Introducing The Faceless Ones…

Colin Baker once said that Doctor Who was about “playing cowboys and Indians.” Growing up with three brothers, I can testify that that was very much what it was for us. We’d hide behind makeshift wooden forts in our backyard, shooting not just plastic rifles but pretend Dalek guns. We’d hold our fingers together in the shape of “the black triangle” from The Five Doctors and chase one another until one of us was winded. We’d act out the comic strips in our bedrooms, in front of tape recorders, for our mum. We’d hollow out polystyrene spaceships and march the Dapol Cybermen and Tetraps up and down the ramps. Doctor Who was the door for certainly my imagination. My brothers were never quite as enamoured but willingly played along in the spirit of it all. Jim, the closest brother in age, will still assert that The Tomb of the Cybermen is the best Doctor Who story of all time, and if that isn’t an example of a load of adults playing in some tunnels, I don’t know what is.

There was one caveat when I was young in our Doctor Who play. I was always the Doctor. I can’t ever remember one of my younger brothers being the Doctor. Selfishly, it was always me. I’ve always done the voices of the Doctors. I’ve always loved taking them off and using their respective patters and I know my brothers and friends enjoy it “when the voices come out.” 

In the spirit of play, therefore, and finding we all have more time than usual on our hands (ironic for a Time Lord), please enjoy these videos which I’ll couch under the umbrella term Introducing The Faceless Ones… It’s a short series of some of the Doctors - in no particular order - reacting to the latest, beautiful steelbook release. More to come!

JH

The Faceless Ones

When The Faceless Ones was announced as the next exciting animation project from BBC Studios, a secret little bit of me thought, “Oh no, not that one?” It’s a show that has never been hailed as a classic. It’s not even much talked about. Indeed, its matters of interest to the roving fan are usually summed up in one sentence: It’s the one at Gatwick Airport where Ben and Polly leave cackhandedly. It’s just possible that an early appearance from Pauline Collins could liven up this tale’s reputation and sense of invitation but even then, discussion usually reverts to talk of her now sadly absent millinery stylings. There’s a paucity of publicity photos related to the story and the aliens are one of the show’s least visible, least celebrated examples. Was this a fair summation of the merits of The Faceless Ones? A rightly forgotten, average 60s tale not even visibly promoted by its makers at the time? Or was the animation set to suddenly reveal a hitherto unnoticed classic? The answer, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between.

The first thing most obviously noticeable about The Faceless Ones is the insane pace of the first ten minutes. It makes no bones about setting up what will be the status quo for the next four episodes. Polly is captured, the Commandant established, the Chameleon Tours boys are definitely wrong ‘uns. There’s an escape-from-a-landing-plane, a police chase, a very quick murder, a kidnapping and some verbal-sparring all in the first third of the episode. There’s a looming sense of dread-mystery hanging over this almost-noir suspense thriller of a first episode. Watching the Chameleon Tours men escort their bandaged patient through Departures is the stuff of classic film and puts one in mind of The Invisible Man. The final shot of the episode and the alien, its back to us, is a true spine-tingler and that moment, along with the eerily beautiful climax of Episode Four mark the story’s pinnacles.

However, once the status quo is established, its writers David Ellis and the usually reliable Malcolm Hulke, don’t really know what to do with it. There are repetitive scenes in the bland sets which really start to test the patience. When in Episode Three, the irritating Commandant asks yet again for the Doctor’s passport, there’s a definite feeling of treading water and we ache for the story to move into second gear. The self-imposed obstructions, such as the dratted passport business or Samantha Briggs being essentially put on hold by everyone she speaks to, hinder the narrative progress and there’s a feeling that very little of value is being learned in the time available. The mysteries are not enough to sustain themselves and their answers – when they come - are fairly facile. The Chameleons believe themselves to be the cleverest species in the universe, but they are easily taken in by the Doctor’s tricks and haven’t considered that a car park full of comatose youngsters might attract attention. They bicker like children and have formed petty cliques amongst themselves. They hardly behave in the most intelligent manner. But then again, neither do the relatives of any of the 50,000 missing passengers, excepting Samantha.

The story does pick up when we reach the Chameleon spaceship but even then, the irritating ambient sound, like a wet finger on a wine glass, evaporates any tension that might be had aboard the celestial vessel. Take the Episode Five cliffhanger: finally, the Doctor is face-to-faceless with his aggressors and… it’s all just so irredeemably flat. Donald Pickering delivers a disengaged vocal performance (presumably predicting that one day he’d have a cartoon face with as much expression to match), alongside another clearly uninspired Bernard Kay, for some reason equating Scotland Yard with a rubbish Scots accent, which he never loses even as the Chameleon Director, despite the fact that Jamie loses his rubbish Scots accent. The overthrow of the Chameleons however is in fact an uncharacteristically mature engagement with the alien menace for Doctor Who, putting intelligence and care at the centre of the winning formula. Lots happens in Episode Six, meaning that the otherwise slow-burner is bookended by two fast-paced instalments which work far better than the tepid remainder.

What The Faceless Ones does do particularly well is make the Doctor the star of the show. This is perhaps the first story to feature Patrick Troughton as we remember him nowadays, butting heads with officials, scheming whilst playing the clown and showing a certainty of tone, tightrope walking his mercurial balance between humour and tension. He is, in short, magnificent here and acts his co-stars into a corner. The only person to come out of this with as much dignity intact is Wanda Ventham. It’s certainly not the unceremoniously dumped Ben and Polly, who do at least enjoy a touching farewell which ends the story on a high note.

The animation itself is perhaps not quite as immediately impressive as The Macra Terror last year but it has far less scope to work with and a more difficult job. Unlike Macra with its alien colony interiors, outdoor terrain and gloomy mineshafts, this story’s sets are simple, sparse and dull – a series of grey box rooms. We also spend lots of time in each of them and it’s to the animators’ credits that they manage to avoid the pictures feeling as repetitive as the dialogue. Character models are strong (and we have a far better Polly!) although if I have a slight niggle it’s that the haircuts look rather like hats, wobbling atop the jaunty heads. Frankly though, this level of animation was far beyond my imagination even five years ago. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable. I can’t quite believe I have four ways to watch The Faceless Ones, a story perhaps less deserving than most to have enjoyed the treatment. Now, I did notice a Leatherman van in Episode One. Is there just a chance that this animation crew have been prepping The Evil of the Daleks too? Now, that might elicit a rather different response on announcement: “Oh yes, it’s that one!”

For now though, I’ve got three more ways to watch The Faceless Ones and even though it might be a rough diamond, there are still many elements to enjoy, not least the faultless Patrick Troughton. Dare we imagine that one day, perhaps soon, we’ll be able to watch, nay marathon, the whole of his era? We can hope!

6/10

JH

The Timeless Children

“It is solid enough but by far the least interesting of all the series finales since the show returned and the most derivative.” That’s what I wrote of Chris Chibnall’s previous finale, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. Finales are notoriously disappointing. Traditionally the grand set up of the penultimate episode is let down by a damp squib of an ending. The only finales which truly work in my view are The Parting of the Ways, The Big Bang and Death in Heaven. The remainder seem either overwrought, overwritten or strangely languorous and talky. After all the action of the build-up, we’re left with a conversation and however human that is, it can’t help but feel like deflation. That’s true to a degree of The Timeless Children which spends an awful lot of time in a room outside the Panopticon with a physically immovable Doctor meaning that in terms of geography, the story literally can’t go anywhere except the realms of the metaphysical. However, I’m also surprised and delighted that those three outstanding finales mentioned above now have a fourth stablemate because, perhaps against all the odds, Chris Chibnall has only gone and bloody done it.

The Timeless Children is a strange story. I wonder if it is a story that actually needed telling. The moral is essentially, as the Ruth Doctor tells us: whatever’s happened in the past, it doesn’t matter. So why bother exploring it at all? “Everything you think you know is a lie,” the Master tells the Doctor but we the viewers don’t actually know anything to begin with. We don’t know if the Doctor ever knew her parents. We don’t know where she came from in the first place. To re-write a history we know nothing about seems like a bit of a pointless task and surely a hiding to nowhere? But what we get here is mesmerising and robust. It is powerful and interesting. It is in the Doctor’s confusion and disconcertion where the drama lies. The Master’s narration over the beautiful images of early Gallifrey is pleasingly mythic and seeing the Capitol in crumbling disrepair feels iconic. I’m not sure how much I like the idea of the Doctor being a special child fallen from the stars (too Superman?); I prefer the idea of the bored student among many who did a brave thing and ran away one day. Cleverly though, Chibnall makes sure that both avenues of possibility are still open and as bold as his re-writing of canon is, he actually plays everything safe. There are no huge revelations, no jaw-dropping surprises. Things play out in measured, thoughtful movements and peak with that Brain of Morbius montage letting us know that everything has always been OK. That’s the real punch-the-air moment: that nothing was wrong with canon in the first place, that everything fits together, and as if to prove it, we get a glorious, reeling rendition of the theme tune to bring this whole incredible history and universe together.

There is another cleverness about this story and indeed this series and it’s perhaps a delicate issue. Since the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, the obvious questions are very quickly asked: If we’re going down that route, why has the Doctor never been black? Why has the Doctor never been disabled? Why does the Doctor not represent me personally? How many degrees of self are there in the world for the Doctor to represent? And that’s the danger of identity politics. Chris Chibnall neatly assures us that in fact, the Doctor has already been all those things and can be any of those things. We don’t need to measure his or her identity any more by virtue of their sex or race or age. If anything, The Timeless Child broadens out the possibilities still further by making all those distinctions irrelevant. Having inhabited all those roles, why should the Doctor even notice anymore? And perhaps that is the over-riding message here: The Doctor, wherever they may be from, whichever body they inhabit, can be anything. And so can we all. The past doesn’t matter; the future is more important. And in The Timeless Child, Jodie Whittaker finally, finally convinces that she has the chutzpah to take on this part. For once, she convinces throughout. She is real; tangibly the Doctor. She is never better than when playing the victim and here, she is the centre of a very personal persecution throughout. Desperate, confused and scared, this episode plays to Jodie Whittaker’s real talents and she brings, ironically, her felt humanity to the part.

These last three episodes have been as grand, enjoyable and bold as Russell T Davies’ Utopia/ The Sound of Drums/ Last of the Time Lords or Steven Moffat’s Face the Raven / Heaven Sent / Hell Bent. They are the respective writers’ magnum opuses, Doctor Who in long form with an authorial vision at the centres. Chris Chibnall’s Who represented by this three-part finale is linear, exciting and personal. If I was unconvinced before about what Chris Chibnall had to bring to the table (and I’m still not sure I can hear his voice across his work), then I’m looking forward to what comes next. Because even amongst all the often nail-biting heroic posturing and sometimes po-faced mythologising of the show, there’s still room for those completely silly Cyber Lords. That’s the heart of the show, right there: the birth of the universe, bodily regeneration, Irish dreamscapes and camp robots in headdresses. Yeah, Chibnall understands what presses our fan buttons alright.

8/10

JH