Doctor Who Rewind - The Faceless Ones

I've reached the top of the recon hill and I'm about to free wheel down, smiling in the knowledge that I've just two serials to go before I reach the next completely existing one, The Tomb Of The Cybermen.

That bad news is there are six and severn parts to them respectively. Oh brother!

So, The Faceless ones is all about a race of alien chameleons who are trying to replace the identities of 50,000 of there people who were destroyed in a catastrophe. Replace them of course with human counterparts.

All the action centres around modern day (1960's) Gatwick airport where the aliens have set up an airway called Chameleon Tours. They have taken over the bodies of two airport personnel, Spencer and Captain Blade, and are arranging to fly plane loads of young passengers up to an orbiting spaceship where they are miniaturised and stored.

It is Polly who initially alerts the Doctor that something is up when she witnesses Spencer murder a man, with a strange ray gun, inside the Chameleon Tours hangar.

The Doctor tries in vain to report the incident to the authorities but the airport commandant is reluctant to hear the Doctors wild claims.

Jamie does some investigating around Chameleon Tours and meets up with Liverpudlian Samantha Briggs (played by non other than Pauline Collins - Shirley Valentine) who is looking for her brother who has gone missing on one if the flights to Rome. She received a post card from him, but later discovers it was a faked.

The Doctor discovers that both Ben and Holly have been put into suspended animation in a cabinet and narrowly avoids being frozen by Spencer himself.

The Doctor meets DI Crossland who is investigating the missing Chameleon Tours passengers, it was his partner DI Gascoine that was the first victim Polly saw get shot.

The airport commandant gives the Doctor twelve hours to find out what has happened.

Jamie takes Samantha's ticket and boards a Chameleon flight to find out what is happening to the passengers. While he's in the toilet Blade destroys a pursuing RAF fighter and the plane docks with the spaceship. When Jamie emerges from the toilet he finds all the passengers have been miniaturised, and stored in draws. He is captured by Blade's assistant and put in a room with to aliens.

The Doctor threatens to remove the life support armband of alien air traffic controller Meadows, and learns the truth about why the Chameleons are stealing humans.

The doctor pretends to be alien Meadows and boards a flight to the ship. When there he seizes an opportunity to fool the aliens when one of them disintegrates, it's original having been found by Samantha in a car parked in the airport car park. Blade and Spencer kill the Director and the fake Jamie, whose originals revive. Crossland stays behind when the Doctor, Jamie and return with the freed humans.

In the airport, Samantha kisses Jamie goodbye (despite being asked to be the Doctors next assistant she turned the job down). Polly and Ben learn that the date, 20th July 1966 is the exact date that their adventure with the doctor started (remember The War Machines and WOTAN at the top of the Telecom tower).

They decide they have had enough of travelling with the Doctor and want to remain in their own time. The Doctor sympathises with them, having never returned to his home world himself.

With Ben and Polly gone, the Doctor reveals that the TARDIS has been released from airport security and is missing. The story ends with them both leaving to try and locate it.

Some great ideas and performances in this story. Even better to have a couple of episodes where everything moves and we get to see Troughton in full flow.

Incidentally there's a great moment when one of the alien copies enters the Chameleon Tours office, when he grabs the door handle it clearly comes off in his hand. Being the pro he is the actor simply places the handle on the shelf inside the door and carries on regardless.

Also of note, when the Doctor starts messing with the Chameleons equipment in episode four, he does so with a screwdriver! Perhaps not a sonic one that we've come to associate with him, but none the less one all the same. So this must be the first time we see him with the implement.

Seeing all those passenger miniatures too, I think the BBC have missed a trick in marketing an entire miniature Chameleon passenger set, or perhaps they did?

Next time on Doctor Who Rewind, the Doctor and Jamie try and find the TARDIS, and run into a bit of time travel trouble.