Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 166: The Faceless Ones, Episode Three

Dear Diary,

There’s an episode of Adam Adamant Lives! (sadly, the only one from the first series that’s missing from the archives), in which a train mysteriously vanishes, only to later re-appear pulling into Waterloo station… full of skeletons! It’s a scene that a number of people believe to be from Doctor Who (Indeed, I used to work with a chap who swore blind that it was a Jon Pertwee story), possibly because it’s such a bizarre image.

I’ve said it a couple of times since Innes Lloyd took over the producer’s chair – quite often in stories written by Ian Stuart Black – but much of the stuff in this episode really could have come from an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers, or whatever. There’s no aliens on display (even if they are present), and much of the story hinges around the Doctor finally managing to convince the powers-that-be there’s genuinely something wrong at Gatwick airport.

The final shot, in which we see a plane filled with excited young tourists suddenly left empty is fantastic – and very reminiscent of the kind of striking image that you’d find in action/adventure serials of this period. The only real Doctor Who twist is that we’ve been told these planes are going up higher than expected – right the way into space. As I’ve said before: this may not really be Doctor Who, but I love it.

One of the things that works the best is the Doctor himself being placed into the format of a 1960s adventure serial. All I seem to do lately is sing the praises of Patrick Troughton, but once again he proves why he simply is the Doctor as he tries to convince the Commandant and the Inspector that there’s more going on here than they may care to believe. He demonstrates a kind of cooling gun on a man he suspects to be an alien duplicate, before going on to muse to the man that he’s sure he’s seen him before – he must have a double!

I spoke a lot in the First Doctor’s era about Hartnell’s transformation from crotchety old man to the person we think of as being the Doctor, and I think that The Faceless Ones might be the best example of Troughton becoming the person we think of as being the Second Doctor. All through his stories so far, he’s perfectly played the quiet Doctor, coming across as being innocent and child like (and it’s not all an act, I don’t think), while really standing back and keeping an eye on events. It’s obvious in The Underwater Menace, as he stops the spear from hitting a girl, and stirs up a conversation with Zaroff to try and uncover the professor’s true intentions. It’s even more present here, as he joyfully revels in being one step ahead of the aliens for the most part. The Doctor’s really enjoying this.

Watching television last night, an advert came on for the DVD release of a film starring Pauline Collins. and I pointed her out to Ellie as ‘the companion in the story I’m currently watching’. And that’s accurate! If we can count Kylie Minogue, and David Morrisey as companions in the 2009 specials, then we surely have to count Sam (she’s from Liverpool, you know) as being one, too.

It’s strange, coming after an episode in which I’ve been praising just how well the Second Doctor interacts with Ben and Jamie (and usually Polly, when she’s not been kidnapped), that our two most experienced companions are totally dispensed with in this episode, and replaced with a new girl. With the benefit of 40-something year’s hindsight, I know Pauline Collins isn’t going to be stepping aboard the TARDIS in a few day’s time, but it’s clearly the way the character is being written here.

She’s introduced as an intelligent, plucky young girl, she’s got a character quirk (did I mention that she’s from Liverpool? It was brought up three times in as many minutes in yesterday’s episode, so I thought I’d better say something about it), the Doctor groups her in with Jamie at one point when speaking, and there’s no mention of any family outside of her brother, who’s disappeared (that’s why she’s down from Liverpool). It’s interesting, at least to me, to have a potential companion being introduced with such a thick accent, less than 18 months after Dodo’s was shifted around the country before being phased out.

If anything, at this stage, the accent makes it even more obvious that Sam is to be our new time traveller, as having some kind of ‘quirk’ is a bit of a pre-requisite for a companion at this stage. Since taking over, Lloyd and Davis has introduced Ben (the ‘East-ender’), Polly (the ‘posh girl’) and Jamie (the ‘Scottish lad from the past’). In the next story we’ll be adding Victoria to our list (the ‘Victorian girl’). Still obvious as it may seem, I’m ever so glad we won’t be getting Sam full-time – that voice could grate after a while…

a