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Doctor Who - The Faceless Ones by Terrance Dicks Published: May 1987 Edition read: Target first, 1987Coolest Cover: Is it me, or did David McAllister only have one police box reference photo?Purple Prose: "The Doctor and the Commandant stood staring at each other, neither liking what he saw...‘A typical bureaucrat’, the Doctor was thinking. ‘Neat, fussy, precise and authoritarian. Quite unable to cope with anything outside his normal frame of reference." ‘Scruffy,’ thought the Commandant. ‘Excitable, anarchic, eccentric! Probably made the whole thing up as some sort of twisted joke’. (p.27) Crimes Against Literature: Not exactly a crime, but the Doctor uses the Sonic Screwdriver twice.Childhood Recollections: The condition of my well-thumbed copy tells me that I read this all the way through. It must have made an impact because I later bought the hardback from a small ad in Celestial Toyroom.Ramblings: In some ways it’s strange to reflect that ‘The Faceless Ones’ took so long to be adapted for Target, particularly given its position as the one outstanding story co-written by Malcolm Hulke and which Hulke left unadapted at his death. Then again, I suppose, even with the presence of the formless Chameleons, it’s not exactly a monster-heavy story and the original serial seems to have relied heavily on the supporting cast doubling up to play their human and Chameleonised roles. Having played most of its cards by the halfway mark, it’s also not difficult to imagine a certain amount of marking time taking place in the last couple of instalments, and so it’s good to be able to report that what Terrance Dicks delivers in this instance is an adaptation which concentrates on pace and adventure rather than being slavishly faithful. I think I’m right in saying that Dicks would probably only have had the first episode available to him as reference material when writing his novelisation, and he definitely makes the most of it- the first episode’s cliffhanger comes on page 36 of 140- to establish his characters and setting. In particular, the Commandant (the name is explained as a nickname given to him by his subordinates) comes across particularly well, as does the brassy and flirtatious Sam, although the mannerisms which Bernard Kay gave Crossland in the original story are missing (which seems to confirm my point about Dicks’s reference material). The rest of the story seems to have been subjected to a kind of streamlining which cuts out a lot of the running around and emphasises the plot, so that the action passes very quickly and never drags. There’s also a suitably unsettling atmosphere in the later sections of the book when the story starts to echo Invasion of the Body Snatchers, although having said that, the Chameleons’ plan is fairly small stuff even if the Doctor’s resolution is surprisingly pragmatic for the Second Doctor- would anybody really have been that worried if fifty thousand teenagers disappeared and were replaced by Chameleon duplicates? In fact, with its morally ambiguous ending and themes of loss of identity based around a budget airline, ‘The Faceless Ones’ is a surprisingly modern story in some ways. What we have, then, is another good Terrance Dicks effort which retains the essence of the original story, sets up the atmosphere and then condenses some of the later sequences so that we end up with a tightly-written adaptation which is an adventure first and foremost. It’s a sensitive adaptation too, which respects the themes and concerns of the original television episodes, but recognises that long sequences of location filming and action aren’t necessarily what’s needed to propel the story along, and the end result is a good entertaining adventure.
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