Review: Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones Parts 1-3

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Second Doctor and his companions, Ben, Polly, and Jamie, arrive in the then-present of 1966, one year since The Doctor took Ben and Polly on their first trip. Though while Jamie adapts to modern times, Polly witnesses a murder with a strange weapon, uncovering a secret conspiracy of shapeshifting aliens called Chameleons.

OUR TAKE

The Faceless Ones continues the process of animating classic Doctor Who stories that were originally lost from the First and Second Doctor eras due to the poor way of archiving those stories at the time. For those not in the know, most of the footage for these stories has either been destroyed or has been missing for sometime, with the search for the original film canisters something of a treasure hunt for dedicated fans of the show. Now though, with it clear some stories might never be found, the BBC has taken to reconstructing theses stories by making new weirdly animated versions with the existing audio (which thankfully we have of every episode already). Though honestly I can’t imagine this being appealing to fans who are anything less than Whovian completionists that need to see every episode before they die or something, as without my prior interest and knowledge of this series, I imagine I’d be pretty lost and bored.

This story in particular does have a lot of interesting trivia surrounding it, with it apparently being the first story to primarily take place in what was then the modern day, which is something of a staple for the series nowadays, and probably made it a lot cheaper to shoot when they didn’t have to make elaborate fantastical, historical, or futuristic types of sets for once. It also sees the departure of Ben and Polly, the last two companions of the First Doctor before the historic first Regeneration into the Second. While their actual leaving isn’t shown until the end of the story, this first half of the story is where they’re effectively shuffled off. Whether that was the right call is up for debate, the two of them didn’t quite have discernible personalities to begin with and Jamie, a former Scottish Highlander, was becoming a fan favorite around this time and would go onto be one of the longest running companions.

Though while there are interesting behind the scenes bits about this episode, the story itself is pretty thin, especially for being six parts, and not helped by this uncanny animation style they’ve used for these reconstructions. It’s essentially Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but even cheaper and less interesting. There are plenty of fine comedy bits for late 60’s British television, such as The Doctor, a time travelling alien, and Jamie, a Scottish person from the past, trying to discern what a passport is, but it really doesn’t hold up. Maybe the second half will hold up better tonight.