"The Faceless Ones" Episode 5

Doctor Who
Airdate: May 6, 1967
Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines
Written by David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke
Produced by Innes Lloyd
Directed by Gerry Mill

As the airplane docks with the satellite, Jamie emerges from the restroom to discover that all of his fellow passengers have been miniaturized. He evades capture for a while, but gets tripped up by DI Crossland, who has been copied by the aliens' leader, the Director. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Doctor confronts Meadows with the armbands, who promptly spills the beans. Quite a few members of airport staff, and all of the Chameleon employees, are formless aliens who require a link to their human originals in order to survive. The originals are hidden somewhere in the airport, but he doesn't know where. The Doctor directs the Commandant to find the originals, which they can use to threaten the Chameleons¹, while he and the original Nurse Pinto pretend to be Chameleons and board the last flight up to the satellite. But Captain Blade is not fooled by their deception, and once aboard the satellite, they are quickly captured by the Chameleons.

We've talked from time to time about how "Doctor Who" takes a very investigational approach to its stories. At the beginning of each story, the Doctor and his friends stumble upon some indication that something strange is going on. Over the course of the story, the heroes discover the full extent of what is going on, and then take a position to influence the outcome in some way. The previous story is a good example. The first three episodes of "The Macra Terror" are all about our heroes discovering that this seemingly idyllic colony is actually being controlled by the Macra, and the last episode is all about the Doctor defeating them.

This approach is so simple, so basic, and so common that we hardly ever even notice it. But the length of "Doctor Who" stories, and the way they are seen today versus how they were seen at the time, make it worth considering. It isn't until this episode that we finally know what's really going on here. And this episode aired nearly a month after Episode 1. For a month, the "Doctor Who" audience in 1967 was being given little clues, one week at a time, building up to this revelation. If you happen to watch any current television shows that air once-a-week, think about what happened on your favorite show four weeks ago. It seems almost like the distant past, doesn't it?

Of course, we experience "Doctor Who" much differently today. Typically, "Doctor Who" fans watch an entire story in one go, unless it's especially long, and then we moan about how much padding there is. But if you take it a week at a time, you discover an altogether different problem. Stretching the story out over all this time ends up putting tremendous pressure on the reveal. For all this build up, there had better be something good at the bottom of it. What this episode gives us is the idea that the Chameleons lost their identities in some sort of terrible explosion, which makes very little sense. That's a bit disappointing, really.

¹ Yes, they're called "Chameleons". It's not clear if that's their real name, or if that's just what everyone calls them because it's convenient. If it is their real name, you have to wonder if that's what they were called even before they lost their identities and had to start copying other beings. Even if it isn't their real name, it's a bit too cute that they called their front "Chameleon Tours". I mean, if the Daleks had been behind this, do you think they would have operated an outfit called "Dalek Budget Holidays"?