The faceless ones (1967)

Review
More about Doctor Who
More about this serial

Review

This was a six-part serial, first broadcast between 8th April - 13th May 1967. A brief and somewhat spoiler-ish summary of the plot: the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben find themselves on a runway on Gatwick airport where they discover that some tour operators are not what they seem.

What I've seen:

Parts one and three. Parts two, four, five and six are missing.

The good bits:

it's an unusual and pretty good story
the use of location is effective, and the (then) contemporary airport setting makes for some interesting period detail
there are good performances by both regulars and guests
Samantha, a young girl looking for her missing brother, works well as a temporary companion (and she's played by Pauline Collins, who also played queen Victoria in an episode of the new series)

The not so good bits:

part one feels padded, with the Tardis crew spending most of their time skulking around the Chameleon Tours hangar, the airport's main building and some parked aeroplanes
the last three episodes, which should contain the resolution to the mysterious developments in parts one and three, are missing
Jamie appears to have won the 'which of the companions is going to fill the young action man slot' contest, and Ben seems superfluous to the story. Ben and Polly leave the series at the end of this serial, and Ben's departure is probably a good thing

My verdict:

Interesting.

The surviving episodes are quite entertaining, but what they offer is all plot build-up and no resolution. It might be more satisfying to see them in conjunction with a reconstruction or an audio version of the entire serial.

More about Doctor Who

An introduction:
Doctor Who reviews: introduction

More "interesting" Doctor Who:
Doctor Who reviews: interesting

More from the Patrick Troughton years:
Doctor Who reviews: 1966 - 1969

Similar stories:
Doctor Who reviews: alien invasion

Original version of this review:
06/11/06

More about this serial

Episode guides:
BBC Cult

Serial reviews:
Outpost Gallifrey

DVD reviews (of the 'Lost in time' boxed set):
Outpost Gallifrey

With the exceptions listed here, all content © 2006 D9D1E2.COM. Please read the disclaimer, copyright information and terms of use. On this page Transitional HTML 4.01 and CSS 1 are used. If you're seeing this text you either have CSS switched off in your browser, or you're using a browser that can't handle CSS. If you're using an older browser version, you might want to consider upgrading.