The Faceless Ones

2 complete, 4 reconstructed. This was another very cool sci-fi concept, this time set in present day (1966) Earth. The Tardis lands in Gatwick airport, and although being held by the authorities should have been the extent of their problems, they uncover another sinister plot!

The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie land in the middle of Gatwick airport runway.

A private travel firm is abducting young people under the pretence of taking them abroad on their planes, but en route they are being miniaturised and transported to an orbiting space station. The planes convert to spaceships. The Doctor just happens to learn all this when he finds someone one of the aliens has murdered for knowing too much. They’re taking people in order to assume their form, as the aliens’ true appearance is grotesquely ‘faceless’, with featureless scaly (possibly green?) faces, apparently due to some sort of illness.

Getting through immigration is not easy when you’re a Timelord.

It’s another interesting premise because, like the Macra in the previous episode, they aren’t actually evil as such, they’re just trying to survive, and they consider their own form of life to be above humans in all respects. That said, the mood of this one is very much “invasion of the body-snatchers”, with impostors in key roles in the airport, and no-one sure of who is real, and it takes a while before the Doctor can convince the airport staff that anything is even wrong!

One of the ‘faceless ones’ undergoing transformation.

Once they realise something strange is happening, the Doctor is given free reign by the police to sort it all out. In the end, they defeat the aliens due to a stupid design flaw of their transformation process – ie. the original humans have to be kept safely stowed away, or the transformation process can be disrupted and the copy alien can be killed. They threaten the aliens with this and get them to leave, although the Doctor offers to help them find an alternative treatment for their condition.

The alien ship, originally posing as a passenger jet plane.

On leaving the airport, Ben and Polly choose to stay behind on Earth, as they are now back where they left. The ever-loyal Jamie stays with the Doctor and they return to the Tardis, only to find that it is missing! Dun-dun-duuuunnn!!

Ben and Polly stay behind.

As Ben and Polly depart, I will summarise and comment on their role.
Like many of the Doctor’s travelling companions, Ben and Polly join the Tardis from present day London and leave it in the same place (more or less). They are reluctant travellers, in that they didn’t mean to be there. They both have lives to go back to, so when the Tardis lands in Gatwick airport, they take the chance to say goodbye. Neither of them do anything remarkable, but Ben provides the ‘muscle’, and Polly provides the ‘sass’. Both of them witness the Doctor’s first (first televised, anyway) regeneration, which I suppose is pretty noteworthy. Anyway, they both end up safe and well, so that’s good.

The Macra Terror

4 episodes, all reconstructed. Another cool sci-fi episode. A human colony on another planet, far from Earth in the distant future. What seems like a peaceful civilisation has a dark underbelly, in the form of creatures called Macra.

The Macra attacks!

They’ve been using the colonists to mine gas from the ground that they need to survive. They control the the leader of the colonists, who controls the whole colony by feeding them instructions in their sleep. No-one ever meets the leader, he only appears on the video screen to give instructions.

The Doctor sneaks about.

It’s all very sinister. Anyone who proclaims to have seen a Macra is taken away to be ‘cured’. The Doctor uncovers it all and the Macra are defeated by reversing the flow of gas and releasing their controlling grip on the leader. I enjoyed this one too and would have liked to have seen some surviving video. Alas, such was the BBC.

The Leader is attacked by the Macra.

I continue to be impressed with Patrick Troughton’s portrayal of the Doctor. He’s really transformed this show for me now. Fortunately, too, a lot of the stories so far are more up my street. Less of the “we’re trapped in this historical time period, oh noes” and more proper sci-fi stuff.

The Moonbase

2 complete, 2 reconstructed. Now this one I really did like. Set in the future, Earth has established a base on the moon that controls the tides and the weather of Earth. Already an interesting premise, the base staff soon go missing one by one, after developing a strange illness, and all turns out to be a Cyberman plot! Didn’t see that one coming at all.

The Doctor attempts to cure the sick moonbase staff.

The Cybermen want to control the weather of Earth and wipe humanity out. I didn’t manage to catch how these Cybermen survived the destruction of Mondas, or if they were from somewhere else, but the design has had a slight change, in that they now wear fully silver suits, so they appear to be metal all over. Their voices are changed a bit too.

A Cyberman approaches an injured Jamie.

I liked the mystery of events at the start, and how the moonbase staff were under pressure from Earth to keep things on track, playing into their desperation and having to trust the Doctor.

Cybermen do the moonwalk.

I would rate this one as very good, and a shame two of the episodes are only available as reconstructions.

The Underwater Menace

In The Underwater Menace (2 complete, 2 reconstructed), the Doctor, Ben, Polly and new boy Jamie discover Atlantis! Apparently, the ancient lost city is still populated, surviving under the water, sealed away from the world above.

To evade the Atlantan guards, the Doctor disguises himself again.

While the heroes are offered up as a sacrifice to the Atlantan god, a scientist that the Doctor recognises hatches a plan to raise Atlantis out of the sea. However, he is quite mad and really intends to blow up the whole world or something.

The food-gathering fish people play a pivotal role.

This wasn’t a bad serial, and again allowed the Doctor to dress up in disguise (this is becoming a theme). The city gets flooded and destroyed at the end, so the production was fairly good, with pools of water and stuff. I’d rate this one as passable.

The Highlanders

After the enjoyable Dalek story, things have settled back into old habits with another tedious historical story. The Doctor, Ben and Polly are caught up in the middle of a battle between the English Redcoats and the Scottish Highlander clans, predictably enough leading to someone being captured and having to be rescued (why do these stories always go the same way?). Ben gets caught up in an illegal slave-trading operation and nearly shipped off to sea. Polly has to work with one of the clan women to capture a soldier and meet up with the Doctor.

“You may have swords, but I have a recorder… and I’m not afraid to use it!”

The only interesting thing about this four-parter is that the Doctor pretends to be a German doctor, then later dresses up as an old woman. He does the voices well, and uses enjoyably silly tricks to fool the soldiers. (I simply can’t see the same thing working with Hartnell’s doctor.)

One of the Doctor’s many disguises.

Anyway, a big battle aboard the ship ensues at the climax, and the Doctor and co escape back to the Tardis. They take one of the highlanders with them, Jamie, who decided not to accompany his clan on the boat to France.

Captured by the redcoats.

I’ve yet to actually see Troughton’s performance as the doctor in anything other than stills, as so far only reconstructions and audio exist. On the face of it, this particular story doesn’t seem like much of a loss. I’m hoping things pick up again, and it looks like some completed episodes exist ahead.

The Power of the Daleks

What better way to ease in an unfamiliar Doctor than with a familiar enemy? The Daleks return in a six-part serial ‘The Power of the Daleks’. Unfortunately, every episode was lost, so the whole thing is reconstructed. There are varying quality of reconstructions, but I ended up watching fan-made audio-narrated ones on YouTube.

The Doctor awakens with a new face… and a new personality to go with it.

It’s a particular shame that these episodes were lost. Firstly, because it’s one of the best Dalek stories yet, reminding me of ‘Dalek’ (2005) and a little of ‘Asylum of the Daleks’ (2012), in which they are actually a threatening presence that should not be awakened, rather than a powerful army already in full force.

The Doctor searches the planet Vulcan. (No pointy ears here.)

On a remote planet Vulcan (no pointy ears here), a crashed Dalek ship, several hundred years old, is recovered. Scientists are unaware of the dangers within,* and the Doctor finds the inhabitants dormant. But things are not as they seem, and as the scientists reactivate the Daleks and attempt to turn them into slaves, a rebel group seizes control and uses them to take-over. Of course, the Daleks are simply playing along, secretly building more of themselves and attempting to regain full power again.

Scientists study the Daleks, unaware of the danger.

We briefly saw what a Dalek looks like on the inside during their first encounter in The Daleks, but it was very vague and hidden away. This time we see them in full (albeit from the available telesnaps), being grown in vats, injected with machinery and inserted into their armour shells, as the construction line churns out more and more of them. It’s marvelous.

A Dalek production line builds an army.

The other reason it’s such a shame these episodes are lost is because it is of course Patrick Troughton in his first appearance, and actually seeing a new incarnation of the Doctor finding his feet, feeling his face, and discovering just who exactly he is, is one of the very rare pleasures of the Doctor Who franchise.

Even so, from what I’ve seen, I am already a big fan of Troughton’s Doctor. He has a, frankly, AWESOME voice, and he plays a bloody recorder!

Yes, he’s eccentric, as Hartnell’s version was, but instead of a crazy old man, he’s sharper, seemingly more on-the-ball, intelligent, witty, and gets more involved in the action.

A simple change of lead actor has transformed this whole show into something ten times as watchable. I’m looking forward to more adventures.

* Point of contention, Earth was invaded by Daleks in 2150-ish. I didn’t catch a date for this story, but either it’s set earlier than 2150, or set so far away from Earth that the inhabitants are blissfully unaware of what a Dalek is. Or there’s some timey-wimey stuff going on. Shrug.

The Tenth Planet

So, finally, I reach the last William Hartnell story. I have now officially seen every single episode with him as the Doctor (including the reconstructions).

Not only is this the last Hartnell story, I didn’t realise it’s also the first Cybermen story. The place is a space probe monitoring station in the Antarctic; the time is twenty years in the future (1986!!!!), and the appearance of a strange new planet in the sky, an upside-down duplicate of Earth that has drifted back into the solar system after millions of years. Apparently, the Doctor explains, Earth originally had a twin, Mondas, and now it has returned.

The original Cybermen. More like Balaclavamen.

The people of Mondas experimented with combining technology with biology, and purged emotion in an effort to improve their race. The result, cybernetic men (and women, presumably). Unlike the Daleks, whose design is basically identical fifty years later, the Cybermen look a lot different from how I know them. They’re not exactly armour-plated – instead their costumes are mostly fabric, with big chunks of machinery attached to them, and their faces look like they’re covered with a balaclava, only eye and mouth holes remaining. Combined with their disjointed monotone speech (in decidedly British accents, of course), it’s somewhat freaky.

Cybermen in the control room.

Totally impassionate, they attempt to destroy the Earth once they’ve “recharged” Mondas with its “energy”. The base’s commanding officer gets a bit crazy and attempts to launch an atomic weapon at Mondas, which would not only destroy it, but probably irradiate the Earth too. As luck would have it, the Cybermen seem to miscalculate, and their world overloads with excess energy and melts away into space, safely. The Doctor, Ben and Polly’s part in the whole thing is little more than stalling for time, but it seems to work.

Ben and Polly watch helplessly as the Doctor collapses.

Unfortunately, the whole ordeal is too much for the Doctor, whose body is growing weak and weary from age and exertion. In fact, in part 3 (of 4), he’s almost completely absent, having collapsed. I suspect this was Hartnell’s body double and Hartnell himself wasn’t available for whatever reason. I admit, I’m not aware of the reason he left the show. He returns for his last performance in episode 4, which is a good reconstruction, and the final regeneration scene is intact.

After a blinding white light, the Doctor regenerates a new body.

Hartnell gives probably his best performance when minutes from death, his ‘giggling old man’ persona slips away, replaced with a more sober performance, a vague realisation of what is about to happen to him, accepting his fate and finishing what needs to be done. As the Tardis dematerialises from the South Pole, the Doctor collapses inside, and Ben and Polly observe a bright light covering his face, which begins to change… into that of another man.

The Smugglers

Four-parters seem to be the “in” thing now. Despite this being the start of a new ‘season’ (buh?), nothing has changed, and this is unfortunately as frightfully dull as any other Doctor Who “historical” serial so far.

Really, Doctor Who + Pirates can be interesting, if there’s a sci-fi twist, but so many of these early stories are just about the characters getting into trouble in historical settings. It desperately needs some aliens or other time travellers or something. That’s why I liked The Time Meddler but not this.

The Doctor, Ben and Polly dress for the occasion.

This time, the Doctor, Ben and Polly are in the 17th Century and get mixed up with some pirates smuggling some gold or something. The Doctor is captured, Ben and Polly are arrested, it all ends with a big old fight, before they get away again. I would have been bored pretty much throughout even if the video wasn’t missing – as a total reconstruction, it was just snoreworthy.

Y’arrrr!! Not so smug now.

The only interesting thing about it was Ben and Polly trying to figure out where they were, being new to this time travel lark. Oh, and the pirates thinking Polly was a boy, and calling the Doctor “Sawbones”. I liked that. Otherwise, snoooooze.

The War Machines

Wikipedia says this was the end of ‘season 3’… whatever a season was back then. It’s an appropriate enough ending, as the Doctor and Dodo return to late 60s London to discover a new advanced computer is trying to take over the world by brainwashing people and sending out robotic tanks across the country.

In the WOTAN control room at the top of the BT tower, the Doctor puts the computer’s intelligence to the test.

‘Present day’ Earth stories may become an easy way out, but they’ve been fairly infrequent in this series so far, and I rather like them. Not only do we get a look at 1960s culture and references, but the production can be comparatively lavish, with outdoor filming, a large human cast and no need for pokey little wooden sets. Even the British army gets involved!

WOTAN brainwashes people and has them build war machines.

This four-part story also features the “brand spanking new” post office tower (BT tower), the top of which is the home of the computer-gone-evil WOTAN. Both the computer and the war machines are very dated now, with their whirring motorised parts, paper print-outs and typewriter noises, but since it’s set in the 60s, they can rather get away with it. It’s still kind of creepy even now.

A war machine runs amok in the streets of London.

Dodo all but disappears after episode 2. She briefly enjoys the nightclub life with the two new people they meet, Ben and Polly, before being taken over by the WOTAN computer, but after the disaster, she relays a message of thanks and tells the Doctor she’s staying behind. She’s safe and apparently happy to stay, so fair enough.

Having saved the country (and the world?) from the machines, the Doctor leaves, but not before his new companions (cockney sailor boy Ben, and posh blonde Polly) enter the Tardis unaware of what it truly is. Two young Londoners, Ben is a sailor in the Navy, temporarily on leave, and Polly worked with the WOTAN computer. Ben has a bit of a crush on Polly, calling her ‘Dutchess’, and has a cockerny accent. They both seem nice enough.

Ben and Polly meet shortly before joining the Doctor.

As Dodo departs, I will summarise and comment on her role.
She could have been a constant annoyance, with her way of talking and her disregard for common sense, but she became bearable by the end. Her accent seemed to become more posh over time, and she stopped doing such stupid things. At first, she didn’t mind being whisked away through time and space, as she explained she didn’t have any family to miss her. She went along with it all quite willingly, really – although it did take her a while to realise she had travelled through time and space. She actually thought the Ark ship they first land within was a zoo! Though she improved, on the whole I wasn’t keen on her. By sheer chance, Dodo ends up more or less where she left, in 1960s London.