Day 81 — March 22nd 2021
The Faceless Ones Episodes Three and Four
The Faceless Ones — Episode Three
Every so often I say that I can’t remember a great deal about these stories. I did them all on a marathon like this in 2013/2014, but a lot of these stories I’ve not seen since that marathon, and in the seven or eight years since I’ve forgotten a lot of details. I could probably tell you a handful of things about a story (For example, I know the basic plot of The Faceless Ones is ‘aliens lose their identities in an explosion, so kidnap teenagers to take over’), but a lot of the specific beats are lost to me.
That’s never been truer than with this episode, because I so don’t remember it that I honestly wonder if I actually watched it last time around or if I just did the audio by mistake. I’ve not gone back to check, because I’m determined not to find out what I thought about the episodes until I’ve done them all this time.
It’s not true to say that nothing in this episode rings a bell. There’s a single moment (when the Commandant does a double take to Doctor Who’s suggestion that they’re dealing with aliens; ‘That hardly answers my ques… What did you say?!’) which felt familiar. I’m sure I laughed at that moment the last time around, and I laughed at it again here. But it’s — genuinely — the only fragment of this episode that I recognised. For every other bit of the episode I might as well have been watching a brand new one.
I wonder if that’s simply because the episode didn’t make much of an impact on me? It follows the trend from yesterday’s pair of being packed full of ideas and moments I think are brilliant, but falling flat for me as a complete piece.
The thing that’s worked the best for me here are the scenes of Doctor Who trying to get around all the red tape at Gatwick. It’s not something that I’d want to see happening in every episode, but it’s a fun change of pace to see him being held up like this. Especially because it’s easy to look at it from the Commandant’s perspective, to whom Doctor Who must seem like an absolute mad man.
(As a side note, I forgot to mention yesterday that Doctor Who manages to escape being held captive by threatening to blow up Gatwick airport and then making a run for it during the ensuing chaos. In a post 9/11 world that feels an incredibly bold thing to have the hero of your children’s programme do, but surely it must have felt a little odd at the time, too?!)
I think I could tell that this episode wasn’t really clicking for me because I spent the vast majority of it being distracted by Patrick Troughton’s hair. What on Earth has happened to it this week? It doesn’t usually look like this! I’m assuming it’s a result of whatever they applied to it for the ‘freezing’ sequence that opens the episode, but it’s not the most flattering look for him to carry for the next 25 minutes!
It does open up one of my favourite debates about the early Troughton era, though; did he ever wear a wig as Doctor Who? I briefly wondered if this might be the moment he switched from wearing a wig to just styling his own hair, but the subject of wigs is a controversial one. Of course, Anneke Wills claims to have created the Second Doctor Who’s hairstyle by whipping out a comb during rehearsals, and of course Frazer Hines swears Troughton never wore a wig.
See?
What do you lot think? Did he ever wear a wig? I’m willing to be swayed by an argument in either direction!
As for the episode itself, I think I’m going with another 6/10.
The Faceless Ones — Episode Four
I’m beginning to find The Faceless Ones really frustrating. My notes for each episode are bursting with things that I’m really enjoying — little moments, fantastic lines and great ideas that I know would have captured by imagination as a kid, and yet I’m coming away with an overwhelming sense of just being a bit bored. Regular readers will know that I think boring is the worst thing Doctor Who can be, but it’s doubly frustrating when theres every indication that these episodes should be classics.
This episode, for example, is chocked full of dialogue that really sings. I particularly like this exchange between Doctor Who and the Commandant;
Commandant: ‘Well, this time they’ll have the RAF on their tail.’
Doctor Who: ‘How high can fighters go these days, Commandant?’
Commandant: ‘Oh, ten miles plus.’
Doctor Who: ‘How futile.’
I’m impressed to discover that it’s a moment delivered almost exactly as scripted (only ‘ten miles’ is a change, increased from six) because it feels like such a natural and fun little moment that I was almost certain Troughton had added his final line in rehearsals.
I’m also particularly fond of his complaining that everyone is ‘still thinking in Earth terms’, and his closing line for the episode — ‘exactly’ in reply to the Commandant expressing incredulity that the airplane might have gone all the way into space.
I’ve not touched on Samantha Briggs so far, but I’ll have to admit that she’s one of the parts of this story that’s outright not working for me. I’m finding her surprisingly grating. I know people always talk of her as a potential companion (some people claim that she was intended to be until she turned them down last minute, but that doesn’t ever seem to have been the case), but I’ll admit I’m glad she stays behind at the end of the story!
I’m disappointed — really disappointed — to be giving this one a 5/10.
Especially because the basic idea for this story is so simple and brilliant. It could fit quite easily into almost any of the 1960s ITC adventure serials with very minimal changes. I mean, you’d have to lose the aliens, but other than that…! A couple of years ago I wrote up a pitch for an episode of Death in Paradise that was heavily based on The Faceless Ones, updating the pre-written postcards to pre-scheduled Instagram posts, and the aliens stealing teenager’s identities into criminals stealing identities as part of a smuggling ring operating out of the Carribean. There was even a Liverpudlian who arrives on the island in search of her missing brother!
Naturally, the murder victim proves a problem because his body has been laying at the bottom of the Saint Marie harbour for at least a week, but his Instagram shows he was at a party on the other side of the island the night before. I’d love to write it all up properly one day…!
