Doctor Who Review Archive: The Faceless Ones

Episode 1

It looks as if the TARDIS crew didn’t bother using the Time Scanner before disembarking this time. Their panicking and running away upon catching sight of the approaching plane is understandable, though dashing back into the TARDIS and making a rapid departure would probably have been wiser. This is really just an excuse to split up the heroes and separate them from the TARDIS, but as contrivances go, it’s mild in comparison with what is to follow. Polly just happens to enter the one hangar in the whole airport where something sinister is afoot, and coincidentally does so at the exact right time to witness a murder. Later on, Ben chances to blunder into the same place for no good reason – it doesn’t even appear to serve the plot, as he doesn’t witness anything significant.

Polly must have excellent hearing, to be able to hear the Doctor’s muffled call over all the ambient noise. It’s a pity that that’s all she seems to have going for her in this story. While it’s reasonable that she should still be shocked at the sight of someone being killed despite having seen so much death in recent days, she’s risen to the challenge of worse situations before now, and it’s a shame to see her so fearful and pathetic again. She’s particularly inept following her capture, letting Blade and Spencer know that nobody with any authority is going to miss her, and making a complete hash of trying to alert Jamie and the Doctor to her presence, not even attempting to cry out until there’s a hand over her mouth.

Mind you, nobody exactly comes off well as regards Polly’s capture. The villains’ decision only to go for her, leaving her friends at liberty even though she’s already led them to the body (and one of them has shown signs of dangerous intelligence), is absurd. Then there’s the way the Doctor and Jamie blithely stroll on ahead of her, not noticing when she’s grabbed – and this after Jamie specifically stated that they’d look after her.

So far the Commandant’s about the only character to have shown any signs of competence. He’s quick to deal with the problems caused by the obstruction on the runway, and when a couple of suspicious characters report a murder, he doesn’t dismiss their claims out of hand, but tries to find out if there’s anything to them, only addressing himself to the troublemakers’ own misdemeanours once he’s satisfied himself that the serious allegations that have been made are groundless. Considering how often authority figures are portrayed as being closed-minded or wilfully blind, it’s an impressive bit of writing to have him coming to the wrong conclusions without actually being at fault in any way himself.

Another area in which the writers have done well is the establishment of a mystery. It’s clear that Chameleon Tours are up to no good, and that there’s something alien about them, but there are already plenty of intriguing questions relating to exactly what it is that they’re up to. Why are postcards important enough to warrant killing a man? Why should ‘a parent’ have sent a Detective Inspector to snoop around the hangar? What is the alien figure the pilots are helping around the airport? And what has happened to Polly to make her deny knowing the Doctor and Jamie? For all its flaws, the episode does a good job of arousing curiosity.

A few other details are noteworthy in a good way, too. The marks on the late D.I. Gascoigne’s hand add a nasty edge to his killing without getting needlessly explicit. Jenkins’ observation that, “It’s going to be one of those days,” provides a hint of personality, making him more than just a plodding jobsworth. The brief glimpses of the alien being’s hands and the back of its head give the impression of something monstrous without revealing everything, so the viewers’ imagination can go to work during the gap between episodes. In spite of some significant problems, this is a promising start.

Episode 2

On the whole this episode builds on the strengths of the previous one and avoids most of its flaws, but there are still some niggles along the way. ‘Michelle Leuppi’ has come into being remarkably quickly, considering the length of time it takes to transform the alien into a duplicate of Meadows and check that ‘he’ is functioning properly, and the Chameleon Tours mob have even managed to fake a passport for her too. Airport security aren’t doing a very good job, allowing the Doctor to escape twice, and failing to see through the ‘hiding behind newspapers’ ruse even though Jamie holds his upside-down (so were there no pictures on the page he was pretending to read? And doesn’t whoever runs the newsstand have any problem with two strangers grabbing some of the stock and burying their faces in it?). It’s not very clever of Blade to put ‘Leuppi’ on the desk, where the Doctor can pester her and potentially find out a little more about what’s going on. Still, these (and a couple of other points I’ll be bringing up in greater detail later) are a good deal less serious than episode 1’s problems.

Even the parts of the episode that I have found problematic are related to good points. The tests to ensure that the duplicate Meadows has properly adapted to his new form and taken on board his human counterpart’s memories are a sensible procedure, and the reference to Meadows’ having recently moved house sketches in a life for the character beyond his function within the story. While I doubt the effectiveness of hiding behind newspapers as a means of evading the police, as a way of getting the Doctor to see the ad for Chameleon Youth Tours it’s pretty neat. As for the unwise posting of ‘Leuppi’ on the Chameleon Tours counter, at least when it does lead to trouble, Blade shows no sign of the habit so common in villains of blaming and punishing underlings for circumstances beyond their control. He simply acknowledges that there’s a problem and takes steps to deal with it. Such a sensible and level-headed approach could make him a very dangerous enemy.

Most of the questions raised in the previous episode are answered here, but new ones have come up in their place. There’s clearly some sort of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers-type set-up afoot here, but the aliens’ wider purpose has yet to be revealed. The postcards are a smart trick for keeping the friends and families of anyone who goes on a Youth Tour from realising that there’s anything afoot (in the short term, at least, though the deception must have a limited lifespan).

While it’s good that people in the outside world have noticed that something is afoot, it’s a little odd that Brian Briggs seems to be the only person who’s been missed. Just having Crossland mention more than one name would have added a bit more realism, and made it more plausible that the investigation should specifically focus on Chameleon Tours. On the whole, this story is doing well as regards verisimilitude – little details such as the person who wants to use the photo booth in which the Doctor, Ben and Jamie hide, or the sounds of Air Traffic Control going about its business in the background as the Doctor returns to the Commandant, do a lot to help ground the story in a believable world.

Proto-companion Samantha Briggs is a step in the right direction after Polly’s proving so pathetic. She’s spirited, independent and motivated, but clearly out of her depth, so there’s plenty of potential for her to get confused and wind up in danger, as is de rigueur for the female lead, without having to be stupid, inept and helpless. It’s a pity that Ben and Polly have been sidelined (though the discovery of Polly inside the crate is a wonderfully creepy moment) and a replacement brought in, as they both have potential that has rather gone to waste, but at least the newcomer does show some promise.

Considering the overall efficiency of the villains, their penchant for unnecessary gimmickry jars somewhat. The model aircraft used to change the image on the monitor is just a bit tacky, but the trap set for the Doctor towards the end of the episode is as overelaborate and needlessly convoluted as the worst excesses of a Bond villain. Did Blade and his cronies really set up a means of trapping people and subjecting them to clouds of freezing vapour just on the off-chance that it might come in handy one day? Why not simply try shooting the Doctor, or even using that pen-shaped device on him (rather than carelessly leaving it lying around for him to pocket) and attempting to duplicate him? I’m no fan of contrived threats that are rustled up just to provide an episode with a cliffhanger in any case, and this one is all the worse for failing to fit in with the bad guys’ usual methods (and for having the Doctor taken in by a voice that so obviously comes from a loudspeaker).

Episode 3

As if the trap from which the Doctor must escape wasn’t daft enough in the first place, its ludicrousness is compounded by the presence of an emergency back-up freeze gas nozzle in the hangar. Locating it right next to the camera, where it can draw attention to the surveillance set-up, isn’t that clever, either. Following this lapse into incompetent supervillain mode, it’s not entirely surprising, though disappointing, to find Blade insulting his unsuccessful minion just like the sort of clichéd bad guy he didn’t appear to be last episode. Before long the aliens are even speaking derisively of ‘Earth minds’.

The Doctor isn’t being particularly smart, either. After immobilising Spencer, he wastes the opportunity to investigate further, and simply runs away. When he recognises Meadows, he gives him a thorough scrutiny that can hardly fail to give away his suspicions that the ‘man’ is a duplicate, and then drops a further hint when involving him in the demonstration of the pen-weapon’s effects. He doesn’t even seem to have any worthwhile purpose in alerting Meadows to the fact that his disguise has been seen through – indeed, his failure to notice when Meadows clumsily plants the button-weapon (another gimmicky gadget, alas) on him suggests that he doesn’t even realise he’s done so. Sometimes it seems as though this Doctor really is as bumbling and incompetent as he pretends to be.

Samantha handles things rather better, manipulating Jamie into helping her snoop around (and, rather wonderfully, embarrassing him with a hug when the investigation starts to get somewhere). Her tearful moment upon finding more proof that Chameleon Tours are abducting young people is a believable reaction, and her rebuffing Jamie’s attempts at comforting her provides a reminder of her independence. Mind you, if she had become a companion, I’m sure she’d have suffered from the same kind of inconsistent writing as Polly, so I doubt that any major breakthrough in the portrayal of the female companion went out of the window when Pauline Collins opted not to stay on.

Crossland’s a bit of a plot device, really. Now that he’s convinced the Commandant to believe at least some of what the Doctor has been saying, and enabled the Doctor to continue his investigations without having to contend with the authorities as well as the aliens, he’s pretty much served his purpose, so he can get captured too. Still, he has enough of a personality to keep him from being a purely functional character. The writers seem to have made quite an effort to ensure that even minor characters have at least a little substance: consider how few of the guest cast are identified by just a title rather than being given actual names.

Little progress has been made towards answering the questions raised last episode, but the main cliffhanger here does deepen the mystery a little further. I’m not sure why the aliens felt the need to fit the plane with a camera that can pan or track along the length of the cabin, but those suddenly empty seats are an ominous sight. Spencer’s second attempt on the Doctor’s life is less impressive, so I’m glad that the episode closes with the focus on something more significant than this latest disposable threat.

Episode 4

Last episode Blade was telling Crossland that killing humans is an unnecessary waste, and now we have Spencer rigging up a Goldfinger-style moving laser to kill Jamie and Sam (as well as the Doctor, whose suitability for duplication is debatable) in a sadistically drawn-out and conveniently escapable-from manner. This could be illustrating that the aliens have different personalities rather than just an inconsistency in the script – a less blatantly spelt-out version of the pairing of bloodthirsty subordinate and more practical superior that will appear in The Dominators. Regardless, the deathtrap itself is another pointlessly overelaborate one, merely serving to help bulk the episode out to the required length.

The subterfuge adopted by the Doctor and Jamie to try and get into the medical centre seems an unnecessary risk. While it does enable the Doctor to ascertain that the x-ray room is where he needs to search, it also reveals to the aliens that he and his friends escaped from the trap. Even if Spencer hadn’t been watching on the monitor, the Doctor’s rapid departure after being refused entry to the room would probably have raised Nurse Pinto’s suspicions – he should at least have made a show of trying to find somewhere else for his ‘patient’ to recuperate.

Meanwhile, Sam is being even more reckless. While her lack of familiarity with extraterrestrial shenanigans means that she has no way of knowing exactly how much danger she’s putting herself in, her plan is still idiotic. She has no means of contacting anyone once she’s in the thick of things, and if Jamie hadn’t been sent after her, nobody would even have known what she was doing. Not that Jamie’s shifting the risk onto himself is any smarter, as he does have some understanding of how bad things can get. He doesn’t have a passport, though, so I have to wonder how he managed to get onto the flight. Still, somehow his act of chivalrous folly succeeds, so Sam has to fall for a rather transparent ruse to ensure that she gets herself back into peril before the episode ends.

All in all, Jean Rock is doing a better job of investigating Chameleon Tours than any of the principal heroes. Her findings provide enough evidence of something dodgy going on that the Doctor no longer requires Crossland’s backing (and the Commandant’s protests at the cost of the international calls she’s been making are a nice little detail), and her shamming a faint to draw the nurse away from the medical centre achieves a fair bit more than Jamie and Sam’s efforts. It’s a little bizarre that, though the Doctor arrived with three companions and has hooked up with a potential new one, there’s still the need for Miss Rock to play companion-surrogate here, but behind-the-scenes matters do sometimes create obstacles for stories, and there’s not a lot that can be done about it.

After all the effort that’s gone to in order to enable the Doctor to snoop around the medical centre, it’s a rather unproductive search. The Doctor’s failure to spot the real Nurse Pinto is a bit careless, and the significance of his finding the armbands is diminished by the lack of anyone to explain their purpose. He should have had someone keep an eye on Meadows. If the duplicate has any sense, he won’t return to his post now he knows he’s suspected. The alien Jenkins’ attempt at killing the Doctor during the search is at least more straightforward than anything Spencer’s tried, but ultimately it’s just another embarrassing failure on the bad guys’ part.

Things do pick up towards the end of the episode. The killing of the RAF fighter pilot is a reminder of how efficient and ruthless the villains can be (which does make it all the more ridiculous that they keep failing to deal with the Doctor), while the transformation of the Chameleon Tours jet into a spacecraft is a marvellous twist. The telesnaps do suggest certain regrettable differences between the appearance of the model used for the transformation sequence and the plane shown taking off, but minor flaws in the realisation don’t make it any less of a brilliant concept.

Episode 5

While Jamie’s investigations don’t really reveal anything that isn’t made clear elsewhere, they’re a good example of the ‘show, not tell’ principle in action. The sight of the miniaturised passengers has a good deal more impact than Meadows’ explanation of what has happened. Anyone who was paying attention last episode shouldn’t be surprised at Crossland’s having been duplicated, but the bogus Inspector’s attempting to pump Jamie for information, at the same time showing a suspicious amount of knowledge about the Chameleons’ procedures, is a neat way of confirming that what had been threatened has been carried out. It’s just about believable that Jamie should fail to pick up on the hints, so it’s not entirely inappropriate that the revelation that he is the Chameleon Director should be presented as something of a twist, but for most of the audience it should be an anticipatable one.

It’s good that there’s still the odd minor detail added to the script to flesh the characters out. The Commandant’s response to hearing that the wreckage of the fighter has been found, asking if the pilot managed to bale out, is a marvellous counterpoint to the callous indifference shown by Blade a couple of scenes before. While still not wholly convinced that the Doctor is right, he’s open-minded enough to be persuaded by the weight of the evidence turned up over the course of the episode, and by the end he’s working to find the abducted airport workers with the same efficiency he applied to his everyday work back in episode 1.

There’s a hint of the Doctor’s darker side when he threatens Meadows. Luckily for him, this Chameleon is something of a coward, all too willing to explain the plot and betray his fellows in the interests of self-preservation, so we don’t get to see just how far the Doctor was willing to go with his bluff – assuming that it is a bluff. Considering his conduct in previous stories, I’m not entirely certain that he wouldn’t have gone so far as to actually harm the duplicate. While the explanation of how the Chameleons came to be in this state is nonsensical, the revelation of the scale of their operation is rather impressive. There can’t be many Doctor Who villains with 50,000 victims to their name at this stage in the series’ run. With the bulk of the mystery made clear, the story shifts gear, the revelation that Chameleon Tours only have one flight to go providing a deadline and adding a sense of urgency.

At long last the Chameleons have cottoned on to the possibility of duplicating one of the Doctor’s friends in order to get close enough to him to harm him. However, the scriptwriters clearly aren’t interested in the paranoia-raising potential of the set-up, as it’s almost immediately done away with by having the Doctor check the newly-rescued Sam for an armband before accepting that she is the genuine article. His choosing to try and impersonate the impersonators is a risky strategy, and it’s good that he gives Nurse Pinto the choice of whether or not to join him in infiltrating the Chameleon flight. Her willingness to take the risk for the sake of all the other victims provides a stark contrast to her duplicate’s murderous tendencies. It’s all a bit black and white, really: the humans a bit stubborn at worst, the aliens utterly devoid of empathy, and mostly killers.

The Doctor’s lack of knowledge of the finer details of the Chameleons’ plans obviously arouses Blade’s suspicions, but it’s not clear when or how the subterfuge is seen through. It’s not likely that the Doctor and the nurse would have been allowed to join the flight if they were already known not to be Chameleons, so something must have given the game away once they were en route. Blade’s consultation with the Director confirms that there are differences of opinion among the Chameleons, but doesn’t imply that the disagreement is strong enough to prompt overt defiance of orders, which does rather undermine the effectiveness of the cliffhanger. With the top-ranking Chameleon having forbidden the killing of the Doctor, Blade’s threat rings a little hollow.

Episode 6

Most of my issues with the preceding cliffhanger are dealt with in the dialogue following on from the reprise, though Blade’s having ‘checked with the medical centre’ doesn’t really explain how the imposture was detected. It’s a pity the whole of the scene wasn’t included in the last episode, as the threat of the Doctor’s being duplicated would have made a decent cliffhanger in its own right, and would have fit in better with the Director’s orders to Blade.

I’m impressed with the scale of the search carried out at the airport. The Commandant’s suspending normal service and drafting all available workers to help look for the originals of the duplicated staff is an unexpected but sensible measure, and his taking the time to reassure the public that there’s no cause for alarm is a nice little detail. There’s a further element of realism in his subsequently having to deal with the complaints arising from his having disrupted the flight schedules.

The Doctor is on top form this episode, sowing dissension between the ‘special’ Chameleons and the rest, and bluffing convincingly about the discovery of the human originals. He shows a good deal of confidence in his allies on the ground when suggesting that Blade contact the airport for confirmation of his claims, trusting in the intelligence of the humans that the Chameleons have so casually dismissed. His faith is not in vain, the Commandant picking up on the ruse and going with it, while Sam is making an actual breakthrough in the search. This is all the better for simply showing the humans responding to the situation, rather than making a big, triumphalist ‘aren’t we great?’ show of things, as some SF does.

It gets rather gripping as the Gatwick crowd endeavour to make good on their claims while the Doctor’s processing looms ever closer. He buys some time with his bumbling routine, and back on Earth Meadows intervenes to stretch it out a bit more. It’s understandable that the Chameleon who was so quick to betray his fellows in order to save his own life should want to try and prevent the discovery of his original, and his act of desperation, delaying the searchers when things are so urgent, enhances the tension.

Attitudes regarding the well-being of the Chameleons are slightly inconsistent. Nobody seems too concerned about killing the duplicate Jenkins (though, to be fair, the people at Gatwick do only resort to doing so when the Director refuses to believe that they have now found the originals), and the Doctor’s statement that ‘negotiations have been successfully concluded’ is rather cold, considering that the conclusion of which he speaks involved the gunning down of two Chameleons, one of whom looked just like Jamie. However, in a change from this Doctor’s usual policy regarding aliens, he is willing to let the Chameleons live, and even to try and help them find a solution to their condition. A rare display of mercy on his part, and all the more remarkable given that he’s offering it to the Chameleons who’ve been trying hardest to kill him.

While Ben and Polly have spent the bulk of their final story out of action, like Dodo before them, they do at least get a proper send-off. It’s still pretty shabby treatment for a couple of good companions, though. The fact of their having been brought back to the same day on which they left, so they can return to their old lives as if they’d never been gone, does mean that the Chameleons must have been abducting people at the time of WOTAN’s attempted takeover. I wonder what would have happened if either scheme had somehow interfered with the other, bringing the Chameleons and the computer into conflict.

Despite a weak start and some inappropriate supervillain shenanigans, this is a pretty good story. Strong on characterisation, and well thought-out in places, with plenty of attention to detail to ground it in the real world. It doesn’t get that much attention from fandom, perhaps in part because its surviving episodes are among its weaker ones, or maybe because it doesn’t feature a recurring enemy. Whatever the reasons, it deserves better.