Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones review – a murderous Who-dunnit comes alive

The Tardis has landed on the runway at Gatwick airport, and young people are going missing after flying to party destinations across Europe during the 1960s boom for package tourism. Such is the premise of The Faceless Ones, a mostly missing Doctor Who adventure from 1967 that has been re-made as an animation for DVD/Blu-Ray release this month by BBC Studios.

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), Polly (Anneke Wills), Ben (Michael Craze) and Jamie (Frazer Hines) are soon thrown into a murder mystery and missing persons investigation, with the odd glimpse of an alien and some sci-fi gadgets thrown into it. It’s an interesting attempt by the producers to format Doctor Who into something more procedural than the usual zipping around alien planets.

As is the case with the BBC’s animated Doctor Who recreations, budget constraints mean it is not a Pixar-level production, but it more than adequately puts the flesh on the bones of one of the stories we can only otherwise mostly hear. While the pictures are lost, the audio to all 97 Doctor Who episodes that are missing survive thanks to dedicated fans recording them off the TV during their original transmission.

Ironically for a tale called The Faceless Ones, most of the guest cast in this story are an interchangeable set of authoritarian figures or alien stooges. Only Pauline Collins really has a punch-out role as a determined 60s scouser on the trail of her missing brother.

While the pace picks up towards the end of the story as we learn more and more about the true nature of Chameleon Tours and just what is happening to the people leaving on their flights, the story drags a little, and there is plenty of repetitive searching for clues inside the airport, or hanging around waiting for things to happen.

None of the faults with The Faceless Ones lie with the people who have produced the animation – it just isn’t the greatest source material. Unlike, say, The Power of the Daleks, the story isn’t gripping enough to warrant nearly three hours of watching unless you are heavily invested in the era. And it certainly isn’t a great jumping on point if you are unfamiliar with 60s Doctor Who.

The animation team must have considered that they could have assembled a much more watchable 60-minute telemovie version of the tale with judicious cutting of the surviving audio recording. But, clearly, the people most likely to want to purchase an animated recreation of a 1960s Doctor Who story are also the people most likely to want a recreation of every single second of a 1960s Doctor Who story. Even the dull bits.

Where the animation team have excelled is in recreating the black-and-white set design as a cartoon in colour HD. There is beautiful attention to detail in the environments, and an exquisite set of easter eggs hidden on noticeboards and newspaper adverts that will delight fans. They have even managed to squeeze in a pleasing reference to the latest series of the show.

It is always lovely to have more Troughton to watch as the Doctor, and especially with Wills and Craze as Polly and Ben appearing in a story – even if they are absent for much of it. So much of their time in the Tardis is likewise missing from the archives. If the BBC are going to remake all of the lost Doctor Who stories, then it means doing some of the lacklustre ones too, even while there are tantalising Dalek and Cybermen stories waiting to be reanimated. But ultimately The Faceless Ones feels like a release for completists and diehards only. Beautifully done, very welcome, but not essential.

Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones animation is available on DVD and Blu-Ray