The Faceless Ones

Episode 1

Hannah: I'm optimistic about that title. Sounds good. It's not something boring like "The Killers" or "Death Swamp".

The TARDIS materialises on a runway at Gatwick Airport, moments before a plane is about to touch down. The occupants step outside and assess the situation.

Hannah: Why are they running away?
Me: Because they're in the middle of a runway!
Hannah: Just aim the TARDIS somewhere else.

Upon being accosted by a policeman, the TARDIS crew scatter.

Hannah: That just looks suspicious; why didn't the Doctor try to bluff his way out of it, like he normally does? They could have said, "We were taking a walk through the countryside and didn't realise where we were until it was too late. There's a hole in the fence."
Me: They were inside a police box in the middle of a runway at Gatwick Airport.
Hannah: Nobody saw them come out of it. (seeing a hangar) "Chameleon Tours"? Is that relevant?

Polly witnesses a murder in the Chameleon Tours hangar.

Hannah: Is this slightly in the future, then, if they're using ray guns? Or is he a shape-shifting alien? Oh, "The Faceless Ones"... yeah, a shape-shifting alien, and that's why it says "Chameleon". It's been done before. Probably after this, though.
Me: Just you wait. I'm almost certain that their backstory has never been done by anyone else, ever.
Hannah: Maybe they ate a bad prune and became shape-shifters.
Me: That's no more ridiculous than the actual reason, I promise.

Hannah has a lot of fun watching Jamie's bemused reactions to everything in this modern-day setting (especially the "flying beasties"), but it's not long before her attention shifts from airlines to hairlines.

Hannah: Wait, has Polly grown all her hair back?
Me: Yes, well... maybe they've been travelling for a while.
Hannah: Do you know how long it takes to grow hair that long?
Me: We don't know how much time has elapsed since The Macra Terror.
Hannah: At least a year.
Me: There could have been a year between stories.
Hannah: Maybe two or three years.

The airport's Commandant has heard about the four intruders and asks his secretary to contact the police chief.

Me: That's Wanda Ventham; she's Benedict Cumberbatch's mother.
Hannah: Oh, really?
Me: Yep, his parents are both actors. They also play his parents in Sherlock.
Hannah: Oh, I know that. So were they famous actors?
Me: Well, they're not quite household names, but yes, they're fairly well-known in the acting profession. She appears in Doctor Who three times altogether; once each in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
Hannah: Far enough apart that you can't tell. Unlike old Eyepatch Man.
Me: I don't think anybody's too worried about that; sometimes an actor appears twice in the same season, or even in the same story. Remember Peter Purves in The Chase? Anyway, I'll point her out again when we get to the seventies.
Hannah: And then old Cumberbundle comes along and outshines them.
Me: I suppose that depends on whether you're a Sherlock fan or a Doctor Who fan.
Hannah: I'm a Doctor Strange fan. But I do like Sherlock too.

The Doctor and Jamie are reunited with Polly, except that she's calling herself Michelle and claims not to know either of them. Then we get a look at one of the new arrivals at the airport's medical centre: a misshapen creature with a featureless face and distorted skin.

Hannah: Oooh. Put that in the blog. "Oooh."

Episode 2

After five episodes, the new title sequence has finally got a new musical arrangement.

Hannah: I love the twinkly bits.
Me: So you approve of the new music?
Hannah: Yeah, it's the same central song but I like it. It's still mysterious and ethereal as usual, but... twinkly.
Me: Do you like it better than the old music?
Hannah: I like them both; I liked the old one for being slower and more sincere...
Me: Sincere?
Hannah: Mysterious, but in a deep way. This new one's faster - more upbeat and twinkly - so it has a different feel to it, but I like both of them.
Me: Well, that's cleared that up.

The Commandant reports the Doctor and Jamie to the police ("There's a lot of phone calls in this"), but she's more interested in the aliens.

Hannah: They're only faceless so far because they haven't shown us their faces. I want to see what they actually look like.

Her wish is granted a few moments later.

Hannah: Ah. Eurgh. I can't tell if it's got a cloth covering, or if that's an overgrowth of skin or something.

This Chameleon takes the identity of Meadows, one of the air traffic controllers, and begins adjusting to his new body with some sensory tests. Hannah's discourse on ASMR videos is cut short when we reach an entertaining scene with the Doctor, Jamie and Ben hiding inside a small photo booth, so I take the opportunity to steer her back towards the plot.

Hannah: Is this entire thing going to be set in the airport, and it's going to be like watching The Terminal? Which is fine by me, because it's a good film.
Me: It's not that much like The Terminal so far, is it?
Hannah: It's entirely set in an airport.
Me: Only in the same way that The Macra Terror was like Hi-de-Hi! but with more giant crabs.

When Samantha Briggs turns up looking for her missing brother Brian Briggs ("Ryan Giggs?!"), I don't even bother asking Hannah to identify her.

Me: That's Pauline Collins; she is a household name.
Hannah: At this point?
Me: No, but shortly after this she went on to be one of the stars of The Liver Birds, although she's probably best-known for Shirley Valentine, and she's since been awarded an OBE. Oh, and she narrated the TV series based on the Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves.
Hannah: I've never seen any of those.
Me: And she played Queen Victoria in the David Tennant episode "Tooth and Claw".
Hannah: Oh, I've seen that.

The Doctor and Jamie are managing to avoid the police by hiding behind a couple of newspapers. I think I saw this in an old episode of Chucklevision.

Hannah: If I were a policeman, I'd look behind the papers. Does anyone actually read the newspaper held up like that? It must look suspicious.

When the police finally catch up with them, the Doctor escapes by brandishing a fake bomb. Because bomb hoaxes always go down very well in airports.

Hannah: What was it? A rubber ball! I was hoping it would be something weird.
Me: Like what?
Hannah: I don't know. Something like a figurine, or a little china doll, or a grapefruit...
Me: Was that not weird enough for you?
Hannah: A small rubber ball is not.

Sam is still on the trail of her missing brother, but "Polly" expertly fobs her off. Maybe she really does work in public transport after all.

Hannah: I'm really sad, because now she thinks Polly's a cowbag. It's not Polly.
Me: How do you know it's not Polly?
Hannah: Are you trying to tell me she's doing this on purpose?
Me: Maybe she's found a new job.
Hannah: No. She's a nice person; she wouldn't act like that.

Of course, Hannah isn't fooled for a second; the real Polly was abducted in the last episode, and now even her duplicate is leaving on the next flight. The Doctor starts poking around the Chameleon Tours and finds a live feed to the hangar, where he sees Ben discovering Polly's motionless body in a packing case shortly before getting caught himself.

Hannah: It's like a horror movie, where you manage to get a live feed and watch someone else get attacked. Although in the Saw films it always turns out it was a recording and it was a trick the whole time.
Me: I was thinking more along the lines of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but okay.

DI Crossland is still looking for the Doctor, who he believes shouldn't be too hard to find ("You'd be surprised; he's just spent a couple of hours hiding behind a newspaper"), but the Doctor has returned to the Chameleon Tours hangar and finds the body of Meadows, whose duplicate is working in air traffic control.

Hannah: This is creepy; I like it. The build-up is good, but I'm impatient to find out what's going on. It's a curious setting; I'd have thought an airport would seem too limited, but actually it's a large space with loads of different types of areas. The perfect kind of place to have shenanigans going on.
Me: Do you remember when we watched The Underwater Menace, and I told you that the playwright Joe Orton wrote about it in his diary? This is the other episode that he wrote about.
Hannah: Does he talk about Jamie's legs again?
Me: Well, I still have a copy of The Orton Diaries from the university library. He writes: "Watched Dr Who on television. Rubbish, but there's a young boy in it who is worth looking at; like an Edwardian masher at a Gaiety show, I mentally undress him. I'm sure the BBC would be horrified if they realised that even a science fiction series can be used erotically."
Hannah: It's interesting to hear somebody's contemporary viewpoint of the series, even if they don't seem to care for the science fiction element of it at all and they just want an excuse to write about looking at young men.

Episode 3

The Doctor finally manages to persuade the Commandant that Chameleon Tours are up to no good, even if he still refuses to believe the part about them being aliens.

Hannah: They'll take it seriously now, even if they think it's just human trafficking instead of an alien invasion. There are situations where it would be easier for the Doctor to lie to the authorities and tell them he's uncovered an abduction case; he doesn't have to mention that it's aliens who are doing it.
Me: Maybe, but it's no good having the police storm in there and getting obliterated by alien technology.
Hannah: Well, he just has to say that they've got some very nasty weapons; he doesn't need to specify that nobody on the planet has seen them before, he can just say "They're really dangerous and we have to be careful" instead of going around shouting about aliens. After they've been rounded up he can say "Right, now here's the thing I haven't told you..."

The mysterious disappearance of Polly and Ben in the first two episodes is starting to concern Hannah.

Hannah: Are Ben and Polly on holiday?
Me: They're missing; it gives the plot a sense of urgency.
Hannah: They're on holiday, aren't they?
Me: No, it's part of the story.
Hannah: Well, it would be a convenient time for them to go on holiday. It's like a Bank Holiday for them, being forced to have a holiday whether they want it or not.

The secret of Chameleon Tours is revealed in the cliffhanger: the passengers disappear from the plane shortly after take-off.

Hannah: Well, I wasn't expecting that.

Episode 4

The Doctor, Jamie and Sam have been left paralysed on the floor with a laser beam slowly moving towards them.

Hannah: That's a very slow way to kill someone. Why didn't he just shoot them all and leave?
Me: It's the old Bond villain routine; leave the room and assume it'll all go according to plan. Maybe they're too squeamish.

Jamie manages to stop the laser without sustaining what Hannah calls "Luke Skywalker hand", then he steals Sam's plane ticket by distracting her with a sudden kiss. 007 would be proud.

Hannah: He's a sneaky bastard! He's just a young Highland boy and now he's doing all these things. Surely the ticket's got her name on it, and he hasn't got a passport.
Me: The ticket just says "S. Briggs".
Hannah: It's not very secure, is it?

Hannah is sceptical when the plane starts flying directly upwards towards Earth's orbit, but let's be charitable and assume that it's a spaceship built to look like a VC10. One thing she can't forgive is how absurd it looks, and as if to highlight this point, the reconstruction we're watching has used computer-generated graphics to illustrate how it might have looked.

Hannah: I mean, very well done to them for re-creating it, but it looks rubbish.

It also raises further questions about the disappearance of the passengers.

Hannah: I thought they just teleported them off the plane and then carried on where they were going. Why did they teleport them off and go and dock with the mothership? Maybe they use the passengers as a power source, but then why is it just people aged between 18 and 25? I thought they wanted spry young bodies to do something with.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Hannah: I mean to be their hosts! They're on the surface using important people for their hosts, but then they take the fit ones back...
Me: Er...
Hannah: Physically fit! And where are Ben and Polly?

Episode 5

Only episodes 1 and 3 of this six-part story currently survive in the archive.

Hannah: I hope we get to see something this time; I'm always disappointed when I've been waiting to see inside a spaceship and see the aliens, and then we only get to see clips. I hope there are some decent clips in this one.

One thing we do get to see is a rather chilling image of the plane's passengers stored neatly in a drawer.

Hannah: Oh! They miniaturise them! Okay. Now it's understandable.

The Chameleons are stealing the bodies of young tourists because the people of their planet have lost their identities in a gigantic explosion. I pause the episode.

Hannah: What?
Me: Just wondering if you had any thoughts.
Hannah: They had a massive explosion and they lost their identities? That sounds stupid. There was an explosion and they lost their faces and now they don't have personalities anymore. Absolute twaddle.

The Chameleons have collected fifty thousand young people during this operation.

Hannah: How on earth can they abduct fifty thousand people without them being noticed missing? How have they not been discovered if these mass abductions are taking place? Seven or eight planes' worth of people going missing every day, with only postcards being sent to convince their families that they're fine? Only one woman so far has noticed her brother missing. Surely people other than Sam have been trying to get hold of people and have been unable to do so? Also, don't airports check manifestos to see who should be coming off the planes at the other end? Or do they falsify them to show the plane was always empty? And won't people be curious that whole planes are being flown from country to country with apparently no passengers, which is a massive waste of money? How long has this been going on for? After a few weeks you'd expect people to start returning from their tours, and it's obvious that no one has been coming back.

Having already lost Polly and Ben, the Doctor now realises that Jamie has gone too.

Hannah: He's rubbish at looking after his companions.

Episode 6

Ben and Polly seem to be taking rather a long holiday.

Hannah: Are they dead, and they're not coming back?
Me: No, we just haven't seen either of them since episode 2. And even then, that was Chameleon Polly.
Hannah: That is a very long holiday; why did they get three weeks off?! No one else gets three weeks off!
Me: I told you, it's a plot device.
Hannah: What, to make us like Jamie more?
Me: It's dramatic tension, it raises the stakes. Their disappearance is an important part of the story.
Hannah: They've managed to get a three-week holiday out of it, though.

Having forced the Chameleons to give themselves up, the Doctor negotiates with them; he effectively lets them off with a caution and allows them to return to their planet unharmed, on the condition that they release their abductees and don't do it again. Presumably he's willing to overlook the murder and identity-theft.

Me: I think this is the first time that's ever happened.
Hannah: It wouldn't have worked if they'd come to Earth to enslave those people, or to infiltrate the whole planet because they want all our minerals and resources. Although that would be a more believable motivation than: "I don't have a face. Or any hobbies. Can I steal a person and become them, please?" They're just sitting around on their planet, mindless and faceless and bored, wanting to steal an 18-year-old from Liverpool so that they can start collecting football stickers or whatever it is they're going to do with their new identities. This whole premise is stupid!
Me: I like your theory that they're only doing this so that they can get some hobbies.
Hannah: The world is so shallow that they don't want to be faceless. Why not just carry on as they are? I don't understand how they can be lacking identities when they're still able to make plans and do things. They already have abilities and designated ranks, and those abilities aren't coming from the humans they've copied because the communications guy was Jamie and he's not good at anything.
Me: Maybe the Doctor let them off lightly because they're victims of circumstance and not trying to get power for its own sake.
Hannah: It makes them more interesting and thought-provoking, but unfortunately it makes the whole story fall apart.

The Doctor is reunited with the real Jamie, and the abducted people are restored to Earth. The Commandant arranges to have the TARDIS returned ("They're okay with the fact that he left it on the runway?"), and we cut to the Doctor, Jamie, Ben and Polly being dropped off at the airport hangar.

Hannah: There's no touching reunion scene?
Me: I think a lot of time has passed now and we're supposed to get the impression that this is some time later, after everything has been sorted out.
Hannah: Nah, it just feels rushed, like so many endings.

By a breathtaking coincidence, this turns out to be the exact same day that Ben and Polly originally left Earth in The War Machines.

Hannah: That never happens, even when the Doctor can actually fly the TARDIS.

They decide to stay behind and the Doctor says goodbye to his young friends, telling Ben to become an admiral and Polly to look after Ben.

Hannah: What, she doesn't have any ambitions of her own?
Me: Maybe he's hedging his bets because she doesn't have a job anymore.
Hannah: Oh yeah, her employer accidentally made something that tried to destroy the world. Now I know why you were being so weird about them being on holiday; really they'd just left the show, and this is essentially a cameo to say goodbye.
Me: I think they were contracted until about halfway through the next story, and got paid for it, but obviously Sam was being set up as the next companion...
Hannah: That's what I was thinking.
Me: ...so spending the whole story with her and Jamie together might have been a way of trying to establish the new dynamic.
Hannah: Sam doesn't seem like the kind of person who would run away if she's worried about her brother not speaking to her for a week.
Me: Pauline Collins was invited to be the next companion, but she turned it down.
Hannah: Well, it didn't make sense for the character.
Me: I don't think that was the reason she turned it down.
Hannah: No, but why offer it to her if it doesn't make sense for the character?

But the Doctor and Jamie can't leave yet; the TARDIS is missing.

Hannah: Ah, okay, so there's no flying off between episodes.
Me: No, it's a cliffhanger to lead into the next one.
Hannah: It's been mislaid. Which is funny, because luggage-handling at an airport always loses something, and now he's lost his TARDIS.
Me: No, it was there a minute ago. It was outside the hangar, but now it's gone.
Hannah: So it's flown off without him?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: It's camouflaged itself?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: Somebody else has got in it and flown it off?
Me: Or...?
Hannah: That's not the Doctor?
Me: Someone's stolen it.
Hannah: That's what I said.
Me: No, they've stolen it without flying it off. They've physically lifted it up and moved it.
Hannah: Maybe somebody thinks it's a real police box and they've taken it back.

The Score

Hannah: It's a really interesting idea; so many of them are, which is why I always start by saying that. But when you boil it all down, they're faceless aliens because there was an explosion, and they want new identities. Completely stupid idea to go and steal fifty thousand people. Some stories are far-fetched but it all works, whereas this is far-fetched and stupid. How can an explosion have wiped their personality and characteristics and appearance, and yet they're still able to function and carry out this mission without being people? The story is a good idea, up to a point, but it wouldn't hold up very long because such a huge number of people can't vanish unnoticed; stealing people from the margins of society would be far more effective. And there wasn't enough of the actual aliens; I'd like to have heard a lot more about them.
Me: They've got no identities! What is there to learn about them?
Hannah: What was this explosion? What they were like before? Are their children born like that?
Me: I don't think it's worth dwelling too much on their backstory.
Hannah: Why not?
Me: Because it doesn't make sense.
Hannah: Exactly! This is really hard, because I've enjoyed it; it's good as a conspiracy thriller-type story, but it's so full of holes.

6/10