Synopsis:
The Doctor and Nurse Pinto have attempted to bluff their way onto the Chameleon space station, but Captain Blade has already spotted the deception. They find themselves surrounded by armed aliens...
The Doctor is informed that they were allowed to come this far as they wish to obtain his knowledge.
At Gatwick, the Commandant shuts down the airport so that a comprehensive search for the originals of the Chameleon duplicates can be carried out by Superintendent Reynolds and his men.
The Doctor is taken before the Director and sees Jamie there - or his copy at least. He tries to discover the whereabouts of the originals as the Director begins recalling his people from the Earth. When it is clear that the leader is not going to bargain with him, the Doctor begins to sow seeds of discontent - sensing the potential to turn Blade against the Director, who has ordered him prepared for duplication. After he has left the office, the Doctor tells Blade that the airport authorities already know where the abducted personnel are being kept, and that they will begin deactivating their armbands - beginning with him.
The Captain thinks he is lying, but cannot run the risk, and so calls the Commandant.
He claims the Doctor is telling the truth.
Jean and Samantha have been searching the Chameleon Tours kiosk and come across paperwork relating to the hire of some coaches, and a list of 25 car registration numbers - the same number of missing personnel. They must search the car parks.
Blade demands proof from the Commandant, just as his secretary and Samantha notify him of their discovery. He plays for time.
The Director returns and is angry with Blade for delaying the duplication of the Doctor. It has distracted the Chameleons long enough for the Doctor to sabotage their duplication machine, and it blows up. The Director orders a replacement be brought at once.
Jean and Samantha are searching the car park when they are attacked by Meadows, who has escaped custody. Between them they are able to overpower him and they spot Jenkins inside a vehicle as the police arrive.
The Commandant has been given an ultimatum to produce proof that the originals have been found, and so the order is given to remove the armband from the real Jenkins. Blade is horrified to see his duplicate suddenly decompose in front of them.
The Doctor points out that whilst the Director and his friends are safe, with their originals secure in the satellite, Blade, Spencer and their associates from the airport are all doomed.
When the Director attempts to blame them for what has happened, Blade insists of negotiating with the Commandant and the Director finds his people turning against him.
Blade confirms that the aircraft they use can reverse the miniaturisation process, after the Director attempts to claim they cannot do this.
The Director and the duplicate Jamie then attempt to leave and get help, but Blade kills both.
The Doctor agrees to act as negotiator between Blade and the Commandant, and to provide some alternative techniques which the Chameleons might use to deal with their problems. His companions will be found and returned to him. Inspector Crossland will also stay on for a while to help, whilst Nurse Pinto will return to Earth.
Some time later, back at the airport, Jamie bids a fond farewell to Samantha, who has been reunited with her brother. The Commandant arranges for the Doctor to collect the TARDIS.
Ben discovers that today is July 20th 1966 - the very day when he and Polly first stepped aboard the TARDIS in Fitzroy Square. They both realise that they could pick up their old lives by heading into London, as though they had never been away. The Doctor bids them farewell when he sees that this is what they want to do.
Not wishing to spoil their return home, he waits until they have gone before informing Jamie that the TARDIS has disappeared...
Next time: The Evil of the Daleks
Written by Malcolm Hulke & David Ellis
Recorded: Saturday 6th May, 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 13th May 1967
Ratings: 8 million / AI 52
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Director: Gerry Mill
Additional cast: Leonard Trolley (Superintendent Reynolds)
The first drafts of this episode ran rather long and had to be cut. Blade did not know that the Doctor and Nurse Pinto were imposters straight away, and the Doctor was able to prolong their deception.
Changes made to the script included Meadows disguising himself as a policeman to follow and then attack Samantha and Jean at the car park, and it was the original of Ann Davidson whose armband was removed. Blade and Spencer were initially unsuccessful in challenging the Director. Nurse Pinto removed the armband from the real Jamie so that he recovered and came to help the Doctor.
It was stated that the Chameleons had only been operating out of Gatwick for three weeks - with the initial script for Episode Five having already said that it took four weeks for the duplication process to become permanent.
The filming at Gatwick was used mostly for the first and last episodes of the serial.
Friday 10th March saw scenes of policemen searching the airport concourse, whilst the following Monday was when the departure of Michael Craze and Anneke Wills was filmed. This included the hiring of a chauffeur-driven car as the Doctor and companions are dropped off at the hangar where they think the TARDIS to be.
The bulk of Episode Six filming took place on Tuesday 14th March when the regulars were not present. Pauline Collins, Wanda Ventham (Jean), George Selway (Meadows) and Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins) were all required for the climactic car park sequences. By only appearing on film as the real Jenkins in this episode, Tranchell would only be called upon to play his duplicate in studio a few weeks later. Gilly Fraser (Ann) was also present this day.
When the director reviewed the footage of the car park scenes, he was annoyed to see that Collins and Ventham were clearly seen to be chewing gum.
Whilst we may only have a single photograph of the raw state Chameleon, and a few images of Troughton and Hines posing beneath an aircraft at Gatwick, there were a number of publicity pictures taken of two of the female guest artists. Collins and Fraser posed for a number of photographs together, wearing straw hats and a feather boa, some of which were in colour.
Studio recording was very straightforward, with no scheduled recording breaks. Two 'run-ons' were planned instead. The opening captions ran over a view out of a circular porthole into space, whilst the closing ones ran over a shot of the Doctor and Jamie walking away from camera. A camera flare was used for the shooting of the Director and the false Jamie - Frazer Hines then slipping away to change into his normal outfit.
The episode ends with the realisation that it is the very day in which Ben and Polly had first entered the TARDIS at the conclusion of The War Machines. This means that the whole WOTAN incident must have been taking palce at the same time as this story, and that there must have been two incarnations of the Doctor only a few miles away from each other at the same time. We don't know the exact timescales involved in this episode - between the Doctor agreeing to negotiate and his farewell to Ben and Polly, so he might well have been up in the satellite whilst the War Machines were running rampage, though dialogue suggests otherwise. (He tells Nurse Pinto that he'll see her on the 'plane).
Bearing in mind who is going to turn up again next week, perhaps it wasn't WOTAN that the Doctor sensed on leaving the TARDIS in Fitzroy Square after all...
As we've previously said, Ben and Polly were originally going to depart after a pair of four part serials, but The Faceless Ones was extended to six episodes and the next Dalek serial was also going to be a six-parter. Rather than have them leave two episodes into a new story, and eager to be rid of them anyway, Innes Lloyd asked Gerry Davis to write them out early. Craze and Wills therefore filmed their departure a couple of weeks before they recorded their final two studio episodes.
Wills is on record as claiming that she was asked to stay on, but Craze had to go due to the popularity of Frazer Hines as Jamie, and the fact that stories couldn't sustain two young male companions. She has spoken of how badly she thinks he was treated.
However, others have claimed that Lloyd specifically wanted rid of Wills due to certain prima donna-ish demands, and he wanted to introduce a new female companion anyway (hence the courting of Collins to become a regular). Apparently Lloyd was still unhappy with how the regular cast had treated director Julia Smith on The Underwater Menace. New boy Hines hadn't really been involved in this, and he could hardly sack his new star, but he could take action against the others.
You do have to wonder why Lloyd soured on the characters which he was so keen to introduce not that long ago - ones who chimed with contemporary youth culture.
After some radio work and a few movies - usually in the horror genre, as a favour to his director friend Norman J Warren - Craze gave up acting and eventually ran a pub. He died in December 1998, aged 56, following a fall whilst running an errand for a neighbour. The Doctor Who theme was played at his funeral.
Following some more TV work, including The Strange Report, Wills disappeared off the radar for a long time, living in an ashram in India and an artists' colony in Canada, before returning to the UK where she was welcomed with open arms by fandom - going on to attend conventions (in which she spoke honestly about some of the less savoury attitudes of William Hartnell) and to narrate missing stories and novelisations of stories which featured Polly.
The final scene for Ben and Polly has come in for some criticism, with many believing the Doctor is being rather sexist: Ben can go off and forge a career but Polly has to remain the dutiful housewife looking after him. It can certainly be viewed that way, and Polly is often held up to be one of the companions who suffers most from the sexism of the era, but I think it can also looked at in a more positive vein. Could the Doctor be implying that even if Ben reaches the pinnacle of his chosen career, he won't be able to do it without strong support from Polly? Even an admiral needs strong back-up, and she's the one to provide it?
Unlike Ian and Barbara, Ben and Polly won't have lots of missing time to explain away to their friends, family and employers when they get back to London. However, Ben is going to have to explain where his uniform and kit bag have got to, and Polly's job isn't likely to be there anymore thanks to a reprogrammed War Machine, and Professor Brett's probably had a nervous breakdown.
One very big potential issue with the ending to this story is the nature of the resolution with the Chameleons. The Doctor only thinks that he might have some alternatives for them - he's hardly specific on this, and even seems to suggest they might have to just put up with what they've got. He also doesn't stick around long afterwards. What is to stop the Chameleons simply restarting their operations somewhere else as soon as the Doctor's out of the way?
- The ratings have fluctuated wildly over the course of this story, but end right where they started with the same figure as Episode One.
- A young viewer of Junior Points of View wrote to the 12th May edition of the programme claiming that Frazer Hines was "the best looking actor on the television", and the BBC should not consider letting him go.
- The same day, a letter arrived at the British Airports Authority, asking if it was now safe to fly without being miniaturised. The general manager of Gatwick responded to say that they had now managed to rid the airport of aliens and the writer's journey through the airport would be as safe and trouble-free as they could make it.
- Innes Lloyd was also written to, by the editors of Airframe - the journal of the British Aircraft Corporation - asking for information about the aircraft cabin design seen in the story. He responded by stating that, whilst his designer had looked at real examples for research, the set seen on screen was not based on any specific aircraft model.
- Five of the six videotape masters of The Faceless Ones were cleared for wiping on 21st July 1969, with the sixth instalment being destroyed that September. Film copies were known to exist as recently as 1973, in Zambia.
- With only two episodes still in existence in the archives, The Faceless Ones was animated for DVD / Blu-ray release in 2020. Likenesses are faithful to the actors, though we have the usual lack of costume changes to simplify the animation process. The climactic fight between Samantha, Jean and Meadows in the car park doesn't come across very well at all - a limitation of the basic 2D animation techniques employed. They look like they are dancing rather than fighting. The Doctor hides behind the "Mill Hill Times" newspaper at one point - an in-joke as this was the area of London where Patrick Troughton lived. We also get Police 'Wanted' posters depicting the Master - both the Delgado and Dhawan incarnations.
- And finally, another of Oliver Arkinstall-Jones' fabulous retro-style posters:
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