Like his non-contemporaries, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; Patrick Troughton’s Doctor Who could rightfully be interpreted as having a similar anarchic spirit circa 1967 - a watershed year both for him and the aforementioned musical icons.
This affably moral Doctor was a respite from his irascible predecessor William Hartnell. Devoid of any acerbic insinuations, the 47-year-old Troughton was democratically on the side of ‘youth’ personified by his early 20-something companions: Anneke Wills (Polly), Michael Craze (Ben) and Frazer Hines (Jamie). Youth is also the prevailing theme in ‘The Faceless Ones’: aliens entice young people aged 18-25 to their orbiting satellite via a bogus tour company operating from Gatwick Airport.
It is now a well-known fact that many of the Troughton era episodes were wiped or destroyed in the 1970s, to make way for the storage of new programmes. Totally befitting the current digital age and like ‘The Maccra Terror’ before it; this six-part animated version is a labour of love and a refreshing change from the stilted photographic stills used in the Big Finish version where the viewer had to frustratingly ‘fill in the gaps’. You are more than spoilt for choice with this DVD. There are both colour and black and white animated versions plus a version that combines the "missing episodes" with the surviving episodes 1 and 3.
The Doctor and Co. illegally arrive in the TARDIS at the relatively new airport, slap-bang in the middle of a runway. Like the Stones at their Redlands drugs party around the same time and just down the road, they immediately encounter the ‘long arm of the law’. They split, and Polly gets separated but hides in a storage unit and witnesses some dubious goings on by the key airport staff. As the plot gets thicker with each sinister side of it unravelled, the Doctor encounters one bureaucratic blocker after another as personified by the authoritarian ‘Commandant’ - played by Colin Gordon straight out of a bygone era of clipped received pronunciation. Things get even more sticky as the prevailing alien force belittle the Doctor’s efforts to convince ‘the man’, from all parts of the airport complex.
Watching these six episodes is undoubtedly a ‘rescued’ affair. The animation enhances the eponymous aliens’ appropriately robotic aura. By default, this pre-empts the Autons of the Pertwee era two and a half years later, and the shape-shifting Zygons of the 1975 Baker era. The animators certainly know their stuff and they are unafraid to add little quirks: the Doctor - along with Jamie - hides behind reading a newspaper, The Mill Hill Times. Mill Hill was the North London suburb where Troughton grew up. Also, one of the potential abductees contemporaneously bears a resemblance to John Lennon circa the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ era.
By happy coincidence, ‘The Faceless Ones’ sows the seeds for future Doctor Who eras through its casting and characterisation. While it was common for actors to star in multiple Doctor Who stories, there is no doubting the profundity in this case. Wanda Ventham (the mother of Benedict Cumberbatch) who plays Jean Rock the Commandant ‘s secretary was later cast as Thea Ransome in 1977’s ‘Image Of The Fendahl’ and as Faroon in 1987’s ‘Time And The Rani’. Chris Tranchell, who plays the robotic officious counterpart to the Commandant - Jenkins at Passport Control, would go on to play Andred in 1978’s ‘The Invasion Of Time’. Let us not forget that Tranchell used to flat-share with Tom Baker, and his apparel at the time inspired the classic look of the Fourth Doctor.
Closer to home, the bonhomie of ‘the crowded TARDIS’ is a precursor to the Peter Davison era. Frazer Hines readily asserts himself as one of the characters integral to the plot, while Craze and Wills (in their last ever story) are somewhat sidelined, setting the stage for Hines’s popularity in the subsequent seasons - making him one of the show’s longest-serving companions. To round things up. It is interesting to note that the future ‘Shirley Valentine’ Pauline Collins, who played the feisty Samantha Briggs was asked to play a companion, but she declined.
‘The Faceless Ones’ serves as a distinct allegory pertinent to the time that it was released: how would the remainder of the 1960s turn out to be like if the required young people were not there to set it in motion? That doesn’t bear thinking about! A classic ‘What If’, and many more to come!
Text by Humphrey Fordham April 2020
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