The Face of Evil Part One

The one where the Doctor is mistaken for the Evil One...

There was a whole seven weeks between the end of The Deadly Assassin and the start of this next adventure, putting a sizeable gap right in the middle of Season 14. People didn't mind so much back then. There'd been a three-week pause over the Christmas period during Season 13, and the same would happen with Seasons 15 and 18 (indeed, Warriors' Gate was even promoted as the first in a "new season" of Doctor Who). When it came to inserting a pause of a few months into the middle of Series 6 in 2011, fandom was in uproar, but even that was nothing in comparison to the immense gaps between series these days (entire years can pass without so much as a peep from the Doctor).

The Face of Evil opens with an argument between a bunch of scantily-clad primitive types who accuse the beautiful Leela of blasphemy, by claiming their god Xoanon is not real. Leader Andor intends to cast Leela out from the tribe, and her father Sole agrees to take the Test of the Horda in his daughter's place (after both Leela and her maybe-boyfriend Tomas both declined!). Within minutes of the episode opening, Leela's father has been killed and she is ejected from her tribe into the jungle wilderness. And to top it off, the unpleasant shaman Neeva instructs two tribesmen to go after her and kill her!

It's instantly apparent that Louise Jameson's spirited performance is streets ahead of every single other actor. That's not to belittle the ever-dependable Leslie Schofield (Calib), or the enthusiasm and conviction of David Garfield (Neeva) or Victor Lucas (Andor), but Jameson is immediately the stand-out figure here, and not just because she's barely clothed. Another stand-out figure for me is Brendan Price as the ruggedly handsome Tomas, but that is definitely in part because he's barely clothed...

Normally my heart would sink at the thought of a story populated by loin cloths and furry chairs, but there's something quite rich and intriguing about Chris Boucher's plotting which keeps you engaged. I think he was one of the finest scriptwriters the classic series had (all three of his stories, while perhaps not original, are rich and well-characterised).

There's one of those magnificent, spine-tingling TARDIS materialisations that takes its time, and which every fan must adore, and then the lone Doctor steps out, ready for his latest adventure. Austin Ruddy's jungle set, while not quite as convincing as Roger Murray-Leach's for Planet of Evil, looks splendidly real and alien, and all the better for being shot on film. Then something quite jarring happens: the Doctor speaks to camera. Tom Baker was a devil for breaking the fourth wall, and this is one of his most blatant and sustained. He claims to be speaking to himself, but he's actually staring right down the lens of the camera directly to the viewers at home. Kids must have loved it at the time (which is probably why Tom did it), but it is a little baffling.

From the moment the Doctor and Leela meet, they seem to click immediately, which is ironic when you consider that the actors apparently did not get on behind the scenes (mainly Tom's fault, I think). There's a closeness and a camaraderie between Baker and Jameson that is apparent on screen (they even hold hands), even if they weren't feeling it themselves at the time. A sign of good actors, I suppose.

Leela recognises the Doctor as the "Evil One", and it's intriguing when seer Neeva hears the voice of his god Xoanon that it sounds like the Doctor's. There's obviously a very real connection between our hero and this Evil One, yet the Doctor is unaware of it. It's great when the Doctor starts to capitalise on his likeness to the Evil One when he threatens some tribesmen with a "deadly jelly baby"!

It transpires that the tribe of the Sevateem worship the god Xoanon, who is held captive behind a wall by the Evil One, and another tribe called the Tesh. When Neeva starts reading his litany, things start to fall gently into place (especially when we see that the tribe's gong is made of a sheet of metal labelled "Survey Team"). The Doctor puts two and two together and believes that the Sevateem have been visited previously by people from outer space, and the gesture they use to honour Xoanon reflects the checking of the fasteners on a space suit. The camp is dressed by Ruddy as an intriguing mish-mash of primitivism and technology, with bits of spaceship and computer littered about.

It must have been very hard for everybody to keep a straight face when David Garfield starts to dance a manic jig around the Doctor wielding his ultrabeam accelerator, but this brings home the fact that these technologically advanced ephemera are not recognised as such by the Sevateem. They see these gadgets and keyboards, monitors and motherboards as holy relics. All very intriguing.

A dynamic between the Doctor and Leela begins to emerge whereby he tries to temper her savagery (she goes round killing fellow tribesmen - essentially her friends - without a second thought, using poisonous janus thorns), and encourages her to be open-minded. Leela is obviously already predisposed to questioning the establishment (she has, after all, been banished for doubting that Xoanon exists), but as he tells her: "Never be certain of anything", adding that her inner conflict is healthy. Already we can see the intention of producer Philip Hinchcliffe's Pygmalion-styled relationship between the two ("No more janus thorns").

The cliffhanger is a classic, with the Doctor finally seeing what it is everybody else sees in him: the giant face of the Evil One sculpted into the side of a mountain, and that face is his! It's a striking shot, and it leaves the viewer asking many questions about how and why and when. Wonderful stuff.

First broadcast: January 1st, 1977

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: That final reveal of the Doctor's face sculpted into the mountainside.
The Bad: Leela has just lost her father, but seems unmoved. Leela also murders her fellow tribesmen without compunction, claiming their deaths to be "necessary". The lack of emotional involvement is disappointing.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 06 - For the first time since The Ark in Space Part Four (yes, really!) the Doctor offers a jelly baby, this time to Leela. He also uses a jelly baby to threaten Lugo, but as he doesn't actually offer it (he eats it himself), I won't count it in this tally.

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

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: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-face-of-evil.html

The Face of Evil is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Face-Evil-DVD/dp/B006LI4XG2