DOCTOR WHO-THE FACELESS ONES

 

THE FACELESS ONES has a lot of known …uhm, faces. Colin appears as the Commandant of the airport (and is called Number One, which is ironic because he appears in an early THE PRISONER as yet another New Number Two). Jean Rock is played by the ever present Wanda Ventham, who will appear again in DOCTOR WHO (IMAGE OF THE FENDHAL, TIME AND THE RANI) over time as well as the classic UFO series by Gerry Anderson. The immigration officer is played by Chris Tranchell who will play Andred (Leela’s to be husband) on Gallifrey in INVASION OF TIME.

 

The location work looks good…but a bit like 1940s America or 1930s England. The TARDIS on the back of a truck is a stunner. Hiding behind airplane wheels? Polly sees a murder, ala HART TO HART style, not to mention SCOOBY DOO. By a ray gun. You can see ABOUT TIME why the aliens’ plans and background MAKE NO SENSE and that book is totally right. But episode 1 is still a mystery and the Moffat-like illogic has not cropped up yet. Which is why most episode one’s are probably the best of DOCTOR WHO…the strangeness of being in a new local does not bore and is different from last week AND the disappointment of a half hearted story that makes little logical sense has not set in…yet. Although again…why the Doctor and his friends rush OUT of the TARDIS on a runway in an airport rather than retreat inside is odd.

 

It’s a pity to have a story that loses Ben and Polly so soon. I liked them a lot and wish there were more stories with them in it and wish the ones they were in were ALL found.

 

Two good episodes both showcasing the Doctor as many things: detective, saboteur, rebel rouser, frustrated fugitive in an airport and a colony, humble after saving everyone, and chemist and engineer. Troughton is simply amazing.

 

BTW: it’s of note that it is Polly and Jamie that are hugging close and holding hands so much in THE FACELESS ONES.

 

I also love many of the Doctor’s lines in THE MACRA TERROR part 4. To allay Polly’s fears, “Come now, Polly, there’s nothing to fear or rather I think there’s nothing here to fear.” And it is around this time his throat clearing became more constant. He also says to the Pilot, “Bad laws are made to be broken.”  Troughton’s very amazing.

 

 DOCTOR WHO-THE FACELESS ONES episode 2

 

There’s a lot of things that bother me about this episode, the least of which is…if you’re going to replace Polly at all (rumor has it that they didn’t want to replace her but with Mike Craze being forced to leave, the competent actress thought it was time for her to go, too), you might as well replace her with someone equally talented…say, Wanda Ventham as Jean Rock but in this episode we get…Pauline Collins as Samantha Briggs! Annoying from the start, wearing a huge hat like a box on her head and poking at the fake Polly…she grates from day one. She seems to throw compliments at Jamie, fancying him. ABOUT TIME seems to feel (she’s from Liverpool) she’s a lot like Dodo but I feel she’s a lot worse.

 

About Jamie: ABOUT TIME feels that Jamie between his girl shy self in THE MACRA TERROR and his flirty, confident sex appeal self in THE FACELESS ONES, must have acquired some, erm, experience in an unseen adventure. I’ll say. He also hides…several times from police and an inspector who is looking for the dead detective…behind a newspaper with is knees and kilt showing and as they know he’s in a kilt. Added to that this new inspector knows that his quarry was inspecting Chameleon Tours, he might think that would be a good place to start!

 

Add to all of that nonsense this OTHER nonsense about Michelle Leuppe from Zurich…the Doctor quickly deduces that this copy of Polly is not Polly at all in what must be the first time a companion is fully replaced by an alien. Again, I hate to lose Polly AND Ben and here it appears that both are KILLED. Ben finds Polly in a crate with her eyes wide open and motionless. Then, in full view of the Doctor who’s watching from a screen, Ben is zapped by an alien from behind and is told to get rid of the body! One would be forgiven thinking they were both killed! To be replaced by the inferior Pauline Collins as Sam Briggs. Pauline also plays Queen Victoria in TOOTH AND CLAW in David Tennant’s first season. Where she was better.

 

This won’t be the last time the Doctor sees what could be a murder from the other side of a scanner or TV monitor and is helpless to do anything about it (WHEEL IN SPACE).

 

Patrick Troughton is good as the Doctor again and most of this works due to him. He throws a rubber ball and pretends it is a bomb! There’s also a great sequence where he, Ben, and Jamie confer inside a photo booth and when someone opens the curtain, they pretend they are taking pictures. This was mildly amusing and it could have been funnier.

 

The aliens send postcards from their kiosk to the families of the missing young people they kidnap. They also seem to advertise they are Chameleon by their name. And more nonsense.

 

It must be said that the story is an enjoyable runaround so far but it could have been better if the plot were better. Also the whole Ben and Polly thing distracts from enjoying it fully. The cliffhanger involves the Doctor being gassed into a frozen ice face or something…again. I can’t imagine what members of the audience thought if they knew the actors who played Ben and Polly were leaving. They must have figured they were being killed off!!!

DOCTOR WHO-THE FACELESS ONES ep 3

Let me get this straight: the Doctor finds another body frozen in a crate in Chameleon Tours offices, rushes to the main control room, sees the man there, and recognized him as an imposter who is acting as an air traffic controller. THEN, the Doctor uses the freeze pen to scare the man away. The man runs away, leaves his station empty and …what? Does anyone replace him at his station?

 

The alien then goes back to Chameleon and is told by his superior to return there and plant a device on the Doctor’s back that will kill the Doctor once and for all. The show becomes James Bond with the aliens trying hard to kill him in various ways and failing. No explanation why the button on his back doesn’t kill him but downs him until Jamie destroys it.

 

To get back to the alien imposter…the alien returns to his station and manages to plant the button on the Doctor…and NOW, the Doctor doesn’t recognize him and even asks him if they’ve met in the past. WHAT? Is the writer kidding me right now? The man sits down and resumes his job!!! No one seems to remember him or stops him. If the aliens had some power to make people forget, it would have been nice to let us in on it but if so, they’d have no reason to kill the Doctor. They don’t and this is just ridiculous.

 

Okay, so knowing there are aliens in control of this particular tour group, the inspector (Crossland) is sent by the Doctor and Jamie to distract them, is taken prisoner at ray gun and allowed to watch how the pilot and his stewardess make all the passengers (most of them young) vanish from the plane! Maybe a raid with a lot of police would have been better? The commandant, with definite proof of murder and kidnapping, acts like none of this is happening. No one seems to be thinking. Oh and uh Jamie and the Doctor investigate the rooms while Sam is somewhere else?

 

I hate to say it but this episode is not great. Troughton still holds his own and Ventham and he have a good but brief rapport. Even Sam seems to be sympathetic as she worries about her brother Ryan who is missing. Ben and Polly are still missing and do not appear at all.  

DOCTOR WHO-THE FACELESS ONES episode four

 

Okay, we have a lot of stupid people here. Jamie. Samantha. Nurse Pinto. The stewardess. The Commandant. Even the Doctor. The Chameleons.

 

One at a time. Sam, Jamie and the Doctor are captured and immobilized. In true BATMAN villain mode, the Chameleon that captured them, leaves them in a JAME BOND-GOLDFINGER laser trap from which they escape. Not ten minutes later, Samantha, alone, tries to sneak onto one of the tours by giving her passport, money, and real name to…Chameleon Tours, who don’t catch on too quick. For Jamie sneaks on first, stealing her ticket and since it is under S. Briggs, they don’t catch on. Apparently UK airports don’t require first names? Jamie and Sam both know that the plane is not taking people to destinations but to somewhere in outer space so they…do this…without the Doctor’s knowledge or without the Doctor. Really dumb.

 

Equally dumb, although the Chameleon leader catches on…he doesn’t inform the stewardess…and though he recognizes and recaptures Samantha, he doesn’t notice Jamie… who got on without a passport, a fake name, AND a fake ticket. And even though he tells her that someone got on without a passport, I’m not sure we ever are told that it was Jamie or Sam. Either way, he should have know and informed her. Yet he chastises her! In fact, she not only missed the passport thing, she also FORGETS Jamie went to the toilet faking sickness AND forgets to check his seat to find his “belongings.”  We’re not yet told that the passengers are being shrunken (and immobilized?) so that is why I thought they were being somehow teleported to the other place or planet or space station. Wink wink. BTW Jamie stole her ticket by kissing her on the lips…and she responded. This might be the first time a companion kisses someone and gets kissed by someone.

 

The Commandant is according to the Doctor still thinking in Earth terms. Indeed. He’s too stupid to realize what is happening, too. He sends the RAF to follow the plane which results in the RAF pilot crashing and probably dying when the “plane” fires a ray at his face and seems to blind him. Despite the Doctor telling him it is someone from outer space. The Doctor also expects to find the alien Meadows at his place in the air traffic control! What another dope! He also never realized what was happening under his nose and when it is revealed Crossland is missing, he doubts foul play or outer space aliens! What a dope.

 

On the plus side, Jean Rock believes and helps the Doctor when he asks her to distract Nurse Pinto from the Med Centre and she does this in what is the only fun scene. The Doctor wanders around the med centre but he then switches buttons and…entirely misses the opening wall where the real Nurse Pinto is hidden behind. Uhm, despite him missing this…WHY IS she still there? Jean is almost a proto type for Liz Shaw: smart, fun, and not annoying at all, almost the anti-Samantha Briggs. What a great companion she would have made. Jean, that is, not Samantha. Shudder shudder.

 

On the plus side, I find it fantastic that we have so many of these tele-snaps and the audio of the entire story. Yes, some of the snaps have to be supplemented several times. Plus, the plane turning into a spaceship is an animated thing and that’s good. I also find it highly suspect. I mean I wonder if the “missing stories” actually exist somewhere in full.

 

In any case, this episode is really just a huge filler one. The Doc wanders around. More people are kidnapped. Most of characters act stupid. The Doc finds out…that aliens are using switches to kidnap people. Which he found out before. AND there are TWO death attempts on the Doctor and one is a James Bond one that they get out of using a mirror from Sam’s handbag (maybe the Doctor and Jamie should get utility belts?). Then Jenkins holds a ray gun on the Doctor in the med centre BUT a civilian wanders in and prevents him. Why not just shoot her, too? 

 

We are approaching mindlessness Doctor Who and it’s almost as bad as THE CHASE but without the humor that mess evoked and without trying too hard to be anything other than filler. If that. In fact, DW in the 60s and probably the 70s stretched stories out because it was cheaper to do a story that lasted longer in one setting than to have to depict a totally new and often alien or historical setting. Which may have saved money but lost viewers? I mean I don’t know if it is rumor or not but it’s been reported that DW was almost cancelled in 1969. Then there are those who believed DW ended in 1969 to be replaced by a new show called Doctor Who. But that’s another story.

 

I’m afraid, while this episode is certainly watchable, it’s not very good. 

DOCTOR WHO-THE FACELESS ONES episodes 5 and 6

 

Well, five was okay but six is really boring. This story plagued on far too long. The whole thing is rather predictable. The pilot of the plane was electrocuted. The Doctor uses Meadows to figure out the rest of the plan of the Chameleons. First, they lost their identities AND faces in a huge explosion? What? And their memories? If so, how did they plan this…mess of a mission to take 50,000 young people, miniaturize them, and use their image to exist? None of this makes much sense. The Commandant is fully on the Doc’s side now. Jean shoves a chair into Meadows who tried to escape. She and Sam search for the 25 missing people who are part of the airport staff taken by the aliens. They also stop Meadows who finally does escape.

 

Once Meadows revealed Nurse Pinto as a Chameleon and where the real Nurse was, Pinto almost becomes yet another pseudo companion as she helps the Doctor sneak onto the last flight out, he posing as Meadows posing as the Doctor! In any event, they are quickly caught and almost killed but the Doctor uses the 25 bodies as a ploy to get Blade on his side. Blade kills the Director when the Director refuses to care about those 25 and he also kills a Chameleon posing as Jamie.  It all works out in the end and the Doctor promises to lend the Chameleon scientists a helping idea or two on how to fix their dilemma…you know of having no memories, identities and faces! When he planned on that, I have no idea but maybe in between landing again?

 

Sam’s goodbye to Jamie is a bit sad as they kiss again. Then, there’s Polly and Ben’s goodbye. It’s a novel idea …at least then, to have Polly and Ben stay on the very same day they left their time. They really didn’t want to stay with the Doctor but wanted to continue their normal life. The Doctor tells them they are lucky, he never got back to his home! They look sad as they leave him. It was sad to lose them both as they were good companions. Ben opted to stay if the Doctor really needed him. Jamie promises to watch out for the Doctor.

 

While, again, there’s nothing wrong with these two episodes, other than the entire plot and premise and the alien plan and background (!), the last episode really put me to sleep. If this had been four parts and better plotted and detailed, maybe this would have worked better. As it stands, it’s not one of Troughton’s most memorable, despite some good make up for the aliens and a few good scenes here and there and at least three or even five pseudo companions. The Commandant can almost be a Brigadier trial run.

 

This ends with the cliffhanger into EVIL OF THE DALEKS as the TARDIS has been stolen…