The Faceless Ones

“We neither of us have passports !”

Les scénaristes tentent ici un récit d’invasion subtil, mais pourtant assez vertigineux dans ses perspectives.  

L’aéroport y est autant le reflet des angoisses d’une Angleterre de moins en moins isolée qu’une porte sur un autre monde. Mais il y a aussi du coup une vraie ambiguïté dans toute la narration. 

C’est une autre histoire sans vrai monstre, mais où des êtres seulement perdus affrontent un monde qui n’a peut être plus autant de sens. 

Et en plus c’est quand même assez uncanny.

Watching this recently made me appreciate it a lot more and Time-Flight a little less.  For the Faceless Ones, this was a very creative setting for a Doctor Who story.  It's full of great moments of dark atmosphere and I enjoyed some of the character work of the terminal staff as they grapple with the increasingly disturbing situation around them.  This is not however, a great story for Ben and Polly's exit.  Neither character really shines much and Jamie in comparison already feels much more clearly at home with the adventuring.  Jamie's got some fun moments in this one and definitely helps make this story a lot better than it might look on paper.

I remember reading an excellent article in DWM about Malcolm Hulke, it is clear that his real life experiences impacted the writing of this story. It's drenched in superstition, hidden motives and spies, fantastic stuff.

From the moment our heroes materialise on Gatwick runway in the path of an oncoming plane, this story sets itself out as a lot of fun. Having spent my first 18 years in Crawley, the fact that this episode was that it was all filmed and set so close to home was marvellous for me.

Jamie being given a love interest was the first hints of romance we have had since Susan in Dalek Invasion of Earth. Samantha Briggs, the Liverpudlian girl is a great character in and of herself, she gives a wider scope to the story and sells the idea that teenagers from across the country are going missing - plus it's nice to have two characters with ordinary accents talking in classic who!

Lots of great ideas here, from the falsified passports to disfigured aliens - it feels like Doctor Who has really succeeded with re-inventing itself with this Doctor, yet somehow staying very much the same show.

The most lasting consequence of this story is the departure of Ben and Polly, who have been a fantastic team. Ben was a complete departure from Ian and Steven who were made in similar heroic, stoic moulds. A cockney with a cheeky attitude worked perfectly alongside Jamie, who is less forthright and confident. Polly is really hip, the moment she was first onscreen it was difficult to remember Dodo was even in that story. Its a crying shame that she wasn't present throughout the whole of her final story. Having said all this, whilst they were brilliant companions, everything I love about them was there to be seen in The War Machines, after that there were more there to support the fantastic new Doctor. It would have been nice to see these two develop further in their own right. Perhaps I would rate them higher if their entire time wasn't so cruelly missing.

Another great story - can't wait to see what happens next!

I do love this story but there’s so many things wrong with it BUT I STILL LOVE IT I just would have swapped Ben and Jamie’s role in this story around make it Bens time to shine but due to contracts I understand why not

I really liked this story!!! It's about shapeshifters who run an airline and are slowly replacing the human staff at an airport; there was a real tenseness with how the enemies can look like anyone, and the story kept up a real sense of mystery throughout most of its runtime as we wondered who was who and what the shapeshifters' ultimate plan was. And then in the last two episodes, Jamie hitches a ride on one of the planes, it goes into space, and things get really wacky.

I also really liked the airport setting. It's still a closed space, good for studio recording, but it allowed for a lot of diverse sets within the episodes that made the area really feel sprawling.

One thing about this story is that it's the final departure for Ben and Polly, two of the companions. Honestly I'm not too fussed; I was sad to see Steven and Dodo from season 3 go at the end of that season, but in Ben and Polly's case, I just can't seem to muster too much enthusiasm for them... they never really developed interesting personalities to me, and it probably doesn't help that most of their episodes are missing. I liked them, and they had some interesting moments... but they did feel underdeveloped compared to some other companions, and I'm kinda glad that Jamie can get a little more breathing room.