The Faceless Ones - DVD Review

If you look at the big series polls which are conducted every few years, you'll notice how those stories which no longer exist, or which have only the odd orphan episode still in the archives, tend to rate fairly low scores. The only ones that do better are the ones with Daleks or Cybermen in them. The Enemy of the World was always scored low, based on the one episode which existed, plus its reputation as the one without any monsters in the "Monsters" Season 5. Then the missing five episodes were recovered and we got to see that the orphan episode was the weak, atypical one, and the rest of it was really rather good. The story shot up the ratings back in 2014, the last time we had a DWM poll.
No such poll has been conducted since the generally overlooked The Macra Terror was released in animated format, so it will be interesting to see how this is re-evaluated.
Likewise with The Faceless Ones, which I watched last night. I opted to watch the colour version.
Two of its six episodes we have been able to watch for a while - the first and third. They are set at Gatwick Airport, and are confined, for the most part, to two main sets - the Chameleons' hangar, with its concealed control room, and the Commandant's office / air traffic control room. As well as their limited locations, the episodes are also ones in which the raw-state Chameleons don't actually appear, and there is a lot of running back and forth as the story is still setting itself up.
The story really picks up after we get beyond these episodes. Whilst Gatwick still features prominently, the action expands to take in the Chameleon space station.
There are a number of very strong characters, best of whom is the Commandant, played by Colin Gordon. Nurse Pinto (Madalena Nicol) is also a very good addition to the cast, both as the real one who helps the Doctor, and as her villainous Chameleon duplicate.

Whilst these characters have significant roles to play, the same can't be said for the companions. Innes Lloyd, inexplicably, took a dislike to Ben and Polly and ordered their removal from the series at the earliest opportunity. Since Jamie had been introduced, it was felt that there was no longer any need for a second male companion. Anneke Wills was offered the chance to stay on with Hines, but out of loyalty to Michael Craze, and a general dislike of staying in any part too long, she elected to leave as well. Both actors were contracted up to the second episode of The Evil of the Daleks, but were written out early in this story. Both vanish in the first half, reappearing only for the last couple of minutes to make their farewells in scenes filmed on location. Set up as a potential replacement for Polly is Sam Briggs (Pauline Collins). She elected not to accept an on-going role.
Ben and Polly leave because they've found out that this is the very day that they first set foot inside the TARDIS, at the conclusion of The War Machines. That story is referenced in this animation as we see a newspaper headline about the War Machines being defeated.
Other visual "Easter eggs" include wanted posters of the Master in the airport police station. Preview clips showed the Delgado version of the Master, but the DVD release now features the Sacha Dhawan version pinned beneath it. Later, we see that Dhawan's poster has been replaced with one featuring the Meddling Monk. In the airport concourse we have adverts for ESGO (the gas refinery from Fury From The Deep, which is to be the next animated release later this year) and for "Magpie Electricals" - first seen in The Idiot's Lantern.
One rather annoying distraction is the placement of names of people associated with the project (e.g. a whole wall of Hickman's Oil cans - referencing Clayton Hickman, ex DWM editor). It's far from subtle. I would be interested to know why the Doctor and Jamie hide behind copies of the "Mill Hill Times" newspaper. Mill Hill lies in North London, whilst Gatwick is in Surrey, to the south of London.
One very poorly realised sequence is the fight between Sam and the Chameleon Meadows in the car park in Episode Six - this really shows up the limitations of this style of animation.
So, is the story any good? Has my opinion of it improved? I've known the orphan episodes for a while, as well as the audio and telesnaps of the missing episodes, so I'm fairly familiar with it. I've never regarded it as a bad story, merely an okay one. It was nice to finally be able to see the whole thing in one format, rather than in piecemeal fashion, and it has gone up slightly in my estimation thanks to that. Any new early Troughton material is always to be welcomed.