show that aired in 1967, “The Moonbase” has a very realistic feel. The weather control device on the moon is populated by a very cosmopolitan crew, and the design of the place isn’t as cringe worthy as other contemporary takes on ‘the future.’ The story is also very good; fast-paced and exciting. The first episode sets things up wonderfully; Morris Barry’s direction is particularly good as he uses shadows of the Cybermen to build up the suspense – Joe Ahearne used a similar trick with the Daleks recently in “Bad Wolf” to similar effect, so Barry must have been doing something right! Sadly, lovely little touches like this don’t work on audio, but when combined with telesnaps you just about get the picture.

For the most part a tense and claustrophobic story, much of the plot revolves around the Doctor and his companions investigating the strange plague that is slowly killing the crew of the base. Like certain eagle-eyed viewers at home, the Doctor knows it is the Cybermen behind the plague, but he just can’t convince the crew of that until it is too late… However, Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’ script certainly isn’t without humour; and quite clever humour at that. “The Moonbase” is notorious for the sexist treatment Polly has to put up with, not only from the “make a cup of coffee, Polly” Doctor, but also from just about everyone else she comes across in the story!

“Not you, Polly. This is men’s work!”

And so Doctor Who is hammered by critics for being sexist, which at times is a fair criticism – but not here! These critics forget that it is Polly alone who creates the ‘pollycocktail’ that destroys some of the Cybermen! If anything, in having Polly help save the day, the writers of “The Moonbase” were actually taking the piss out of sexist people, not endorsing sexism!

“The Moonbase” isn’t perfect though. As with the previous story, Frazer Hines’ Jamie is given little to do as the result of being written in at the last minute. He’s unconscious for the first episode, and then spends half the serial in sickbay with a fever. Moreover, after four years of television the Doctor finally visits the moon which is great, but he’s accepted far too easily by the crew for my liking. And finally, after all the hype surrounding the Cybermats, they don’t really impress at all. The story about how they carry the plague is clever and works well, but sadly the visual effects of the time weren’t quite up to the job.

Images of the Cybermen coming out of the sewers near St. Paul’s Cathedral, or emerging from the Ice Tombs of Telos are burned into the memories of so many Doctor Who fans, but I would argue that the Cybermen marching across the surface of the moon with that evocative stock music (the same piece used in “The Tomb of the Cybermen”) playing is just as enduring an image... It’s a shame it’s missing.

“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…

Rightly overlooked. The Faceless Ones has points of interest, but as with The War Machines most of its good qualities are in the execution rather than the story. Admittedly I quite enjoyed the two surviving episodes, but reading the scripts almost sent me to sleep. It's thin even by the standards of six-parters and doesn't realise the potential of its ideas.

One problem is its use of the companions. Innes Lloyd wanted rid of Ben and Polly, so had them written out after two episodes here even though Michael Craze and Anneke Wills were still contracted to get paid through to Evil of the Daleks. That I don't mind. The Doctor, Jamie and their latest bit of skirt is a better team than Troughton's four-man TARDIS crew, even though I like the characters. Evil of the Daleks is certainly better for not having to make room for Ben and Polly. Nevertheless it's odd to see them simply disappear, not to mention a wasted opportunity. Make them evil! Creep out the audience! That's the whole point of Invasion of the Body Snatchers stories. You can't trust anyone, even your friends. However here the Gatwick staff are impersonal and officious from the beginning, so it makes less difference to see them get turned into Chameleons.

Admittedly there's thematic mileage in this. The 1978 and 1993 remakes of the 1956 film of Invasion of the Body Snatchers both dropped the original's "cosy small-town America" for a more impersonal setting, where you might almost think you were surrounded by pod people to start with. In 1978 they went for the big city (San Francisco), then in 1993 they went the whole hog by choosing a military base in Alabama. Nevertheless somehow I don't think the Doctor Who production office in 1967 were thinking it through that deeply. Having Ben and Polly duplicated isn't being treated as a story opportunity, but simply as a plot device to write them out in favour of the Doctor, Jamie and Samantha.

The latter's good, by the way. Pauline Collins is best known these days for a distinguished fifty-year acting career including Shirley Valentine and (for Doctor Who fans) Queen Victoria in Tooth and Claw. In 1967 Innes Lloyd asked her to become a regular, but she declined. It's a shame. She'd have been fun, with a Wendy Padbury-like cuteness. She's blatantly the Temporary Companion, chirpily tagging along with Jamie and the Doctor like a prototype Zoe or Victoria.

In fairness Ben and Polly pop back in part six for a rather good (but pre -filmed) leaving scene. That was a nice surprise. Nevertheless I wonder what the contemporary audience must have thought, not knowing everything in advance as we do now. If it's disconcerting for us, it must have been downright bewildering in 1967.

However the production is better than its scripts. It's an odd fish... contemporary to 1967 and so to modern eyes practically a historical. What's more, it has lots of locations and a good sense of place. You get a feel for Gatwick Airport and its petty officialdom that probably hasn't changed an iota since the sixties. All this background is vital, since it gives the Chameleons something to subvert when they start taking over. They work really well. They're sinister, albeit not technically evil. They're merely cold, ruthless and arrogant, in particular being confident in their superior intelligence to the point of stupidity. The production definitely gains atmosphere and verisimilitude for not being set on some cardboard-corridor alien planet. I like the whistling music too.

There are some nice performances. For all you Time and the Rani fans out there, this is the other Doctor Who story to bring together the lovely Wanda Ventham (also in Image of the Fendahl) with Donald Pickering (also in The Keys of Marinus).

I found it odd to see Troughton's Doctor so keen to run to the authorities, but maybe it's his experiences here that put him off doing so in the future. In fairness they find him exasperating too. It's also nice to see for once the Doctor letting the bad guys live! Overall, this story isn't worthless but it's an overstretched runaround that would have been infinitely better as a four-parter. Episode four in particular is just episode three cut-and-pasted with a slightly different sinister revelation at the cliffhanger. I can't even praise it for not being a Troughton base-under-siege story since 'twas only Season Five that went overboard with that particular formula. Personally I'd describe The Faceless Ones as the anti-matter twin of The Wheel in Space. The latter is an overstretched six-parter that really suffers from not being complete, since it has a David Whitaker script with a strong sense of structure and escalation even if it's as slow as molasses. On the other hand this story benefits from not being complete. There are things I like about its surviving episodes, but the sum of its parts is definitely greater than its whole.