Doctor Who, season 4 continues …

The Faceless Ones is a 6-part early Doctor Who adventure that is mostly missing from the BBC archives.

In order to watch the serial, I’ve found the “Loose Cannon” reconstructed version of the missing episodes 2, 4, 5 & 6.  This version employs the audio of the story matched against telesnaps (still images), descriptive text captions, existing footage where available, and sometimes a little added pieces of CGI/animation.

This six-part adventure has much more going for it than we can see in the two surviving episodes.  Sometimes the motives of the Chameleons gets a little lost, and the resolution to the story is a bit wet, but it provides good entertainment throughout the six episodes.

Set at Gatwick airport, it heavily uses the idea of aeroplanes, charter tours, and how easily people (like luggage) can be lost.  Its ambitions may not have been realised in the original version (the plane leaving Earth’s atmosphere and docking with an orbiting satellite).  It’s difficult to tell because this has been replaced by CGI animation in the Loose Cannon version.

The idea of the Chameleons taking the face of others is used subtly, making the Doctor’s job much harder, and is something that would be later used in other adventures – such as Terror of the Zygons.

The Faceless Ones is the final story for Ben & Polly and they don’t get a much better send off than Dodo did before them.  They pretty much vanish in episode 2, with barely a mention made until all of the youngsters are found by the Doctor at the end of the story.  Then we get a single scene (pre-filmed much earlier, I believe) with them effectively saying “bye” to the Doctor and Jamie.  Still, it was better than not having that final scene.

Unlike recent adventures that haven’t led directly into the next, The Faceless Ones does.  This actually makes the leaving of Polly & Ben a bit awkward.

The way it works is that the Doctor and Jamie have just been given permission by the airport commandant to retrieve the TARDIS, then they have the final Ben & Polly scene, then, once they’ve gone, the Doctor turns to Jamie and says “I didn’t want to tell Polly and Ben, but the TARDIS has gone missing”.

Next time … The Evil of the Daleks