The Faceless Ones

Chapter The 66th, involves those who have - in the words of Sir Billiam of Idol - eyes without a face. (But without the eyes either.)

Plot: 
The Doctor and Jamie (and Polly and Ben are involved too, but blink and you'd miss it) investigate at Gatwick Airport in 1966 the convoluted plot by a Club 18-30 style package holiday company, secretly run by aliens called the Chameleons, to kidnap the youngsters on their flights in order to take over each one's identity and body print for a pod-person of their own race. They've been doing this for some time, with the plan nearing completion, but are only now transforming key people in the airport authorities; as such, some suspicion has been aroused. This lack of organisation is probably because their leader, The Director, has a lethal combination of incompetence and arrogance: typical upper management. Anyway, the Doctor investigates, pretends to have been converted himself, and hitches a ride with the rest on the last flight back to the Chameleon base, a satellite in space, where he plays them off against each other, and negotiates the release of all the humans. Jamie has a holiday romance that doesn't get further than the airport with Samantha Briggs (they snog loads!) but she decides not to join him travelling in the TARDIS (and Polly and Ben leave, but blink and you'd miss it).

Context:

After two in a row stories that nobody else in the family was interested in watching with me, I was hoping for a crowd pleaser this time round. The randomiser came up, though, with a story that's two-thirds missing and would need to be supplemented by audio and slide shows. It seemed unlikely to snare any additional interest, so I got underway on my own. The Better Half dropped in a few times, though, for similar visual attraction reasons as last time when I was watching a David Tennant episode; she may not want me sharing this with the internet, but she appreciates the look of Fraser Hines in 1967 in a similar way to how she appreciates Tennant in 2006 and now. She's not the only one: Joe Orton was similarly impressed; he'd mentioned Fraser appreciatively before, and then noted in his diary at the time of The Faceless Ones episode 2's original broadcast "Watched Dr Who on television. Rubbish, but there's a young boy in it who is worth looking at... 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."

First-time round: 

The Faceless Ones exists in different bits and pieces discovered over many years, and aptly that's how I first experienced it too. I seem to remember having a pirate VHS in the early 1990s which had episode 3 on it, not very long after it had been found and returned to the BBC archives in 1987. I can't remember how I got the tape, and don't know how the episode would have become available on the fan circuit, but it wasn't of a very watchable quality (the recovered film was badly damaged in places). Much later, I heard the audio of all six episodes when it came out on CD in 2002. And finally, the following year, I saw episode 1 and a somewhat restored episode 3 on the final Doctor Who VHS release ever, a boxed set that mopped up the few remaining episodes that hadn't been released before then. It was a limited edition that also included an incomplete Hartnell story, another (at the time) orphaned Troughton episode, The Web of Fear 1, and an enamel pin badge.

Reaction:

When the producer of The Faceless Ones, Innes Lloyd, first moved into the role, he unceremoniously replaced the actors then playing the Doctor Who companions to freshen up the show. For Jackie Lane, who played Dodo, this meant being written out abruptly two episodes into a longer story, with a horribly brief explanation tagged on at the end, when she wasn't even in the studio, that she wouldn't be coming back: no heroic send-off at all. Innes must have thought this was for the greater good, as it allowed him to introduce a pair of more contemporary regular characters, Ben and Polly. It's a bit rubbish therefore that, when Ben and Polly come to leave in The Faceless Ones, they are again abruptly written out two episodes into a longer story, with a horribly brief explanation tagged on at the end, when they aren't even in the studio, that that they aren't coming back. Worse things happen to actors, of course, but what about rewarding the audience's emotional investment?

Perhaps learning from previous mistakes, this production integrates Ben and Polly's departure a little better into The Faceless Ones than Dodo's exit in The War Machines. The Chameleon Tours story is about young people of around their age going missing, which gives credence to their dropping out of view all of a sudden; there is also a brief pre-filmed goodbye scene in episode 6 (Dodo's goodbye is passed on by another character as a telephone message - the Doctor Who equivalent of being dumped by text). If anything it's integrated too well: as the story becomes about finding Ben and Polly, it raises expectations about their eventually being reunited with the Doctor and Jamie. By necessity, though, this reuniting happens off-screen, and then as soon as they're found and back with the Doctor and Jamie, and the plot is resolved, they decide to bugger off again. It's unsatisfying, and that's a shame, as it undermines an otherwise very good story.

Despite dropping the ball with Ben and Polly, a lot of what's successful in The Faceless Ones is about character dynamics. This is the first time that Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines, one of Doctor Who's most wonderful and most natural pairings, work together properly in Doctor Who. They'd featured together in previous TV work, and no doubt clicked behind the scenes when Fraser first joined the cast - it seems likely that's why he was kept on as a regular, as in Jamie's debut story and the others between it and The Faceless Ones, he and the Doctor don't share much story time; this changes from this point on, though: they are instantly, and forever after, the double-act on screen that they were off. Try-out companion Samantha Briggs also achieves instant chemistry: when the three of them are lying down waiting to be zapped by a Goldfinger homage, they really feel like a team, despite only having been brought together minutes before. It's a great loss for the show (though not perhaps for her career) that Pauline Collins wasn't tempted to stay on.

The setting is well constructed and populated with good characters, all well cast and played. A mark of a good tale is that it creates a world one wants to visit, and that's definitely true of this version of Gatwick Airport with its exasperated commandants, campy vicious captains and arch customs officers. This is the debut outing for Malcolm Hulke (here co-writing with David Ellis) who would write regularly for the show in the 1970s and deliver this standard of world and characters again and again on TV, and then later (and even better) when he novelised his episodes. Apart from being the debut of a significant Who writer, The Faceless Ones is significant in other quiet ways: it fuses the contemporary Earth story that had been tried out before in The War Machines with the 'base under siege' template (replete with a distrustful CO that has to unwillingly put his faith in the Doctor) which would be applied increasingly in Doctor Who stories from this point onward, and even finds time for some space flight action too. It is a bit silly in places, though: the villain's plan - particularly the idea of throwing off suspicion by sending unnecessarily suspicious postcards -  seems built to fail.

Connectivity: 

More alien infiltration of a South-East England institution that arouses the suspicion of investigators, including the TARDIS team. As in School Reunion, the aliens' plan depends upon a large group of youngsters. Both involve companions the producers classify somewhat as has-beens who decide not to travel on in the TARDIS at the end (of course, this was a little more unfair in regard to Ben than it was to Sarah Jane and K9).

Deeper Thoughts:
List-o-mania. One stereotypical aspect of Doctor Who fans highlighted by commentators, sometimes somewhat cruelly, is our preponderance for making lists. It is certainly something of which I am guilty, and the volume of anecdotal evidence I have about other fans overwhelmingly tells me I'm not alone. Is it that the programme is one that attracts enthusiasts of a certain psychology, or is it something that's inherent in the programme itself? Is Doctor Who particularly list-worthy? There's certainly a lot of it. Unless one was lucky enough to start watching in November 1963, there will be a wealth of earlier episodes you haven't seen when you start, many from different Doctors and eras, many potentially containing plot points of interest in the ongoing tangled continuity of the show. Is it intimidating to navigate that new world without the 'map' of a list one has found or compiled? Casting my mind back, I can't remember ever not knowing the weight of Who's pre-history, probably because I first discovered the show during a season of repeats designed to highlight its heritage. Even so, I wanted to find out even more in more detail very quickly. Maybe some folks can just jump in, not knowing where they are in the overall story, but I'm not one of them.

Once you have such a list, then there's an obvious metric you can measure: "which of these have I seen?" or the variant for the collector fan (if that isn't all of us) "which of these do I own?". Before you know it, the list has become two lists, but one mission: to turn the shorter list into the longer list by slowly finding (and buying) and watching them all. For the Doctor Who fan (unlike, say, the Star Trek fan) there's a third list that needs to be factored in too, "which of these doesn't exist any more?". Throughout the 1990s and early twenty-first century, I would integrate all three into a slowly dwindling checklist of VHS and audio releases yet to be watched/listened to. I would, at the beginning of every year and often several times during the year, write it out longhand, ticking off all those I'd got already, putting a dot next to those that had been announced for future release in Doctor Who Magazine, speculating about which ones would be ticked off before the end of the year. I realise this makes me sound like a basket case; it's not that I needed to flip the light switch on and off 17 times or else my family would die, it was just a pleasant enough displacement activity.

The Faceless Ones episode 1 was one of the last few I ever saw, as noted above, but the very final Doctor Who story I ever caught up with (on audio) was The Underwater Menace in February 2005; and at that point I'd watched or listened to every one of 26 years worth of broadcast Who, just in time for the new series to start the following month. As long as new stories are being transmitted, the mission will never complete. Even then, there's still the chance that some of those missing stories will be found. Even if they're not, they may one day all be animated at least. For any completist, there's a love/hate relationship with completion. Finally finishing stuff off can leave one bereft, and whatever one may claim to others or even oneself, that one is eager to get to the end, it's easy to find oneself pushing the finishing line into the future, to enjoy the mission a bit more. This is presumably why, I suddenly realise, I've set up a situation where I once again am slowly whittling away all the Doctor Who stories, one by one, in a random order; I've recreated my old displacement activities in this blog.

In Summary:

Takes off nicely, hits a high and keeps going, then comes down with a bit of a bump as Ben and Polly are ejected. Overall, though, top flight.

School Reunion

Chapter The 65th, it's September, which means it's back to school.

Plot: 
The Doctor and Rose are contacted by Mickey to investigate intriguing developments at a school in London, Wales. The school turns out to have been taken over by noisy bat-people aliens called the Krillitane. They want to use the schoolchildren as a gestalt supercomputer to crack the mathematical equation that controls the universe; to help them they use a special (magic) oil which has many and contradictory properties like making children clever and obedient, blowing up Krillitanes, moving the plot along, and making chips taste nice when they're fried in it. None of that matters, though, as the key event for the Doctor is bumping into his old friends Sarah Jane Smith and K9, who are also investigating the school, which allows him to enjoy a good old whinge about his extended mortality, and the shortness of human lives, and all that stuff that makes him look deep.

Context:

In the last week, all the children (boy of 11, boy of 8, girl of 5) went back to school, so I thought one afternoon they might like to watch this, as - although it was randomly chosen - it would have some thematic resonance. No dice, though: there was not a single flicker of interest. I waited until the evening when they were abed instead, and watched alone as the Better Half was busy (though she did wander in at one point, and have to tear herself away from the nice close-ups of the scrummy and very fresh-faced Tennant on screen - this story was part of his first recording block, so he looks awfully young).

First-time round: 

I watched this live on its debut transmission on BBC1 in 2006. The Better Half and I had got married at around the time they started filming the Christopher Eccleston series, and for the year following that we lived in Kent where she was teaching at the time. Late in 2005, we moved back to the Sussex coast, where we'd both spent our childhoods; by that time, we were expecting our first baby. We didn't sell and empty the flat in Kent straight away, though, and did many trips back in the spring of 2006. I remember buying the Radio Times with Doctor Who on the cover in Gillingham before the season started,and sitting on a box in an almost empty room looking at the fold-out cover that (for some reason) showed the Doctor, Rose, Sarah Jane and lots of monsters all holding hands in a chain. I likely got shouted at a minute later for sitting on my arse and letting my pregnant wife do all the work. Anyway, I associate the stories of David Tennant's first season with this transition, and it was indeed a period of transition for the show too.

Reaction:

I've described the 2006 series of stories before as New Who's Difficult Second Album; losing the leading man, despite getting a very good replacement, has altered the mix, and something's not quite right. They'd fix it; the following years are much slicker, and a few stories of Tennant's first run are excellent. But many, including School Reunion, seem - for want of a better word - fake. There's something hollow and unrealistic about the world of this story. From the very first scene, the background feels like a superficial and shiny representation of a school rather than a real establishment. This is a shame, as it's quite an original setting for Doctor Who (in fact it was the original setting) - it's the first full story to take place inside a working school full of pupils, though a few early scenes of the very first episode in 1963 have a similar setting. With the reintroduction of Coal Hill (the fictional place of education from that first ever episode) when Clara later worked there, it would become a much more common playground, but in 2006 this was new.

Anthony Head, who's mostly very good in the rest of the story at being a traditional yet uniquely alien villain, is twirling a moustache in the opening scene, where he believes that because a pupil is from a children's home, and has no parents, he can eat her. Notwithstanding his need for all the children intact to further his mad plan, are we to understand the institutions of this story universe really aren't going to notice one of their charges disappearing. Are we in a realistic environment or a heightened fairy tale one? I don't think the writing or production has quite made up its mind, and this uncertainty infects the rest, with the story veering scene by scene from wonderful to cringe-a-mundo (a word I have never used before and hopefully never will again). One negative, and apologies for being a bit controversial and having to speak ill of the dead, is that Liz Sladen is a very limited actress; she was generally fine as Sarah Jane first time round, when nothing too demanding was required and her face still had some movement. But to make the story centre on her loss and abandonment issues was a risky move.

To be fair, it's mostly a perfectly serviceable performance, although not very in keeping with the character - she was one of the original series companions that had the fullest life away from the Doctor; it stretches credibility to think this independent woman has been living in his shadow for thirty odd years. There's one moment where it all comes together, the scene where Sarah Jane finds the TARDIS hidden in the school and turns to see Tennant in the shadows, in heroic pose, and they exchange some cracking dialogue. Elsewhere, though, it's dragged down by someone's bright idea of adding the very male humour about the Doctor's old and new companions acting like "the Missus and the Ex" which then means the two female actors involved have to do lots of demeaning bitchy acting, which isn't very apt or very funny. Worse, there's then a scene where in a short space of time they have to both go from sniping at one another, to competing to outdo the other's experiences, to bonding, to uncontrollable laughing. This writing is un-actable for even the very best performer, so isn't very convincing here (though obviously some of the references were fun for us long-term obsessives, but fan service is not a good enough reason to keep it in). It should have been possible to have covered the intriguing aspects about loss and adventure and mortality without sexisim, and without any actor or character having to throw away their integrity.

Mickey and K9 fair a bit better, probably as the lesser focus on them entails more subtlety. Mickey realising he's the 'tin dog' is a wonderful moment for the character, as is his solution to pulling the plug on the nefarious Krillitane scheme. K9's self sacrifice at the end has fans of a certain vintage punching the air too. Other characters get short shrift from an already busy 45 minutes that appears to have had some vicious cuts. There's a focus on the character of Milo, who then completely disappears from the narrative bar a cryptic message later that screams out "missing scene". But it's doubly damaging, as it sets up that it's only Milo being made clever, when all the children are later shown to have similarly been got at, without much story time having elapsed between. It also means that Kenny, the hero of the guest cast, gets even less screen time to be established.

Connectivity: 

Both stories feature K9, and in both he's damaged and in need of mending. Both feature infiltrating alien creatures implausibly disguised as humans.

Deeper Thoughts:
Driving and Schools. The story under consideration this time features a high school and some dangerous driving; both of these remind me of my own youth and adolescence (ask the few people who've been driven by me), and have - apologies in advance - opened the car door to a bit of a reminisce. I was an out and proud Doctor Who fanboy at school from early on, often to be found sketching out Daleks or copies of Target novelisation covers, writing my own Doctor Who comic strips, or wandering round the playing field reading the Doctor Who Magazine Summer Special 1983. I made friendships through Doctor Who; I first bonded with one of my oldest friends, Alex, who's been mentioned a few times in the blog, over a shared love for the show and dislike of P.E. But occasionally, other schoolchildren would confuse my enthusiasm with my being a member of the production team and having responsibility for what aired. Any time anyone had a problem with the show they'd come to tell me, as if I could do anything about it. This was worst after the broadcast of Colin Baker's debut, The Twin Dilemma episode 1. I had a number of kids aggressively telling me they'd never watch the programme ever again; John Nathan-Turner owed me some therapy sessions.

I must have stood out at school a bit, in a certain way, because of this or maybe other factors. I have a few times over the many years since bumped into people from school whom I didn't recognise but who remembered me. On a couple of different occasions, separate people have voiced a variation on the comment "Of course I knew it was you, because of your glasses." Now, this is interesting as I never had glasses at school; I got my first pair of specs in my fresher year at university. I must have just looked like the sort of (computer and Doctor Who loving) person who ought to have glasses back then, and that made an indelible psychological impression on some. Not that I didn't need glasses at school necessarily, my myopia was probably quite a while undiagnosed. On the (only a few!) times I took my driving test, the bit that terrified me most was not being allowed to drive at all if I failed the very first task, reading a number plate in the car park., If they were too far away, I just couldn't see them, which may have explained a thing or two about the quality of my driving.

I never really wanted to learn to drive; but thanks to the persistence and passive-aggressive generosity of a well-meaning parent, I had no choice. If you're bought a second-hand car as a birthday present, you don't have much room for manoeuvre. To misquote Ferris Bueller: I asked for a computer, I got a car: how's that for being born under a bad sign? It seemed a waste of money to me, all the insurance and petrol; plus, I was just beginning to understand the environmental implications too. I eventually passed my test, but when I then drove my car, I kept damaging it by hitting thankfully inanimate things. The car patched up for the beginning of my second year of Uni, I drove myself and Zahir (another Doctor Who fan, and recurring character in the blog) up to Durham without incident. But, days later, before term had even started, I rendered it an insurance write-off. I have not driven since. But this week, I was reading an article. Apparently, millennials - that wonderful rare hothouse breed that jaded Gen-Xers like me love to read about - are choosing not to drive in greater numbers; the number of 20-somethings with a licence has declined by more than 20% since 1994, with rising fuel and insurance costs cited as a reason, and probably technology changing leisure habits a factor too, I would think: social media becoming increasingly a supplement to real world meets. In other words, they'd rather have a computer than a car. So, it wasn't that I was rubbish at driving, you see - I was merely ahead of my time! 

In Summary:

Final report: the exploration of the Doctor and companion's relationship, their lives, and their mortality - A+; the Krillitane plot - B; the Missus and the Ex idea, and the silly bitchy scenes to which it gives rise: D. Overall: Could do better.