The Faceless Ones Episode 2

The one where the Doctor, Ben and Jamie have fun in a photo booth...

A week too late, Delia Derbyshire's fresh version of the Doctor Who theme tune makes its debut here, and its much busier and more frantic than the ethereal original. She's added pace and some shrill expressions which match the new title sequence well (we won't get the full effect of this until the visual episode 3). This 1967 theme will last Doctor Who a long time - 13 years in fact!

I really am fond of the stock music used in The Faceless Ones. It's very low-key, but its a sombre soundscape underpinning some of the intriguing and mysterious goings-on in the story. The scene where the Chameleon morphs into Meadows is chilling stuff, judging by John Cura's telesnaps. A simple cross-fade effect was probably used (similar to the regeneration in The Tenth Planet episode 4), but the fading between a normal human face and the mottled alien head is really quite unsettling, even 50 years later (to me, anyway!).

It seems the Chameleons are swapping with humans, both in body and mind. The "alien" Meadows has the appearance of his template, but also adopts his memories, which is why he knows he lives at 10 Sylvia Avenue, having recently moved from number 34 (which Sylvia Avenue he lives on is unclear - there's one in Pinner and another in Brentwood, and both are roughly the same distance away from Gatwick (approximately 50 miles), so wherever Meadows lives, he has a tough commute to work!).

It's an ingenious, albeit clunky, idea to have the copied aliens alter and moderate their senses to match that of humans using a computer attached to their arms. Alien Meadows' slurred speech is quite eerie, until they alter his settings and he starts spouting perfect Queen's English. They also change his eyesight, smell and taste like they're changing the volume and contrast on a television set, until he's properly Meadows. As I say, clunky but clever!

It's all very mysterious and murky. This episode reveals that Polly has been "swapped", and the real Polly's frozen body is found by Ben in a packing crate, while the "alien" Polly is pretending to be an employee of Chameleon Tours. Confusingly, the fake Polly - or Michelle Leuppi as she insists - appears to land with a Chameleon Tours flight from Zurich, then immediately gets a job behind the desk at Chameleon Tours. Because her presence is attracting suspicious attention from the Doctor and Jamie, Blade readies her to be sent "back to base" on the next flight to Zurich. It's all quite muddled, but not frustratingly so just yet.

We also have the introduction of a new character in Scouser Samantha Briggs, who's dressed like a Biba model and searching for her missing brother Brian. Pauline Collins (who was soon to get her break as Dawn in The Liver Birds sitcom) lifts Samantha off the page with a whoosh of fresh air, making her energetic, feisty and doggedly determined. Her scene with "Michelle Leuppi" is a joy, always one step ahead of fake Polly, and adamant she won't be palmed off ("Brian Briggs - would you like me to spell it for you?"). There were short-lived hopes of making Samantha the new companion (Collins had other ideas) and we can only imagine how different Season 5 would have been with the alternative TARDIS team of the Doctor, Jamie and Sam!

I love the scene where the Doctor, Jamie and Ben have a private chinwag in the photo booth, and they're interrupted by an old lady, making them pretend to pose for snaps. The accompanying telesnap is priceless, and the whole idea of three men having a conference inside a photo booth is so eccentric that it feels very like The Avengers (Malcolm Hulke had written eight episodes of that series by this point).

Meanwhile, the Doctor tries yet again to convince the Commandant of the dead body Polly found in episode 1, and even I'm getting tired of his fruitless attempts now. No wonder the Commandant gets so frustrated with him, he's got no evidence whatsoever that he's telling the truth. Ideally, the Doctor should have moved on by now and got stuck in to investigating everything himself - the murder, the alien ray gun, the disappearance, Polly's mind-swap etc - because the police plainly aren't going to be much help. He needs to be more proactive, although pretending to have a bomb while in Air Traffic Control is a pretty extreme thing to do (how times change, hey?).

As the episode draws to an end, we have Polly cloned in some way, Ben abducted by aliens, and the Doctor freezing to death in a locked room. Quite why the aliens employ a complicated freezing gas technique to kill the Doctor, and not simpler means such as their gas pens or ray guns, is needlessly silly. The treatment of Ben in this story is noticeably poor. He's barely had any lines, and he's done next to nothing, which is a real shame for Michael Craze, as he was capable of so much better. Ben has obviously been ditched in favour of that other young male companion, Jamie, who the show never really needed in the first place. I'm glad Ben's in the photo booth scene though, otherwise we'd miss out on one of my favourite telesnaps ever!

First broadcast: April 15th, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Chameleons are ugly-looking things, and suitably 'orrible.
The Bad: While Anneke Wills and Fraser Hines get plenty to do, it's wrong that poor Michael Craze should suffer. Writers Hulke and Ellis even introduce another companion-type character in Samantha - from a production point of view, it's to replace Wills, who's out of contract after episode 3, but I can't help but feel sorry for Craze.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode 3...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 1; Episode 3; Episode 4; Episode 5; Episode 6

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-faceless-ones.html

The Faceless Ones is available on BBC soundtrack CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Faceless-Frazer-Hines/dp/0563535016. Episode 1 and 3 are the only surviving episodes, and can be found on the Lost in Time DVD box set here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Lost-Time-DVD/dp/B0002XOZW4