Production Code: KK
First Transmitted
1 - 08/04/1967 17:50
2 - 15/04/1967 17:50
3 - 22/04/1967 17:50
4 - 29/04/1967 17:50
5 - 06/05/1967 17:50
6 - 13/05/1967 17:50
Plot
The TARDIS arrives on Earth in 1966 - on a runway at Gatwick airport. Polly witnesses a murder in a nearby hangar and is then kidnapped by the perpetrator, Spencer of Chameleon Tours. Subsequently Ben also vanishes. The Doctor and Jamie are left to try to convince the sceptical airport Commandant that there has been foul play.
It transpires that a great many other young people have also vanished, all of them while on Chameleon Tours holidays. With the help of Samantha Briggs, the sister of one of the missing youths, the Doctor and Jamie uncover a plot by the alien Chameleons to kidnap human youngsters in order to take their identities - for the Chameleons have lost their own in an accident on their home planet.
The Doctor offers to help the Chameleons find another solution to their problem and the kidnapped humans are released.
Episode Endings
Spencer and Chameleon Tours' Captain Blade help a figure swathed in heavy clothing through the airport terminal buildings to the medical centre. There they sit the figure on a table and remove its hat and coat. Although seen only from behind, the features thus revealed appear distinctly alien.
Investigating the Chameleon Tours hangar, the Doctor becomes trapped in a secret room that starts rapidly to fill with freezing gas.
Detective Inspector Crossland, investigating the disappearances of Sam Briggs' brother Brian and of his own colleague Gascoigne (the man seen murdered by Polly), is kidnapped by Blade on a Chameleon Tours plane and taken to the flight deck, which is bedecked with alien equipment. He is horrified to see on a screen that all the passengers on board have apparently vanished.
The wings of the Chameleon Tours plane fold back and the craft becomes a rocket which shoots into space and docks with a large space station.
Having arrived on the Chameleon space station, the Doctor and Nurse Pinto are captured by Blade and a group of Chameleons.
The Doctor and Jamie say their farewells to Ben and Polly who have decided to stay on Earth as they have learned that this is the same day on which they first left to travel with the Doctor. When they have gone, the Doctor tells Jamie that the TARDIS is not where they left it.
Roots
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space.
The Avengers.
Goldfinger (attack by laser).
So Long at the Fair.
Danger Man's Colony 3.
Dialogue Triumphs
Jamie : [About an aeroplane] "It's a flying beastie!"
Blade : "We could eliminate a whole squadron of their toy planes, and they'd never get on to us. Their minds can't cope with an operation like this. Remember the teaching of our Director - the intelligence of Earth people is comparable only to that of animals on our planet."
Continuity
The Chameleons are a generation of aliens made faceless by an accidental [nuclear] explosion. They are a dying race, but they claim to be the most intelligent beings in the Universe (although they later admit that the Doctor's knowledge is even greater than their own). Their leader is known as the Director. The scientists on their home planet have developed a way for them to assume the form of kidnapped humans (it seems that it works best with young people). Almost uniquely, the Doctor does not 'punish' them for their abductions, but instead suggests a chemical solution to their problems.
Polly's double is named as Michelle Leuppi (not Lopez, and this seems to have nothing to do with her real name), from Zurich.
Location
Gatwick airport and the Chameleons' space station, [19 and] 20 July 1966 (the same day as Polly and Ben left Earth in The War Machines).
Trivia
Ben and Polly do not appear in Episodes 3 to 5, and appear only in a pre-filmed insert in Episode 6.
Frazer Hines speaks without his normal Scots burr in Episodes 5 and 6 as the Chameleon copy of Jamie.
Popular actress Pauline Collins appears in an early role as Sam Briggs.
Myth
The only surviving copy of Episode 1 is a print edited by the censors in Australia. (The copy of this episode in the BBC's archives is complete and unedited.)
The Faceless Ones was, by a strange coincidence, the first story to feature the Doctor's face in the opening title sequence. (It wasn't. The first story to feature the new title sequence was The Macra Terror.)
Technobabble
The Doctor uses Jamie's term 'ray gun' throughout.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
Ben Jackson - Michael Craze
Jamie - Frazer Hines
Polly - Anneke Wills
Ann Davidson - Gilly Fraser
Announcer - Brigit Paul
Blade - Donald Pickering
Commandant - Colin Gordon
Crossland - Bernard Kay
Heslington - Barry Wilsher
Inspector Gascoigne - Peter Whitaker
Jean Rock - Wanda Ventham
Jenkins - Christopher Tranchell
Meadows - George Selway
Nurse Pinto - Madalena Nicol
Policeman - James Appleby
R.A.F. Pilot - Michael Ladkin
Samantha Briggs - Pauline Collins
Spencer - Victor Windind
Supt. Reynolds - Leonard Trolley
Crew
Director - Gerry Mill
The Faceless Ones