The Faceless Ones

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035 – The Faceless Ones
Doctor	Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
Writer	David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke
Director	Gerry Mill
Script editor	Gerry Davis
Producer	Innes Lloyd
Executive producer(s)	Peter Bryant associate producer
Production code	KK
Series	Season 4
Length	6 episodes, 25 mins each
Transmission date	April 8–May 13, 1967
Preceded by	The Macra Terror
Followed by	The Evil of the Daleks

The Faceless Ones is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from April 8 to May 13, 1967. This story sees the departure of Michael Craze and Anneke Wills as the Doctor's companions Ben Jackson and Polly.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
- 3.1 Cast notes
4 Continuity
5 Production
- 5.1 Missing episodes
6 In print
7 Broadcast, CD, VHS and DVD releases
8 External links
- 8.1 Reviews
- 8.2 Target novelisation

[edit] Synopsis

On Earth in the 1960s, the Second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie investigate the mysterious Chameleon Tours.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

"Doctor, it's a flying beastie...!"

The TARDIS arrives on a runway at Gatwick Airport and is confiscated as a hazard by the police, while the Second Doctor and his companions split up to avoid arrest. Polly ends up in a store room belonging to the mysterious travel company Chameleon Tours and oversees a man killed by another using a futuristic weapon. It seems the killed man had found some incriminating postcards. The man with the weapon, Spencer, reports his actions by telelink to his superior, Captain Blade, who heads to the storeroom to investigate. It seems the dead man is a police officer named Detective Inspector Gascoigne. When Blade arrives to investigate he helps Spencer dispose of the body and destroy some suitcases too. Polly flees, having alerted Spencer to her presence, and is reunited with the Doctor and Jamie, whom she tells of her encounter. When they investigate and find the body they are overseen by Blade, who starts to get worried about the security of their scheme. They seem to have humanoid figures stored in metallic cabinets which Blade is treating with medication.

The Doctor and his friends now head to airport control to warn those in control of Gatwick of the situation. However, Polly is soon separated from them by Spencer, who proceeds to interrogate her with Blade. The Doctor and Jamie realise she had been captured and this makes them ever keener to contact the airport authorities. The Airport Commandant is typically sceptical of their story, but agrees to accompany the Doctor and Jamie to the Chameleon Tours hangar. When they get there the body has of course disappeared and the Commandant is disbelieving of clues that the Doctor interprets as burn marks from ray guns. Blade ensures the trip leave with no evidence, while Spencer goes about some sort of resuscitation exercise on one of the semi-concealed humanoids. Its face is almost featureless, with prominent veins and a greenish pallor. Another human, Nurse Pinto, assists them and she brings in an unconscious air traffic controller called Meadows. He is connected to the alien by a strange machine which transforms the faceless being into a doppelganger of Meadows. Using alien technology the new Meadows even manages to replicate the original’s voice. The alien Meadows is then sent to work at Air Traffic Control.

Back in the main airport the Doctor and Jamie are stunned to see Polly emerge from one of the newly landed planes. However, she denies knowing them and claims her name is Michelle Leuppi and that she is from Zurich. With the Commandant now ready to hand the Doctor and Jamie over to the police, the pair make a break for it, determined to continue investigating. While hiding they also find their missing companion Ben, who is equally concerned for Polly’s safety. They encounter the mysterious Michelle working in a Chameleon Youth Tours travel kiosk and she botches her defence so badly that Blade, who has overseen the encounter, decides she must depart on the next flight. Ben splits off from his friends to try and work out what is going on at the Chameleon hangar, while the Doctor decides to make his peace with the Commandant and Jamie is left on watch at the kiosk. Jamie soon encounters Samantha Briggs, a young Liverpudlian looking for her missing brother, who disappeared on a Chameleon Youth Tours flight to Rome. He was reported to have arrived there and even sent a postcard, but no-one at that end seems to have seen him. Together Jamie and Samantha decide to investigate the situation. The Doctor returns and, with Michelle having disappeared, breaks into the kiosk. Inside is a pile of fake postcards purporting to be from missing travellers. They also find a monitoring device which shows them the scene in the Tours hangar. When Ben investigated the Tours hangar he found a second version of Polly in suspended animation in a metal cabinet. Now the Doctor, Jamie and Samantha witness Ben being captured by a Chameleon Tours operative and frozen with some sort of weapon. The immobilised young man is taken as a prisoner by the two alien operatives, Blade and Spencer. The Doctor heads off to the hangar to investigate, telling Jamie and Samantha to stay where they are.

Meanwhile another policeman has arrived at the airport. He is Detective Inspector Crossland and he is looking for the missing DI Gascoigne. They are both supposed to be investigating reports of missing young people following flights on Chameleon Tours. He soon makes contact with Jamie and Samantha and, with stories exchanged, Crossland is fearful that his colleague is the murdered man Jamie is referring to. Jamie is able to offer visual confirmation of this. The Doctor now returns, having escaped a deadly gas attack by Spencer at the hangar. He did, however, find the unconscious body of Meadows, gathering more data on a puzzling situation. The Doctor and Crossland now make contact with the Commandant and persuade him there is something very amiss at Gatwick. The Doctor argues that Chameleon Tours is a front for the mass kidnapping of young people by aliens. He proves his alien theory by using the freezing gun he found at the hangar. Crossland is persuaded of the threat, especially when Jamie and Samantha arrive with even more fake postcards, and in turn persuades the Commandant to give the Doctor the run of the airport for twelve hours to find out more. He starts to examine the flight schedules, learning that there are seven or eight incoming Chameleon Youth Tours flights per day. Crossland boards the next incoming flight and encounters Captain Blade, who tries to reassure him of his good intentions. When this fails Blade actually pilots the plane to take off again. Crossland is kept quiet by a ray gun until the plane is in flight – after which Blade shows him that the entire passenger compartment of young people seems to have disappeared.

The aliens now decide to eliminate the Doctor, and Meadows is giving the task of attaching a deadly weapon the size of a button to his clothing. This is done and the next time the Doctor investigates the hangar he is overcome and rendered unconscious via the small weapon. Spencer then captures Samantha and Jamie with the freezing gun. He leaves them to die beneath a moving laser beam, but Jamie and Samantha wake up and, having roused the Doctor, they deflect the beam and make their escape. Sending Samantha back to keep an eye on the kiosk, Jamie and the Doctor head for the first aid centre, which the Doctor has deduced the aliens are using as a base. The alien Nurse Pinto is there, having just duplicated an immigration officer called Jenkins. The Doctor now meets up with the Commandant, who is worried that Crossland seems to have disappeared. It also becomes clear from checks with other airports that Chameleon Tours never delivered any passengers abroad. The Commandant now arranges an RAF flight to track the next Tours plane to leave Gatwick. The next flight is to Rome, and unbenknownst to the Doctor, Jamie arranges to get on board, having stolen the ticket Samantha bought for the same purpose. She is angry when she finds out the deception, but by that time Jamie is already aboard the plane. Samantha is sent to see the flight manager to complain properly – but finds only the murderous Spencer waiting for her. He has her bound and taken to Nurse Pinto, who seems to be the organiser of the aliens at the airport.

The plane takes off with a travel sick Jamie aboard and an RAF fighter in pursuit. Captain Blade, once more piloting the flight, detects the tracking craft and eliminates it. Once he is clear Blade redirects the plane upwards rather than forward, using rocket engines to propel it into the outer atmosphere. Waiting for them is a vast alien spacecraft. They soon dock and Blade and his flight assistant Ann Davidson disembark. Once more the passengers all seem to have disappeared – all apart from Jamie, who is in the toilet. He emerges bewildered and heads to investigarte his surroundings, soon finding a store of miniaturised passengers hidden away in drawers. Ann Davidson returns and catches him snooping, sealing him in a closed room with two misshapen aliens.

The Doctor has worked out from the radar signals where the plane has gone. He now decides to take action and confronts Meadows, whom he knows to be a duplicate. The black armband Meadows wears proves he is a substitute and the Doctor threatens to remove it as a means to make him talk. The fake Meadows explains that his race damaged by an explosion on their home world which removed their identities and doomed the species too. They are now reliant on a scientific process of identity theft to sustain and extend their lives and race, and to this end his people are abducting up to 50,000 humans. The originals are being stored in a spaceship above the Earth while the aliens take on their lives and existences. The Doctor uses Meadows to track down Nurse Pinto at the medical centre but she does not co-operate and is transformed into a green blob when the armband on the real Pinto is activated. The real Nurse Pinto is now revived. Samantha, who was being held there too, is set free and tells the Doctor that Jamie was on the last flight to disappear.

Jamie meets the Director of the aliens, named now as Chameleons, who has taken on the identity of Crossland. The Director says the airplane/spacecraft is now heading back to Earth to collect the other Chameleons at the airport. The Doctor has meanwhile worked out which of the airport staff have been duplicated, but says their cover should not be blown lest the abductees be imperilled. Rather, the Commandant is given the task of finding the original humans, wherever they might be.

The Doctor waits until the Chameleon plane returns and then determines to get on board. He uses the real Nurse Pinto to create a ruse for a newly returned Captain Blade, convincing him that he too is now a Chameleon because the real Doctor had got too close to the truth and had been immobilised. Blade explains they are evacuating and both the Doctor and Pinto are told to head for the plane along with the duplicate airport staff. Once they are all aboard, Blade pilots the craft away and back to the space station. They all disembark and Blade seeks out the Director to tell him that he has worked out they have been infiltrated. In order to fight back a duplicate Jamie has been created (minus Scottish accent). The duplicate has accessed Jamie’s memory and provides the Chameleons with data on the Doctor, revealing that he has considerable powers and knowledge. Blade reacts by sending undisguised Chameleons to track down the Doctor and Pinto. They are captured and taken to the Director, still in the form of Crossland, who arrogantly refuses to have the humans used for cloning released. The duplicate Jamie is also revealed to the Doctor, who now tries to scare the Chameleons whose real identities are still on Earth, warning of them what could happen if the real ones are found. Blade and Spencer are evidently unnerved by this tactic. A little later these two Chameleons, along with the fake Jamie, are given the task of processing the Doctor and Nurse Pinto. The Doctor now says the Commandant has found their originals, and says radio contact with Gatwick will confirm this. This is tried and the Commandant, who has still to find the real airport staff, fails to bluff that he has found the real staff. However, meanwhile Samantha has worked out that the real staff are hidden in cars somewhere in the airport's vast car park. Together with the Commandant’s secretary, Jean Rock, they track down the right cars.

On the space station the Director is incensed that the Doctor has yet to be processed, and the Doctor has used the bought time to destroy the transformation equipment intended for use on him. Another unit is produced and the Doctor and Pinto are linked to it along with two unidentifiable Chameleons. Before the transfer can begin, however, the Chameleon in the form of Immigration Officer Jenkins disintegrates, proving to his species that the real staff have indeed been found. Blade and Spencer respond by drawing their weapons and staging a coup, fearful their lives are in danger. A radio link with Gatwick confirms that the Commandant now has the real staff and he threatens to turn more dials on armbands unless the Doctor is released. Blade frees the Doctor, who now negotiates a peace between the humans and the Chameleons. If all the humans miniaturised and frozen on the spacecraft are revived and freed, the Chameleons like Blade will be spared and the Doctor will also help try and find a scientific alternative “cure” for the condition of the Chameleons. The Director and the fake Jamie try to reassert control but are killed by Blade and Spencer. Blade now agrees to the Doctor’s terms, and together they track down the real Jamie and Crossland, both of whom revived when their duplicates perished. The planes are now loaded with miniaturised humans and the Doctor, Jamie and Nurse Pinto join the first flight while Crossland stays behind to oversee the return flights programme.

Back in the airport sometime later there is much celebration and thanks. Jamie bids a fond farewell to Samantha, and then heads with the Doctor to find Ben and Polly, who were due to return to Gatwick too. When the four travellers are reunited it becomes clear Ben and Polly now want to stay on Earth: it is July 20th 1966, the exact day they first left in the TARDIS, and thus a natural time to end their travels. The Doctor and Jamie bid farewell to their friends and then head off to find the TARDIS, which has been released from storage. However, they are stunned when it appears to have been stolen and head off to find it.

[edit] Cast

Dr. Who — Patrick Troughton
Polly — Anneke Wills
Ben Jackson — Michael Craze
Jamie McCrimmon — Frazer Hines
Commandant — Colin Gordon
Blade — Donald Pickering
Jean Rock — Wanda Ventham
Samantha Briggs — Pauline Collins
Crossland — Bernard Kay
Meadows — George Selway
Ann Davidson — Gilly Fraser
Spencer — Victor Winding
Jenkins — Christopher Tranchell
Inspector Gascoigne — Peter Whitaker
Heslington — Barry Wilsher
Nurse Pinto — Madalena Nicol
Supt. Reynolds — Leonard Trolley
Policeman — James Appleby
Announcer — Brigit Paul
R.A.F. Pilot — Michael Ladkin

[edit] Cast notes

Bernard Kay appears as Inspector Crossland.
Wanda Ventham and Donald Pickering would later star as husband and wife in Time and the Rani.
Christopher Tranchell would return as Leela's love interest Andred in The Invasion of Time.

[edit] Continuity

July 20th, 1966, is noted as the busiest day for the Doctor in his time on Earth. The First Doctor defeats the War Machines and WOTAN. As noted in the synopsis above the plans of the Chameleons have been foiled and the TARDIS has been stolen at the beginning of the Second Doctor and Jamie's adventure against the Daleks.

[edit] Production

Working titles for this story included The Chameleons.

This story had its origins in a planned Hartnell story by Hulke-Ellis called The Big Store, in which aliens occupied mannequins in a busy department store, while waiting for human hosts to possess. The idea was adapted for the Troughton era and its setting changed to a metropolitan airport.
Filmed on location at London Gatwick Airport. Heathrow also accepted the production team's offer, but the team chose Gatwick as the cost was lower. Doctor Who did film at Heathrow for Time-Flight in 1982.
Pauline Collins was offered the chance to continue playing the character of Sam Briggs (who appears only in this story) as a new companion, but declined the offer. Collins guest-starred, years later, as Queen Victoria in Tooth and Claw (2006).
There is a fan myth that this was the first story to feature the Doctor's face in the opening credits (exact determination having been difficult due to the number of episodes missing from this era of the programme). In reality, it was The Macra Terror that saw the debut of the new title sequence. However, the revised arrangement of the theme music that accompanied this new sequence made its debut in Episode 2 of The Faceless Ones.

[edit] Missing episodes

Of this story, only Episodes 1 and 3 exist in the BBC archives.

As well as the complete version, Episode 1 also exists in the BBC Archives as an incomplete print returned from ABC in Australia in the early 1980s after the Australian Film Censorship Board had removed the following scenes: Spencer killing Inspector Gascoigne with a Chameleon ray-gun; the alien arm emerging from the cupboard; and panning shots of the alien figure (seen only from behind) at the end of the episode.