UK, 8 April 1967-13 May 1967
6 episodes, average 25m
videotape, black and white, 4:3
mono, English
Previous Serial: The Macra Terror (1967)
Next Serial: The Evil of the Daleks (1967)
Series: Doctor Who (1963-1989) – series 4, episodes 31-36
A British television science fiction serial directed by Gerry Mill. Four of the six episodes are not known to have survived. At the end of episode six, companions Polly and Ben opt to leave The Doctor and Jamie. It also saw the first (albeit minor) change to the theme tune with added electronic “spangles” added at the start of the piece.
Premise
In Gatwick Aiport, 1966, Polly witnesses a murder in a hangar and is abducted by the killer, a representative of Chameleon Tours. After Ben also vanishes, The Doctor and Jamie are left to work out the mysteries – including the extraordinary number of people who have vanished while on a Chameleon tour…
Credits
* = uncredited
Crew
Director: Gerry Mill
BBC
Producer: Innes Lloyd
Associate Producer: Peter Bryant
Script: Malcolm Hulke, David Ellis
Story Editor: Gerry Davis
Studio Lighting: Howard King
Film Camera: Tony Imi
Film Editor: Chris Hayden
Title Music: Ron Grainer, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Title Music Arranged by: Delia Derbyshire *
Studio Sound: Gordon Mackie
Special Sound: Brian Hodgson
Costumes: Daphne Dare, Sandra Reid
Make-up: Gillian James
Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland
Production Assistant: Richard Brooks
Assistant Floor Manager: Sue Marlborough
Cast
Episode 1
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
James Appleby (policeman)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
George Selway (George Meadows)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Peter Whitaker (Inspector Gascoigne)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins)
Episode 2
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
George Selway (George Meadows)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins)
Madalena Nicol (Nurse Pinto)
Bernard Kay (Inspector Crossland)
Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs)
Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Brigit Paul (announcer)
Episode 3
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
George Selway (George Meadows)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Bernard Kay (Inspector Crossland)
Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs)
Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Barry Wilsher (Heslington)
Episode 4
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins)
Madalena Nicol (Nurse Pinto)
Bernard Kay (Inspector Crossland)
Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs)
Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Brigit Paul (announcer)
Barry Wilsher (Heslington)
Michael Ladkin (RAF pilot)
Episode 5
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
George Selway (George Meadows)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins)
Madalena Nicol (Nurse Pinto)
Bernard Kay (Inspector Crossland)
Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs)
Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Barry Wilsher (Heslington)
Episode 6
Patrick Troughton (Dr Who)
Anneke Wills (Polly)
Michael Craze (Ben)
Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon)
Colin Gordon (Commandant)
Wanda Ventham (Jean Rock)
Victor Windling (Spencer)
Donald Pickering (Captain Blade)
Christopher Tranchell (Jenkins)
Madalena Nicol (Nurse Pinto)
Bernard Kay (Inspector Crossland)
Pauline Collins (Samantha Briggs)
Gilly Fraser (Ann Davidson)
Barry Wilsher (Heslington)
Leonard Trolley (Superintendant Reynolds)
Uncredited
Robin Dawson, Barry Dupre, Pat Lecleve, Ron Pearce [chameleons]
Roy Curtis, Roger Jacombs, Vic Taylor [ATC technicians]
Kedd Fenton, Crawford Lyle, Taggart Rushton, Geoffrey Witherick [policemen]
Peter Roy [airport police sergeant]
Robin Dawson, Peter Blair Stewart [airport policemen]
Elizabeth Smith [double for Nurse Pinto]
Terence Denville [double for Blade]
Robin Burns, Charles Erskin [workmen]
John Evans, Ann Gabriel, Tony Lang, Steve Pokol, Audrey Searl, Audrey Stewart [airport personnel in plane]
Ann Barber, Michelle Barry, Nigel Bernard, Mike Briton, Joy Burnett, Penelope Daiton, John Dickinson, Sandy Duke, Gloria Forster, Maria Hauffner, Pearl Hawkes, Pamela Hinton, James Holbrook, Richard Kitteridge, Joanna Lawrence, Gary Leaman, Tony Mead, Jean Myers, Barry Noble, Lisa Noble, Alan Norburn, Ralph Rankinson, Joanna Robins, David Seaforth, Don Simons, Tina Simons, Marjorie Summerville, Donald Sinclair, Basil Tang, Denise Testar, Graham Tonbridge, Valerie Vyner, George Wilder [passengers]
Production Notes
The Faceless Ones came about as a result of a meeting between two writers who had been trying, without success, to write for the series for some time. Malcolm Hulke, who would go onto great success with Doctor Who, writing for both the series and the spin-off Target novelisations, had been approached by Sidney Newman as early as 1963 to write something for the first series. Newman had already worked with Hulke on ITV before he took over as the BBC’s Head of Drama, commissioning him and Eric Paice to write the children’s science fiction serials Target Luna (1960), Pathfinders in Space (1960), Pathfinders to Mars (1960-1961) and Pathfinders to Venus (1961). Hulke had also contributed episodes to The Avengers (1961-1969), four of which he co-wrote with another future Doctor Who regular, Terrance Dicks, and had co-written the theatrical films Life in Danger (1959) and The Man in the Back Seat (1961). Hulke’s first story idea for Doctor Who, The Hidden Planet (it was replaced by Terry Nation’s The Keys of Marinus), was deemed unusable, as was a subsequent submission, Britain 408 AD.
Meanwhile, writer David Ellis had been toiling away on episodic British television since the early 1960s, contributing to police dramas like Dixon of Dock Green (1955-1976) and Z-Cars (1962-1978) as well as writing detective thrillers for BBC Radio. He’d also tried several times to pitch ideas to the Doctor Who production office but The Clock and The Ocean Liner had both been rejected. In early 1966 the two writers met and decided that working together they might have a bit more luck. They were wrong as their first submission, The People Who Couldn’t Remember also failed to find favour with producer Innes Lloyd.
But they persisted and submitted an idea for a new story, The Big Store, about a London department store being used as a bridgehead for an invasion by faceless aliens. This idea appealed to Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis and the pair were commissioned to write a set of scripts for what would become the eighth and penultimate story of the programme’s fourth series, the first to feature Patrick Troughton as The Doctor.
But once they started writing, they encountered a number of issues handed down by the production team that needed to be ironed out. First, Lloyd had decided that the four episodes per story format wasn’t working and that all new stories should be six episodes in length. And then there was the not inconsiderable issue of Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills) who Lloyd and Davis believed were no longer working as companions and were due to be written out. Facing these obstacles, along with Lloyd’s suggestion that the story might work better at an airport, Hulke and Davis decided to abandon The Big Store and start again, keeping the idea of faceless aliens and fashioning a whole new script called The Chameleons.
Wills and Craze were contracted until the second episode of the next serial, The Evil of the Daleks, but Hulke and Davis were asked to write Ben and Polly out of the last four episodes of The Chameleons and the last episode of the story marked the final brief appearance for the characters (the actors were still paid for the additional episodes in which they didn’t appear). Hulke and Davis were asked to include a new female character in their scripts with a view to her becoming the new companion alongside the recently arrived Jamie McCrimmon. (Frazer Hines) and they came up with a character originally named Mary Dawson but later rechristened Cleopatra ‘Cleo’ Briggs and eventually Samantha Briggs. Unfortunately the role was offered to Pauline Collins who had no interest in playing a recurring role in the series so Samantha never did join the TARDIS crew – David Whitaker, writer of The Evil of the Daleks came up with Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) instead.
Gatwick Airport was secured as a location for the story which soon became known under its more familiar title of The Faceless Ones and Gerry Mills (who had been a production assistant on The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve in 1966) was hired as the director, taking the serial before the cameras on 10 March 1967 at Gatwick before retiring to Lime Grove Studio D on 1 April. In the meantime, effects sequences were shot at Ealing Television Film Studios on the on the 15 and 16 March. The aliens’ space station had been built by Shawcraft, the regular supplier of Doctor Who’s specialist props at the time, but the relationship between the company and the BBC had been growing increasingly fractious in recent months, especially after the Macra prop for The Macra Terror had proved so costly and yet so unconvincing. Things came to a head during the Ealing shot when their models for the aliens craft suffered technical problems and the satellite model was damaged when the wire being used to support it snapped. Costly reshoots had to take place on 11 April and it marked the end of Shawcraft’s relationship with the Doctor Who production office. Elsewhere production went smoothly enough, despite Mill’s decision to shoot several scenes out of sequence, a practice new to the production team.
As production continued, Innes Lloyd made it known that he was planning to move on from Doctor Who. Science fiction had never really been his forte and he felt that he’d gone as far as he could with the programme and wanted to move on to pastures new. Gerry Davis was the BBC’s first – and logical – choice to replace him but Davis too had decided that the time was right for him to move on. Instead the BBC turned their attentions to Peter Bryant who had been assisting Davis and he was made associate producer on The Faceless Ones. He would take over as script editor part way from series five, before being promoted to producer on The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1967. He stayed with the show until 1960 when, after casting Jon Pertwee as Troughton’s replacement, he moved on to produce Paul Temple.
The Faceless Ones was broadcast between 8 April and 13 May, starting with 5.50 million viewers but picking up viewers as it went, finishing with 8 million. Episode two introduced a slightly modified version of the theme tune from Delia Derbyshire – uncredited as ever – which would stay in service until the end of Fury from the Deep the following year. Further refinements were added over the years though this version was largely the version we would hear until the end of The Horns of Nimon in 1980 after which a new arrangement by Peter Howell took over.
As was common with the Patrick Troughton era, many episodes of The Faceless Ones were wiped so that the tapes could be reused. Only episodes 1 and 3 have survived though around 30 seconds are missing from the latter due to print damage. Off air recordings of the soundtrack were made by fans several reconstructions were attempted using available footage and John Cura’s ‘tele-snaps’, still images taken a regular intervals as the programme was broadcast so that directors and actors could keep a permanent record of their work. The BBC released an audio of the soundtrack on CD in February 2002, the surviving episodes were included on the The Reign of Terror VHS boxset and as part of the Lost in Time DVD set and a newly animated version of the story was released on blu-ray in March 2020.
Alternative Titles
The Chameleons – working title
References
Books
- Doctor Who Program Guide 25th Anniverary Edition by James C. Armstrong Jr, Michael L. Brown p.21 – credits, episode list
- Doctor Who: The Handbook: The Second Doctor by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker pp.75-86- credits, synopsis, review
- Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker pp.121-124 – credits, synopsis, review
Other Sources
- BFI Southbank Guide February 2020 p.36 – illustrated listing
