The Faceless Ones

A strangely-titled beast, ‘The Faceless Ones’ returns us to a story in six parts after another string of four part adventures. After a story that was a bit ‘weird’ in ‘The Macra Terror’, we find the Doctor and his companions returned to Earth in present day England for this one. It’s played pretty straight, and involves a fair bit of filming at Gatwick airport, a departure (pun unintended I swear) from any sort of location shoot Doctor Who had enjoyed previously.

Doctor and Jamie behind the tyres of a 'flying beastie'.

I was impressed that Episode One in fact starts off with the Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie running around the runway under planes. There’s a chilling and mysterious murder to kick start the saga, oh and the episode exists! However, four of the six episodes of ‘The Faceless Ones’ do not exist.

Polly, avec long hair. Compare please to her pic in 'The Macra Terror'

The strangest thing about this story is Polly’s hair. In episode one of the Macra Terror her hair is cut very short, but suddenly it’s back to full length in the opening episode of ‘The Faceless Ones’. The only guess I could make was that pre-filming for ‘The Faceless Ones’ took place before ‘The Macra Terror’, an entirely studio-bound story, began shooting. Anneke Wills had not had her hair cut yet, and then had it cut just before shooting started for ‘The Macra Terror’. Then they realised they had all this film shot with long-haired Anneke, and had to get her a wig for the studio scenes in ‘The Faceless Ones’. As conspiracy theories go, it’s not one of the most interesting, but it’s the best I could come up with.

This story features pens that freeze people, doppelgangers aplenty and the writing out of Ben and Polly. It is sad to see them go. Michael Craze had been told his contracted wouldn’t be renewed, and Anneke decided to leave with him. In all fairness, they had taken on Frazer Hines (the production team) back in ‘The Highlanders’ almost on a whim, and the three companions did appear to be one too many. It would have been nice if we’d had more adventures with Polly. As it stands for Michael Craze and Anneke Wills, only one story exists complete in the archives, and it’s their first – ‘The War Machines’.

They were apparently contracted for all six episodes plus two of the next story. It’s a bit odd then that they were written out of ‘The Evil of the Daleks’, as well as episodes four and five of ‘The Faceless Ones’. They just reappear at the hanger at the end of episode six to say goodbye! Bit unfair on both that they couldn’t have a decent send-off, but at least they go to say ‘goodbye’, which is more than poor Jackie Lane got with Dodo.

Pauline Collins guest stars are Samantha Briggs in this story, and they hoped she would agree to become the next companion. A lot of the action centres around her and Jamie, and that may be why Ben and Polly disappear for so long, however she decided not to sign a contract and only features in this story. Samantha and Jamie did make a nice pair doing their investigating, there was good chemistry between them and it would have been interesting to watch that relationship develop. Frazer Hines’ role as Jamie had been limited up to this point, and it’s the first time Jamie gets to hold a fair strand of the plotline.

Another notable cast member is Bernard Kay, back again for his third (I think) role in Doctor Who. This time he plays Police Inspector Crossland, who in the end becomes the director of the Chameleons, a faceless race of aliens wanting to replace young people and take over the Earth. He plays the two roles very differently and very well. And we have Donald Pickering, the perfect villain, cast in the role of Captain Blade.

 The plot, written by first-time Who writer Malcolm Hulke and David Ellis, struggles to hold up for six episodes – it was originally planned as a four part adventure. There is an awful lot of investigating going on through the middle of the story. The Doctor has trouble convincing anyone that he’s not a lunatic, people escape, get captured again, evidence disappears, classic stuff to pad things out.

Pauline Collins, Bernard Kay and Frazer Hines.

Donald Pickering

Speaking of Patrick Troughton, he is very strong in ‘The Faceless Ones’, and in this story the Doctor really takes the lead. He plays the straight and serious stuff – which he is getting more of now – brilliantly and his Doctor is warm and honest and basically fantastic! Troughton may have taken a little while to sort out what would be the main characteristics of his Doctor, but now that he has he has quickly overtaken Hartnell as ‘my favourite Doctor’. Well, he only had one Doctor to overtake as they’d only been one!

The final part and a bit sees some of the action taking place up in space. The cgi in the reconstruction may have been better than what was originally done – the satellite that the Chameleons are based apparently frustrated the director, Gerry Mill, a lot. A bit slow in places, poor treatment of Ben and Polly, but Troughton, Hines and Pauline Collins make this story quite good.

7/10

The War Machines

Looking forward this appears to be the last complete story for quite a while. I have two seasons that follow with only one complete story I see. It’s going to be difficult that’s for sure. This is the last story of the third season as it aired but there wasn’t a record break after it – I am unsure when that occurred.

It’s strange to think that Doctor Who went through its first three years and the final story of those three years was the only story to be set in the present (1966). I understand that future adventures may well return to the present more often, or the very near future. Again this was penned by Ian Stuart Black, who wrote two stories in a row, something quite rare. It’s a very different beast to ‘The Savages’ and not blessed with the political thoughtfulness of the previous story. The ideas were passed to Black from Davis as the person originally down to write this story wasn't able.

A War Machine on the London streets.

However, it’s a pretty enjoyable tale, nicely paced with again a lot of location shooting. It features the London Post Office Tower, which had just been completed around the time of filming, as central to the plot. A nice touch, in a story with ideas that resonate today, in a plot line that has been done so many times. What if computers developed a mind of their own and turned on humanity? Of course, in 1966 this was probably a very new and scary concept.

Polly and Dodo at the 'Inferno' disco.

We see a disco in this story which feels very out of place in Doctor Who, at least at this time. There’s something very ‘clunky’ about the production. Maybe it’s because the War Machines themselves, tools and weapons of the evil computer WOTAN, are clunky. They appear to be large cardboard boxes with a couple of pipes and lights added. There are slow and very easy to outrun. The dialogue is clunky too and not delivered with precision at times. William Hartnell struggles at points and is rather marvellous at others.

The Doctor gets serious!

He is the focus of the show this time and has a tough workload – they had almost given him a holiday in ‘The Savages’, where he was unconscious for most of episode three. He’d had two weeks off a couple of stories earlier as well in ‘The Celestial Toymaker’. The strain and workload is really starting to show.

As for clunky dialogue, well lines like ‘C-Day, that’s computer Day’ is an example. WOTAN hisses out lines such as ‘Doctor Who is required’, but despite that faux pas, the biggest issue is the lines being very hard to understand, especially in the final episode.

Ben and Polly follow the Doctor into the TARDIS.

The rest of the cast is an interesting mix. Professor Brent is played by John Harvey and I have to say, as a key player he was poorly cast. He struggles to remember his lines and always looks as if he’s searching his mind for them. They get delivered in a very stilted way and I just don’t believe the performance sadly. We are introduced to Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills) in this story, who end up leaving in the TARDIS.

Polly meets Ben when she takes Dodo (Jackie Lane) to the ‘Inferno Nightclub’, the hottest spot in town. Lane has a very clunky line when she says ‘what I’d really like is to go to the hottest nightclub in town’. It is not to be a happy story for Dodo. She was written in at the end of one episode, and written out after only half a story. Why the producer didn’t have the decency to extend the contract for 2 more episodes I don’t know. Dodo was a decent, bubbly companion who suffered for little back story and the production team not caring much about the character. I think she was very hard done by.

In the background, Dodo in on of her last scenes.

‘The War Machines’ features a lot of different locations both exterior and in the studio. They even managed to get a taxi in the studio. There is a very bizarre sequence featuring a tramp (again given some clunky lines: ‘it’s bloomin’ paradise to what I’ve been used to!’) who is killed by the War Machines in a somewhat shocking sequence. I liked the pacing of the story, the use of locations and other elements, yet on the other hand it almost felt like a pilot episode for a new series and everyone didn’t quite know what they were supposed to be doing or where to pitch their performances.

Announcing 'C' day.

6.5/10

The Savages

New writer to the series, Ian Stuart Black, wrote this story, and it’s a very interesting one too. Since ‘The Daleks Masterplan’ every Doctor Who story has been four parts, and the series really is really benefiting from shorter stories and a regular pattern and pace. ‘The Savages’ starts with a lot of location work, and it continues throughout the story. This was something I really noticed, and it occurred to me that to this point the amount of location shooting  throughout the series had been extremely limited.

Apart from ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ and ‘The Myth Makers’, location shooting had only been the occasional linking shot or something like that. Nearly the end of the third season, ‘The Savages’ provides us with the first alien planet shot outdoors – in a quarry naturally! There is a fair bit of outside stuff shot on film for this one, possibly the most to date. It represents a shift in the way the show is produced – now with Innes Llyod at the helm and script editor Gerry Davis. I thought the previous team of Wiles and Tosh were doing some very interesting things with the series, but from watching Donald Tosh interviewed on ‘The Gunfighters’ DVD I see that Lloyd’s ideas for the show were quite different from Tosh and Wiles’, who didn’t have a good crack at the series in all fairness to them. Not all of their stories hit the mark but they were always trying to do something different.

William Hartnell gets all scientific as savages watch on.

Lloyd and Davis took over from ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, however I think this was the first story they commissioned and really had their mark on. And it’s a good start! Sadly, not existing at all in the archives, I realise now that the next couple of seasons’ worth of stories will be hard to get through as there will be a lot of reconstructions. My friend Andrew told me he had never watched the full reconstruction of this one before. He has now!

It’s very much a (well executed) ‘ideas’ story. The concept is interesting, and political too. I’m not sure if it was inspired by apartheid or colonialism in general, but the theme is taking things off others to make you strong. The elders take the life force from ‘the savages’ on this world. They have found a way to take this life force from the savages making them smarter and healthier, whilst the savages are left to live in caves and run around in skin. Perhaps the story is representing the concept of the poor making rich people rich?

Presumably this world is some sort of human colony far in the future, but it wasn’t 100% clear to me. It is mentioned that the savages are the same as the elders – they are both the same race in other words. It’s quite an horrific idea really, and a very adult concept for the show to deal with. I wonder what the children watching back in the day would have made of it.

It's a sad farewell to Steven
and Peter Purves

It is also Peter Purves’ final story as Steven Taylor. Lloyd and Davis had decided to move on both companions as soon as they could, and wasted little time in moving on Peter Purves sadly. At least it was a decent story to go out on for Steven, staying behind to help rebuild a society that couldn’t see that what they were doing was wrong. The leader of the Elders, Jano, is well played by  Frederick Jaeger.

The Doctor and Jano

It’s a nice twist to the plot and the character of Jano when they drain the Doctor of his essence and transfer it to Jano. He can suddenly see that what they have been doing is wrong. Destroying the machines may have been an effective way to stop the plundering of innocent people, but I’m not sure it would have effectively changed the planet. Most of the Elders were far from convinced that what they were doing was wrong.

It’s a good little story. It has a good look to it, with effective use of location work and some nifty looking corridors. Broadcast in 1966 it would have been the sort of story to get people thinking. Also the first story to abandon individual titles for each episode and just have a title for the whole story. An effectively told, interesting story.

7/10

The Gunfighters

I have been led to believe from my good friend Andrew that ‘The Gunfighters’ has a bad reputation. Some of it based on supposedly the lowest ratings to that point – which is not true, several episodes before ‘The Gunfighters’ rated lower (such as ‘The Ark’). It did have the lowest, to the time, audience appreciation score. Apparently this is one of the reasons that the new production team decided to cut the historical stories.

The Doctor meets Wyatt Earp. Or is that 'Mr Wearp'?

Anyhoo, ‘The Gunfighters’ is a refreshingly enjoyable Doctor Who tale after the previous two which were rather hard work. There’s a light-hearted feel to the piece, filled with a talented guest cast and an outstanding performance from William Hartnell. He knew exactly where to pitch this performance, which he generally does, however, there’s barely a slip of the tongue in this story from our beloved Doctor. The same can’t be said for Anthony Jacobs who took on the role of Doc Holliday. He stumbles and repeats several lines, and looks about 50 whereas Holliday was supposed to be around 30 at the time, and indeed died at 36. However, he is well cast apart from those two minor quibbles.

The strongest of the guest cast is John Alderson as Wyatt Earp, he plays straight man to the Doctor who keeps calling him ‘Mr Wearp’ brilliantly. This joke is brilliantly expanded on when Steven accidently calls him ‘Mr Wearp’ and corrects himself in embarrassment. I liked Peter Purves’ performance as well in this story, although the actor did not. Steven is very weak and ignorant of the surround he is in, which is fair enough as he comes from the far future. It works wonderfully well I think. And Jackie Lane shines as Dodo in her best story thus far, with wonderful interactions with Jacobs.
Americans don’t tend to do British that well (and don’t get me started on their Australian accents!) but it’s fair to say that the British aren’t that great at American accents either. There’s a real mix in this story of good and bad accents. The guys playing the Clantons are not very convincing, and fade in and out and sometimes go a bit British. David Graham gives a great performance as Charlie the barman, however his accent is rather stagey – by that I mean it’s reminiscent of an American accent used by non-Americans on stage. It seems a little too strong, a little too ‘worked on’ perhaps. Generally, the main characters are very good. Reed De Rouen as Pa Clanton probably had the best accent.

Kate sings 'The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon'

This story probably can’t be reviewed without at least mentioning ‘The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon’ – a song that does appear far too frequently in the production. It was written for the production, but why they couldn’t write a couple of other tunes I don’t know. It fits in well with the piece, but it just pops up all the time. On top of that it is sung as part of the story as well as being used as the soundtrack which is mighty confusing. The latter verses of the soundtrack version tells the story as it’s being played out, which I liked. I think they needed to have Kate, Steven and Dodo singing a different tune though. They could have checked the later verses and seen what was going to happen!

The shoot out in the final episode.

The sets are great for ‘The Gunfighters’. The stuff shot on film (mostly just the shootout) looks wonderful in the bigger studio with wider streets and a less claustrophobic feel. Everything looks quite authentic and much of the set seems to be interconnected to itself. They managed to put sand on the ground so we didn’t see a shiny black studio floor too which really helps. Very well done.

Dodo is is held hostage by Johnny Ringo

One last nod to the cast – Laurence Payne as Johnny Ringo. Wonderful casting, played him very dark and his introduction to the third episode changes the mood of the entire piece leading up to the shootout. In reality he wasn’t at the shootout, Pa Clanton was already dead and many other things didn’t happen as they did in this piece. But never let the facts get in the way of a good story. And despite what others may say, this is a good story.

8/10