The Faceless Ones

The TARDIS arrives at Gatwick airport, creating a major stir on the runways and landing the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben right in the thick of trouble. Sought by the airport police, they separate to hide, and Polly witnesses a man being murdered with an alien weapon. Polly is soon abducted by the murderers, who are operating under the guise of Chameleon Tours; a discount airline offering inexpensive vacations to young people. Ben vanishes next, leaving the Doctor and Jamie to convince the airport staff that there are alien beings in their midst. The Chameleons are just what they sound like; creatures capable of assuming other forms in order to survive. In their raw form they are shapeless, barely humanoid, as a result of an accident on their home planet, and they have found a means to remodel their bodies into the shape of others. With the airline cover they have systematically abducted 50,000 young people and taken them to their orbiting space ship, intent on returning to their home planet with them and beginning the rebuilding of their race.

Creepy. It's very Invasion of the Bodysnatchers with and edge that only Doctor Who could add. Visually only episodes 1 and 3 exist out of 6, but it's enough to set the scene around Gatwick airport and show the fun location footage of the serial's opening minutes, and to convey the threat of the disguised Chameleons. Polly and Ben are gone for most of the story, and when they do finally return in episode 6, they're done, and they leave the Doctor. Perhaps it's the widening gulf between them and their friend that makes them want to leave, or maybe they're just not cut out for time travel after all and when the chance to leave comes up, they take it. The added perk for them is that the TARDIS has returned them to Earth the very same day they left, so Ben won't miss his ship and be court-martialled, and Polly can... well, she's out of a job with WOTAN having blown up in the Post Office Tower so it's back to the swinging Inferno Club to hang with Kitty and cruise other patrons. The whole adventure unfolds over the course of a day, so the War Machine crisis is over and normal British life has resumed. In episode 2 the Doctor and Jamie hide behind newspapers to avoid the airport police; wouldn't one of those periodicals have some kind of report on the events of the previous days? I personally love it when adventures come close to overlapping like this one does; at the time I suppose no-one was thinking along those lines but in future episodes when storylines come close to crossing (as with 1963's An Unearthly Child and 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks) the production team have fun with it, and drop a few visual references and continuity hints for the link back.

There is also the notion of continuity from one episode to the next. There are very few of the early adventures that end without leading directly into the next one. Each adventure ends with the title of the next one right after the credits, but almost all end with a few seconds of introductory material to get the next one started. The Faceless Ones is no exception, and the Doctor announces that the TARDIS has been stolen. With Jamie in tow he sets off to find it, but who would steal his ship?

NEXT EPISODE : THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS