Synopsis:
Captain Blade and his colleague Spencer have escorted a mysterious figure, its identity hidden, into the airport medical centre. It is humanoid in form but lacks any facial features.
Lying on a couch behind a screen is a man named Meadows, who works in Air Traffic Control. He is unconscious.
At Passport Control, the woman who looks exactly like Polly - even wearing the same outfit - argues that she is named Michelle, and has come to England from Switzerland for work.
The Commandant sends a message for Superintendent Reynolds to come and, when the Doctor realises that it is to arrest him rather than to investigate the murder they have reported, he and Jamie decide to flee.
In the medical centre, Nurse Pinto attaches electronic devices to the heads of the alien being and Meadows, who now lie side by side. Slowly, the faceless alien begins to alter in appearance to resemble Meadows. After a few moments, there is an exact duplicate of the air traffic controller beside the original. Pinto and Blade test the duplicate with biographical questions, and it is clear that the process transfers memories as well as likeness. The process is controlled by a special armband.
The Doctor and Jamie are in the airport's main concourse, hiding behind newspapers, as they discuss what to do next. They are thinking of returning to the Chameleon Tours hangar to investigate further, when they spot "Michelle" working at an airline desk nearby. This proves to be that of Chameleon Tours. They try to talk to her again but she insists on not knowing them. However, she lets slip that she knows the man they saw killed was shot, despite them only saying he had been killed.
The desk is being monitored on CCTV by Blade from an area behind the kiosk. He realises that "Michelle" may prove a liability so he has her withdrawn and replaced with one of their air hostesses named Ann Davidson. Michelle will be leaving on their next flight.
The Doctor and Jamie are reunited with Ben, and seek refuge in a photobooth to plan their next steps.
In the control area of the airport, the Commandant is introduced by his secretary, Jean, to Detective Inspector Crossland of Scotland Yard. He has come to investigate the disappearance of his colleague Inspector Gascoigne - the man whose murder Polly had earlier witnessed. He explains that they had come here to investigate Chameleon Tours.
The Doctor decides to try speaking with the Commandant again, and suggests Ben have a look around the hangar. Jamie should keep an eye on the airline kiosk.
Michelle is being confronted by a young woman named Samantha Briggs. She has come down from Liverpool to demand information about her missing brother - last seen embarking on one of Chameleon's cheap youth tours to Europe.
Jamie observes this discussion and approaches Samantha, telling her that he knows someone who might be able to help her.
The Doctor's attempts to get the Commandant to listen to him fall on deaf ears, so he creates a diversion in order to flee once more.
Ben is exploring the Chameleon hangar when he finds a large crate. Opening it he is shocked to find Polly, in a catatonic state.
The Doctor is examining the Chameleon kiosk when he spots the CCTV system, and witnesses Ben being captured by Spencer at the hangar - shot with a pen-like device which causes him to freeze. He hurries off to try to save him.
Crossland is interviewing various airport staff, and learns from Jenkins at Immigration about the strange pair who are currently been searched for.
Sam and Jamie see Ann encourage the young passengers who are about to embark to pre-sign their postcards, to save time later. The only proof her brother made it to Rome was a postcard they received, and now Sam realises that this doesn't mean he wrote it there.
She and Jamie are then confronted by Crossland.
The Doctor is looking round the hangar when he also finds a comatose figure in a crate - the real Meadows. He is lured into the back office and finds himself trapped there. Small panels open in the walls and a freezing gas emerges.
The Doctor collapses...
Written by Malcolm Hulke & David Ellis
Recorded: Saturday 8th April 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.50pm, Saturday 15th April 1967
Ratings: 6.4 million / AI 50
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Director: Gerry Mill
Additional cast: Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs), Bernard Kay (Crossland), Madalena Nicol (Nurse Pinto), Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Innes Lloyd had decided on a shake-up to the regular cast, and Michael Craze and Anneke Wills were contracted only for two further four-part stories following The Macra Terror. When The Faceless Ones was extended to six episodes, this meant that the pair would need to be written out after the second episode of the following story. As we saw with Jackie Lane's Dodo in The War Machines, this could be narratively clumsy and unsatisfying. Whilst he wasn't terribly happy with them, he was aware that they were popular with the viewers.
It was therefore decided to have their characters written out at the end of this story, rather than extend any contracts. It was then planned that Ben and Polly would actually disappear from the narrative after this second episode - to be seen for the final time in a sequence which could be pre-filmed on location.
Malcolm Hulke and David Ellis already had a young female character appear from their second episode - Mary Dawson - who is searching for her missing brother.
Gerry Davis asked the writers to develop this character with a view to them becoming the next female companion.
Mary Dawson would become Cleopatra "Cleo" Briggs, before settling on Samantha "Sam" Briggs.
Liverpudlian actress Pauline Collins was given the role, and Lloyd would bend over backwards to try to convince her to stay on as a regular - but Collins simply wasn't interested in any long-running role on television at this time.
Prior to its expansion to six episodes, this instalment would have see Crossland being trapped on the aircraft as its cliffhanger. This would be moved to the end of the third episode. Draft versions of this episode also saw the Doctor and Ben almost being crushed by a falling aircraft engine in the hangar, and the cliffhanger would have been the discovery of the comatose Polly in a crate.
Nurse Pinto was named O'Brien.
Friday 10th March 1967 saw Gilly Fraser being filmed at Gatwick Airport, approaching the desk which would feature as the Chameleon Tours one in studio. Frazer Hines was also present that day, taken out of rehearsals for the second instalment of The Macra Terror. He was filmed wandering around the airport concourse.
Saturday 8th April proved to be the last studio day for Craze and Wills. Technically, Wills had played Polly for the final time the week before, as she was called upon to play the duplicate "Michelle" character throughout this episode, other than the brief shot of her frozen in the crate.
Joining the guest cast was Bernard Kay, making his third appearance in the series. Back in 1964 he had played resistance fighter Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, returning the following year to play Saladin in The Crusade.
Episode 2 of The Faceless Ones is significant in that it is the first to use the new arrangement of the theme music. This was the work of Delia Derbyshire, who remastered her original August 1963 version, naming it "Signature Tune No.2". The opening rush of white noise was removed, whilst tonal rises - "wind bubbles" - were added underneath the main theme.
It was felt that this fitted better with the new title sequence which had been introduced at the start of the preceding story.
Barry Dupres played the Chameleon in the medical centre, the duplication process being very simply achieved by mixing camera images of George Selway playing Meadows with Dupres' lumpen alien.
The airline kiosk set was a small one, built within a larger set which included the Chameleon control room.
White smoke was used to simulate the freezing gas.
With a lot of toing and froing this week, there were seven recording breaks planned. This first was needed to swap Selway from one couch to the other to show the end of the duplication process. Two breaks were used for setting up then dismantling the small kiosk set, whilst others were used for camera moves. The last was needed for the cliffhanger, as Troughton had to have icy make-up effects added to his face.
Craze and Wills were unhappy with the way their work on the series came to an end. Troughton had especially benefited from Wills' advice about shaping his character in the early days, and he was sorry to see them go. Even Hines, who had initially failed to hit it off with them, was saddened by their departure.
We'll return to this come Episode 6.
Once again, we have little moments of humour amongst the menace. The distinctively dressed Doctor and Jamie are being hunted through the airport, yet get away with it for a while by concealing themselves behind broadsheet newspapers. In the animated version of this episode, it's a Mill Hill local newspaper - the district of London which was home to Patrick Troughton. Jamie holds his paper upside down.
Later, we see the pair joined by Ben and they take refuge in one of those photobooths which people used for passport pictures. At one point a lady goes to use it, and we see the trio pretend to use it - posing with cheesy grins (other than the confused Jamie).
In the Commandant's office, the Doctor creates a diversion by threatening to throw a bomb - which proves to be a rubber ball.
This episode sees the first proper look at a Chameleon, though it's only the sedentary one in the duplication process sequence at the start. The science-fiction elements don't really kick in until the second half of the serial, so this is still very much a modern thriller in an exotic setting - something akin to an episode of The Avengers which, of course, had see episodes written by Malcolm Hulke.
Lloyd had been very happy with the realisation of the new aliens, yet they hardly feature at all throughout the whole story, the villains for the most part being represented by their human duplicates.
- The ratings see a sizeable drop this week - down more than 1.5 million on the previous week. The appreciation figure remains stable, and will even rise significantly over the next few episodes.
- Pauline Collins would eventually return to the series in 2006 when she portrayed Queen Victoria in Tooth and Claw. A portrait of her as Victoria also featured in Empress of Mars.
- Innes Lloyd had been resistant to Collins playing Sam Briggs with her natural Scouse accent. It was Gerry Mill who insisted she use it to differentiate her from the usual younger female companions.
- Gilly Fraser was at this time married to Peter Purves, who had featured in the series as companion Steven Taylor.
- Madalena Nicol was a Brazilian actress, who spent only a decade or so working in England. She had previously acted on stage in France, and would return to her homeland at the end of the '60's. In the late 1970's she was teaching drama in Texas.
- Prior to becoming an actress Nicol had been a singer. She performed at the White House for Franklin D Roosevelt.
- The vents from which the freezing gas issues are obviously sink plugholes.
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