Synopsis:
After destroying a trailing RAF jet, the Chameleon aircraft transforms into a spacecraft and flies vertically upwards, to rendezvous with an orbiting space station...
The Commandant is still convinced that the aircraft must have crashed, but the Doctor knows that it has risen vertically and passed through the upper atmosphere.
Word comes through that the wreckage of the jet has been located, but there is no sign of the Chameleon 'plane.
The miniaturised passengers have been collected by the alien masquerading as Ann Davidson, who has been distracted in her task and has failed to notice that Jamie was not amongst their number. He is still in the bathroom.
He emerges to find the cabin empty - apart from a group of raw state Chameleons who are collecting the passengers' belongings. He slips out of the aircraft into the station and follows the air stewardess. He comes across a room full of metal cabinets, and discovers that they are full of comatose miniaturised people. He is then captured by Ann and a pair of Chameleons.
At Air Traffic Control the Doctor challenges staff member Meadows when he reports back for duty. He is forced to raise his sleeve and they see that he is wearing one of the control armbands which he had found in the medical centre. It is black in colour.
When the Doctor threatens to tamper with it, Meadows agrees to tell him and the Commandant what they want to know.
He explains that his people have a satellite in a hidden orbit some 150 miles above the Earth, and this is where the passengers are being taken. His homeworld was devastated by a huge explosion, which resulted in his people losing their identities, and they are now dying out.
They are planning to abduct some 50,000 young people, which is why they have to be miniaturised.
The duplication process takes time and the original, who wears a white armband, must be kept safe until the process becomes permanent. The originals of those working at Gatwick are somewhere at the airport, but Meadows claims not to know where.
Should they be found before the process is finalised, and their armbands removed, the Chameleon duplicate will perish.
Samantha has been taken to the medical centre where Nurse Pinto is meeting with Spencer. They will duplicate the girl in order to get close to the Doctor and kill him.
The Doctor has Meadows accompany him to the centre, along with a police officer.
They expose the nurse as a Chameleon and remove her freezing weapon. Sam is freed and the original of Nurse Pinto is found behind a hidden panel.
The Chameleon duplicate has a concealed gun and uses it to kill the policeman. She's about to shoot Meadows, accusing him of being a traitor, but he manages to pull off her armband. She collapses, her body reduced to a shapeless lump.
The real nurse has her armband removed and quickly regains consciousness.
Samantha then informs the Doctor that Jamie took her place on the last Chameleon Tours flight.
On the satellite, Jamie meets Inspector Crossland, who asks him for an update on what was going on at the airport before he left. The Inspector then reveals that he is a Chameleon duplicate. He is the Director, the mastermind behind this entire project.
Elsewhere, the Chameleon aircraft leaves for Earth.
A search of the medical centre has revealed that there are 25 people working at the airport who have been replaced, in order to carry out the Director's scheme. They will be picked up and taken to the satellite on the final flight. Air Traffic Control see the aircraft suddenly appear on radar.
After landing, Blade goes to the medical centre to find Nurse Pinto with the Doctor. She explains that the Doctor is actually a reprocessed Meadows.
Blade orders them to go to the aircraft, collecting Jenkins on the way.
The Commandant is informed that the next Chameleon Tours flight seems to comprise only airport personnel, with the Doctor amongst them.
As soon as the 'plane takes off, he calls Superintendent Reynolds and instructs him to initiate a thorough search of the airport grounds. Samantha and Jean are looking through documents in the medical centre for clues as to where the originals are hidden.
On the satellite, the Director has just overseen the duplication of Jamie when Blade arrives and informs him that there were two imposters on the last flight. The Director orders that the Doctor must not be killed. His knowledge will be of use to them and he will be duplicated instead.
The Doctor and Nurse Pinto are trying to bluff their way onto the satellite when they suddenly find themselves surrounded by armed Chameleons...
Data:
Written by Malcolm Hulke & David Ellis
Recorded: Saturday 29th April 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 6th May 1967
Ratings: 7.1 million / AI 55
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Director: Gerry Mill
As mentioned last time, the draft script for Episode 4 saw the aliens plant a bomb in a portable radio belonging to Cleo (as Samantha was then named), and this was slipped to the Doctor by the fake Jenkins. This episode would have begun with the Doctor freeing Cleo in time for her to warn him about the bomb, which he was then able to disable.
The Doctor worked out that the tour flights were fake as one was scheduled for La Villa in Andorra - and there wasn't an airport there.
Meadows gave a more detailed explanation for why his people were abducting Earth people. It was due to a nuclear reactor exploding that the Chameleons lost their identities. The duplication process was given a specific timescale to complete - four weeks. The Commandant had police and fire brigade dismantle the medical centre in the search for the missing originals.
When challenged by Blade, the Doctor claimed: "I'm a Chameleon who's been processed twice! Once to become Meadows, and secondly to Doctor Who!".
During the week of rehearsals, Frazer Hines continued to film location work for the following serial, joining Deborah Watling and Daleks at Grim's Dyke House on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th April.
Patrick Troughton then spent Friday 28th at Ealing to record all of his material for the fourth episode of The Evil of the Daleks, as he would be on holiday the week of recording.
Recording on the evening of Saturday 29th commenced with a taped reprise of the Air Traffic Control scene from the close of the previous episode, with the opening captions playing over shots of the space station and a photograph of the apparently empty aircraft cabin.
The miniaturised group of young people was achieved as a cut away by shooting some extras lying in boxes on a small set, using a high tower camera.
Four extras were made up as raw state Chameleons for the episode, seen emptying the aircraft of passenger belongings then threatening the Doctor and Nurse Pinto at the cliff-hanger.
For the sequence in the medical centre, a photograph of Madalena Nicol as the real nurse behind the secret panel had been taken the week before, to allow for continuous filming.
A female extra was made up as a partial raw state Chameleon to be seen briefly as the alien rapidly decomposed, allowing Nicol to play the real nurse.
The medical centre scenes required four recording breaks - two to allow Nicol to swap from playing the fake to the real nurse, and another for the death of the policeman, as the actor needed burns make-up added. The fourth was to place the blobby remains of the Chameleon nurse at the doorway on the set.
A fifth break allowed Troughton to move between the ATC and medical centre sets.
Playing the Chameleon duplicate of Jamie, Hines used his natural accent for the only time in the series.
Bernard Kay wore a simple dark tunic to play the Director, whilst Hines had changed into a Chameleon outfit.
It may well be during the production of this episode that the only known photograph of a Chameleon was taken.
At long last the action gets away from Earth, though only for a bit as there's still a lot going on at the airport. We also finally get to see a bit more of the Chameleons in their raw state.
It's a little odd the way they are used however. The duplicates are supposed to be the exact same aliens, just wearing human faces, so you have to ask why they are treated as a servant class by those who have adopted human bodies. The answer actually lies in the story from which this was developed - "The Big Store".
In that we had the two quite distinct groups of aliens - the intelligent Numbers and the more menial Letters - and this differentiation seems to have bled through to the new version of the story.
Here, there's no reason at all why some Chameleons should be brighter than others, unless the aliens have specifically allowed some superior caste to get their new forms before anyone else. Either that or they somehow become smarter once given their new human identities - despite Blade and Spencer telling us for the last four episodes how the Chameleons are so much cleverer than Earth people.
In this episode Spencer specifically quotes the Director's claim that the intelligence of humans is equivalent to that of animals on their own planet.
The idea that a higher caste of Chameleon gets a human form first cannot be right, as the Director only gets his new body now, after Crossland has been captured and duplicated.
- After the fluctuations of previous weeks, the ratings seem to stabilise with only a very small increase in viewers, and the appreciation figure matches that of the previous instalment.
- It was the week following the broadcast of this episode that a BBC Programme Review meeting was held, at which Shaun Sutton wanted the ratings to stabilise around the higher figure of 8 million.
- As mentioned above, we get our first proper look at the raw state Chameleons in this episode. When it came to producing a figurine of the alien, Eaglemoss elected to base it on the version created for the animated release of the story:
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