Synopsis:
Trapped in a secret room within the Chameleon Tours hangar, the Doctor is overcome by jets of freezing gas...
He manages to block one vent with his handkerchief, but another jet causes him to collapse. Believing him unconscious, Spencer approaches - only for the Doctor to stun him with his own pen-like freezing weapon.
Blade arrives soon after and is angered by Spencer's incompetence. He orders him to personally kill the Doctor whilst he is away on their next flight.
Detective Inspector Crossland has been talking to Jamie and Samantha and has come to believe their story - specially about his missing colleague, Gascoigne - Jamie recognising a photograph as the dead man seen in the Chameleon hangar. Crossland decides to approach the Commandant and get him to take their claims seriously.
Samantha, however, decides instead to take a look at the hangar and talks Jamie into accompanying her.
The Doctor has also gone to see the Commandant, who is about to have him arrested when Crossland arrives and appears to corroborate some of his claims.
The Doctor goes on to state what he believes to be happening here - the mass abductions of young Earth people by an alien power, with Chameleon Tours simply acting as a front for their operations. He points out how two of his own young friends - Ben and Polly - have now also vanished.
He is aware that the aliens are copying people, as he had seen Meadows in Air Traffic Control just before seeing him again in a comatose state at the hangar. To prove alien involvement he decides to demonstrate Spencer's freezing pen - asking Meadows to assist.
A cup of coffee is turned to ice, and a panicked Meadows rushes from the room.
Samantha and Jamie have found lots of pre-filled and stamped postcards, which they take to the Commandant, Crossland and the Doctor as proof that the missing passengers, like her brother Brian, may never have made it to their holiday destinations.
It is clear that packages of cards are sent to the foreign destinations to be posted back to the UK.
The Doctor asks for 12 hours in which to explore the airport unhindered, to which the Commandant agrees, whilst Crossland decides to approach the airline direct.
Spencer and Meadows meet to plan the destruction of the Doctor. Meadows is given a small button-like device and sent back to Air Traffic Control, an item which he must slip unnoticed to their target.
The Doctor speaks with Jean Rock about the airline and learns that they operate only a small number of aircraft and service European holiday destinations only. He is also informed by Air Traffic Controller Heslington that the radar will only track aircraft for a limited range after take-off.
Meadows returns and presses the button device onto the Doctor's back.
He and Jamie then go to take another look at the hidden room at the hangar.
Crossland speaks to Spencer at the airline kiosk and he contacts Blade to let him know that a policeman wants to speak to him. The captain agrees that he should be allowed to come over to their aircraft.
There, the Inspector sees the 'plane fill with young people, eagerly looking forward to their trip.
He meets Blade and Ann Davidson in the cockpit area, and is surprised to see that the aircraft has controls unlike any he has ever seen before.
The Doctor and Jamie are being observed by Spencer, and when they are seen to discover a link with the airport medical centre, he activates the button device remotely. The Doctor collapses, though Jamie is able to quickly remove it.
Crossland finds himself being taken captive on the 'plane as it takes off. Blade activates a set of controls then switches on a TV monitor showing the cabin.
The Inspector is shocked to see that all of the seats are now empty. The passengers have disappeared...
Written by Malcolm Hulke & David Ellis
Recorded: Saturday 15th April 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 22nd April 1967
Ratings: 7.9 million / AI 53
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Director: Gerry Mill
Additional cast: Brian Wilsher (Heslington)
Critique:
As previously mentioned, The Faceless Ones was originally going to be a four part story, until Innes Lloyd requested longer stories as a budget-saving measure. This episode count would become the predominant one until the end of the Pertwee era. Future script editors would bemoan this move as it was always felt that many stories simply couldn't sustain this running time.
The Faceless Ones certainly suffers from a lot of padding in its first half - which is also the section which has the least science fiction elements. It's pretty much more of a techno-thriller up to the end of this episode. We've hardly glimpsed the Chameleons so far.
The Doctor has so far made three attempts to get the Commandant to listen to him, and we're beginning to lose count of the number of times he and his companions have been back and forth to the Chameleon hangar to investigate it.
The arrivals of Crossland and Samantha do move things along, however, as they are more proactive characters determined to get things done.
Initial drafts of this episode saw the Doctor attacked by Spencer wielding an oxyacetylene torch. Ben and Mary Dawson found the real Polly hidden at the hangar whilst her duplicate worked at the airline kiosk. Jamie spent most of the episode being chased around the airport by Jenkins, who had already been duplicated at this stage.
The biggest change to the next draft was obviously the removal of Ben and Polly from the action all together.
The Doctor ripped off his shirtsleeves to plug the vents in the hidden room. The button-like device was to be a fake button activated by body heat, which inserted a deadly needle into its victim.
During the run up to Episode Three Sandra Reid returned as costume designer. She had fallen ill towards the end of The Moonbase and been replaced by her predecessor Daphne Dare, who had worked on the majority of Hartnell stories.
Some of the model work for the serial was remounted during the week of rehearsals, the reasons for which we will look at next time.
Lloyd also set out some ground rules for those wishing to work on the programme. Some of this involved budgets, such as the average episode costs being set at £2570. Captions were to be standardised. There should be a maximum of 5 recording breaks, with two fades to black to allow for overseas broadcasters inserting adverts - one after the opening reprise and one at the mid-point of the episode. The last 20 seconds of each episode should be telerecorded to use as the reprise for the next instalment.
This generally happened anyway if a director wished to avoid rehiring an actor or re-erecting a set that wouldn't be needed for the rest of the studio recording. At other times, the closing scenes were simply restaged by the actors - noticeable when you watch episodes back to back on DVD etc.
Episode Three began with a telerecording of the end of the previous instalment, over which the opening captions were shown. It utilised none of the pre-filming material from Gatwick, but did make use of a fair amount of library footage to illustrate Blade's aircraft landing and taking off, and Heslington's radar.
Mill actually arranged for six recording breaks, so clearly hadn't yet seen Lloyd's new guidance.
When the Doctor sees the medical centre on a monitor at the hangar, it is a static photograph he is looking at, taken the week before as the set wasn't required this week. A BBC photographer was also asked to take images of the aircraft cabin set with its seats both full and empty, to be used as captions for the following episode. One of Mill's recording breaks was to have the 14 young extras exit the cabin set at the end of the episode.
It was decided to record parts of the episode out of sequence - all of the scenes set on the 'plane being left to the end of the evening. This was still a very rare occurrence for the programme.
In the summer of 1985 rumours were circulating at a DWAS convention that The Faceless Ones (3) still existed. It had been bought by film collector Gordon Hendry two years previously, along with The Evil of the Daleks (2), at a car boot sale.
By 1987 Ian Levine had negotiated with Hendry to have both episodes returned to the BBC archives.
The Faceless Ones (3) was in the worst state of repair, with four noticeable cuts to the recording. Subsequent commercial releases have used brief scenes from elsewhere in the episode to plug the gaps.
- After the huge drop last week, the series regains its audience - bouncing back by 1.5 million. The appreciation figure also rises by 3 points.
- A survey for this episode by TAM found it to be the fourth most watched children's show of the week, with some 4.15 households watching.
- This is the shortest of the six episodes, at 23' 10". Episode Two was the longest at 25' 22". Four of the six episodes are under 24 minutes long.
- Two days before this episode went into studio, it was decided that Doctor Who might be brought to a close after its fifth season. A series named Bonaventure was proposed by Shaun Sutton, and a pilot requested, but nothing ever came of this.
- Despite having already recorded her final scenes, Anneke Wills was still closely associated with the series when she was invited to be a guest on Juke Box Jury on the evening of this episode's broadcast - though the episode was taped and not shown until the following Saturday.
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