The Faceless Ones Episode 3

The one where an aeroplane full of passengers disappears in an instant...

We pick this slow-moving but suitably intriguing tale up with the Doctor being frozen to death by icy gas jets in the Chameleon Tours hangar. Almost immediately, the Doctor hunkers into his coat, collar up around his ears, but it would be much simpler to move as far away from the icy jets as possible, rather than just flop down beside them. Still, at least the Doctor manages to outwit thicko Spencer with his own gas pen, and escape. It's funny, but during the brief moment where Troughton is in his shirt sleeves, he looks remarkably like he would in The Two Doctors, 18 years hence!

I said thicko Spencer because he just is. He's very straight and humourless (as all the Chameleons are) but he's also appallingly rubbish at any job he's given. Captain Blade really has got a liability on his hands (or "a fool" as Doctor Who villains prefer). Later on Spencer tries yet again to kill the Doctor, this time by getting bumbling Meadows to attach a destructive device to him. He's so desperate to have the Doctor dead, why doesn't he use a ray gun, or a gas pen? Why all these extravagantly silly methods of dispatch?

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!).

The Faceless Ones Episode 1

The one where the Doctor is asked for his passport...

Ooh, a new title sequence! Although the new look opening titles had been running since the previous serial, The Faceless Ones Episode 1 is the first time we can actually see them (until somebody finds an episode of The Macra Terror). It's quite strange to suddenly see Patrick Troughton's face in the howlaround effects, and despite it being a happy, smiley Doctor, the visual effect is quite disconcerting. His face fades into solidity, but just as it first appears it looks mutated and fractured, and as if he has more than two eyes. Weird... I can understand why some contemporary viewers were freaked out by the Doctor Who titles when they were growing up! It's also strange to see the new titles over the original theme tune, but this would change with Episode 2 with the debut of a revamped theme too.

The episode opens with some exciting location footage at Gatwick Airport. It's the first time we've had any location footage since The Underwater Menace, and the first time the Doctor has visited contemporary Earth since The War Machines. In fact, this episode feels very much like The War Machines, with its modern-day setting and plenty of warehouses and creeping about.

The Macra Terror Episode 4

The one where Jamie dances the Highland Fling...

The first five or so minutes of this episode consist of a pretty laboured catch-and-escape scenario, with the Doctor and Polly running away from Ola's guards, and Jamie dodging the Macra's giant claws. It struck me only now, four episodes in, that the Macra don't make any sound (except for their control voice). They're huge monsters, this is Doctor Who, so why don't they roar or growl or gnash their fangs (that's if they have fangs - there's certainly plenty of teeth on display on the sleeve of the BBC soundtrack CD!). They must be the quietest monsters Doctor Who ever had (aside from the Weeping Angels).

Everything picks up when Jamie escapes into the main hall where a group of colonists are rehearsing. There's no doubt about it, the chant they're rehearsing is sheer bonkers, and the main cheerleader is as ardent as an American Christian TV evangelist (surely his refrain to recite the chant again "but this time with more feeling" is a sly reference to the 1958 play/ 1960 film Once More, with Feeling?).

The Macra Terror Episode 3

The one where Polly and Jamie become miners...

A quick question before I kick off proper: why is the Pilot called the Pilot? It's a ground-based colony, it doesn't fly or travel anywhere. It's a strange moniker for Ian Stuart Black to give the leader, because it's just a rank, not a name. Everybody else has a proper name - Ola, Medok, Officia etc - but the guy in charge has only a faceless job title for a name. Strange...

Anyway... The Pilot sends the Doctor, Jamie and Polly to work down the mines, as part of the amusingly named "danger gang", which sounds like one of those ensemble comedy troupes from the silent film era, such as the Crazy Gang or Our Gang. I love how the Doctor takes the mickey out of the name too, by claiming that the person who wrote the lyrics for the colony's inane jingles should be in the danger gang!

The Macra Terror Episode 2

The one where Ben turns bad guy...

Although there isn't much opportunity for the guest cast to make a huge impression (The Macra Terror isn't the most character-driven serial), Trevor Lodge does his best to make poor old Medok a rounded, sympathetic character. The viewer knows he's telling the truth about the creatures he sees, and the Doctor knows he's right too. But Medok isn't your run-of-the-mill rebel; once he knows the Doctor believes him, he realises that he'd be more useful free than incarcerated alongside him, so tells the Pilot that the Doctor is innocent.

We later see Medok in the hospital undergoing correction treatment, and the telesnaps make this look pretty awful, as if someone's beating him while he's hung upside down, but I'm sure that wasn't the case! Lodge's performance is heartfelt and truthful, making him a character we can relate to and care about, unlike almost everybody else in the colony. Patrick Troughton shares some lovely scenes with him, particularly when Medok insists the Doctor wasn't helping him.

The Macra Terror Episode 1

The one where Polly gets her hair done and Ben and Jamie get a massage...

Twenty-one years before the Doctor visited a futuristic Earth colony which turned out to hide a dark secret beneath its sugary-sweet veneer, the Doctor visited a different futuristic Earth colony which appears to have its own dark secret beneath its sugary-sweet veneer. But unlike The Happiness Patrol's Terra Alpha, The Macra Terror's colony goes unidentified.

From the outset, The Macra Terror is bonkers. Or at least it sounds bonkers, with some out-there sound design from Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire, making her first contribution to the series since realising the theme tune in 1963. And the entire aural smorgasbord is rounded off eccentrically by the late, lamented Dudley Simpson. The soundtrack burbles and fizzes with energy and typically 1960s visions of the far flung future. There are snatches of The War Machines and The Daleks in there for good measure too.

The Moonbase Episode 4

The one where the Moonbase is saved by a plastic tea tray...

I have to admire the tenacity of the Cybermen in The Moonbase. There's just no stopping them, is there? Throw anything at them, and they just come back for more! Assault them with plastic-melting solvents? They'll just send some more men to replace them. Call for help from a rescue ship from Earth? They'll just deflect them into the Sun! Seal up the secret tunnel they made into the food store? They'll just shoot a hole into the Moonbase dome to let out all the oxygen!

These Cybermen are unwavering in their determination to see their plan through, and as the episode opens, and we see their silver boots marching inexorably toward the Moonbase across the squidgy lunar surface, you have to wonder how the humans are going to stop them. Both the Doctor and Polly seem obsessed with asking Hobson if they can get into the base, but Hobson reckons not. If I were them, I'd assume that they can!

The Moonbase Episode 3

The one where the Cybermen are (temporarily) defeated by nail varnish remover...

At last, a Cyberman speaks! I've always believed they work far more effectively when they say as little as possible (such as in The Invasion), but these new look Cybermen have some seriously unsettling voices. Peter Hawkins achieves a cold, calculating, robotic chill in these electronic vocals, and they sound absolutely terrifying. The voice (as well as their new design) perfectly reflects their implacable, unfeeling, cybernetic presence, and although sometimes they're hard to make out, I like that. I like that the Cybermen speak in a way that does not cater for the listener, but still gets their message across - cold, calmly and just a little bit calculating...

These Cybermen are scarily ruthless and focused. They don't take any nonsense from lesser humans, and proceed to carry out their plan with efficiency and determination. They also proceed to explain their plan, and are breezily open about their intentions. "We are Cybermen. You will listen."

The Moonbase Episode 2

The one where the Cybermen poison the sugar...

After all my deliberating about whether contemporary audiences would recognise that the silver giant was a Cyberman (because they look so different), Polly makes a huge leap herself by stating that what she glimpses so very fleetingly is indeed a Cyberman. The fact that she knows Cybermen to be tall, cloth-faced, flesh-handed men with polythene-like suits - and the creature she sees briefly is quite, quite different - matters not to Polly, or indeed writer Kit Pedler. It doesn't ring true for me that Polly would know it to be a Cyberman, or that the Doctor would believe her so absolutely without a scrap of evidence. By the end of the episode, the Doctor reaffirms his belief that the culprits are Cybermen, but he still hasn't any more evidence than he did at the start. He must trust Polly so implicitly!

Good old Polly gets the most to do in this episode, but that's really not saying much. So far, Kit Pedler hasn't proven himself to be very good at writing solid subplots for the entire main cast. He virtually ignored Polly in The Tenth Planet, and Ben only got as many lines as he did because William Hartnell fell ill. In The Moonbase, Polly at least becomes the Doctor's lab assistant, but Ben is reduced to random exclamations that anybody could say, while Jamie remains semi-conscious in the sick bay spouting on about the phantom piper. I realise that Jamie's role in this story was small due to the fact he wasn't in the original drafts, but his absence from proceedings seems so obvious, and only highlights the fact the production team at the time just didn't know what to do with all of the characters they suddenly found themselves with. In Pedler's case, he just didn't bother!

The Moonbase Episode 1

The one where the Doctor and friends go walking on the moon...

After a reassuringly trad bumpy TARDIS landing, the Doctor and friends discover that they haven't arrived on Mars, as planned, but the Moon, approximately 200 million miles away (as Ben impressively observes). The Doctor elects to take off straight away (he has a habit of wanting to leave straight away in this body), but the typically excitable Polly wants to stay and explore the Moon. And why not?

I like how Jamie finds it difficult to swallow the fact that they're on the Moon, which he only knows as a huge orb in the night sky, not a place you can actually go (of course, when The Moonbase was transmitted in February 1967, nobody had actually been to the Moon!). Jamie wonders if they'll get to meet the Old Man in the Moon, which is a nice touch for a character who really wouldn't find it easy to grasp what's going on. The fact he accepted the existence of Atlantis rather more readily is glossed over!