19-03-2020, 22:49
Next up filling the unsightly gaps in the obsessively compulsively chronologically ordered Classic Series DVD shelves is 1967's "The Faceless Ones" with Patrick Troughton in the title role.
Is it any good ? It's an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" riff set in Gatwick airport.
As a story, it's miles better than the 1980s airplane based "Time Flight", but that isn't too difficult.
Like many of the Classic series 6 parters, it suffers from slow pace and repetitive scenes that don't really seem to advance the plot when watched in one sitting and not in weekly installments as originally intended.
There's a bit too much of the characters being chased, captured and then escaping again. Much of the "action" of the first couple of episodes feels like it is a cycle of them hiding around the (to modern eyes startlingly empty) airport from (not particularly observant?) policemen. This just seems to require closeting yourself in photobooths or just generally sitting around with a newspaper in front of your face waiting for kiosks to open or close etc. No immigration lock-downs in those days it seems. Not for white folks anyway.
But the story hits its stride around episode 3 when the Doctor stops avoiding the authorities and gets on with mixing it with the sinister face-changing aliens and their suspicious package holiday tours. And said aliens finally stop just skulking around airport hangers and get into their airplane-disguised-spaceship and start messing with fighter planes.
And there's a mildly surprising - for the era? - ending which for once doesn't involve blowing everything up but the Doctor brokering a truce in a manner one can imagine the Tennant or Smith incarnations doing.
Departing companions Ben & Polly don't get a look in, being pretty much written out in Episode 2 and only coming back for the final part of the 6th episode to say cheerio. (Slightly refreshing in these times where a companion's final story now contractually must be ALL about them ?)
And then in an unresolved cliffhanger a TARDIS-less Doctor and Jamie wander off in search of their missing craft.
Not even an end-of-credits caption "Next Week : The Evil Of The Daleks".
Who knows when that will see the light of day.
The animation is alright, they never quite seem to get Troughton or Hines really quite right, but some of the others like the Commandant, Captain Blade, and Pauline Collins are fairly good likenesses. It's commented upon by the animators that as a project for them it suffers a bit from just being a lot of men in suits to animate, even the aliens are mostly in disguise as humans so there are no Daleks or Cybermen to tangle with.
3 Discs to allow purists to choose between -
1. Black & white surviving episodes 1 & 3 plus black & white animated missing episodes; or option to play all 6 episodes as animation.
2.Colour animation of all episodes.
3. Black & white surviving episodes 1 & 3 plus Telesnap reconstructions of the missing episodes, with option of subtitled descriptions of missing action and/or narration.
Extras include shortish Making Of documentary, and some scraps of old bits of film snipped by Australian TV censors and stock footage film of planes used in the original episodes.
Commentaries with the usual suspects for most of the episodes, including over some (for the commentators unfinished) animated episodes, plus bits of archive audio of Hadoke interviewing behind the scenes boffins and deceased actors.
Next up ? Supposedly "Fury From The Deep" .
Despite an animated tease of a bit of Cybermen story "The Wheel In Space" on a previous DVD release this story doesn't seem to have a release scheduled yet.
Is it any good ? It's an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" riff set in Gatwick airport.
As a story, it's miles better than the 1980s airplane based "Time Flight", but that isn't too difficult.
Like many of the Classic series 6 parters, it suffers from slow pace and repetitive scenes that don't really seem to advance the plot when watched in one sitting and not in weekly installments as originally intended.
There's a bit too much of the characters being chased, captured and then escaping again. Much of the "action" of the first couple of episodes feels like it is a cycle of them hiding around the (to modern eyes startlingly empty) airport from (not particularly observant?) policemen. This just seems to require closeting yourself in photobooths or just generally sitting around with a newspaper in front of your face waiting for kiosks to open or close etc. No immigration lock-downs in those days it seems. Not for white folks anyway.
But the story hits its stride around episode 3 when the Doctor stops avoiding the authorities and gets on with mixing it with the sinister face-changing aliens and their suspicious package holiday tours. And said aliens finally stop just skulking around airport hangers and get into their airplane-disguised-spaceship and start messing with fighter planes.
And there's a mildly surprising - for the era? - ending which for once doesn't involve blowing everything up but the Doctor brokering a truce in a manner one can imagine the Tennant or Smith incarnations doing.
Departing companions Ben & Polly don't get a look in, being pretty much written out in Episode 2 and only coming back for the final part of the 6th episode to say cheerio. (Slightly refreshing in these times where a companion's final story now contractually must be ALL about them ?)
And then in an unresolved cliffhanger a TARDIS-less Doctor and Jamie wander off in search of their missing craft.
Not even an end-of-credits caption "Next Week : The Evil Of The Daleks".
Who knows when that will see the light of day.
The animation is alright, they never quite seem to get Troughton or Hines really quite right, but some of the others like the Commandant, Captain Blade, and Pauline Collins are fairly good likenesses. It's commented upon by the animators that as a project for them it suffers a bit from just being a lot of men in suits to animate, even the aliens are mostly in disguise as humans so there are no Daleks or Cybermen to tangle with.
3 Discs to allow purists to choose between -
1. Black & white surviving episodes 1 & 3 plus black & white animated missing episodes; or option to play all 6 episodes as animation.
2.Colour animation of all episodes.
3. Black & white surviving episodes 1 & 3 plus Telesnap reconstructions of the missing episodes, with option of subtitled descriptions of missing action and/or narration.
Extras include shortish Making Of documentary, and some scraps of old bits of film snipped by Australian TV censors and stock footage film of planes used in the original episodes.
Commentaries with the usual suspects for most of the episodes, including over some (for the commentators unfinished) animated episodes, plus bits of archive audio of Hadoke interviewing behind the scenes boffins and deceased actors.
Next up ? Supposedly "Fury From The Deep" .
Despite an animated tease of a bit of Cybermen story "The Wheel In Space" on a previous DVD release this story doesn't seem to have a release scheduled yet.
That actually made me stop buying the range. It sounds silly but completeness (at least as complete as it can practically be) had become 
That'll be the Tom Baker Season 14 Blu-ray Boxset due on 20 April 2020 ?