The Faceless Ones episode 3 discussion:
R: <accent> Inspector Gascoyne was murdered with a ray gun.
A: In the airport!
H: I told you that you should remember his name.
E: That’s not the kind of name you forget. It’s just too awesome to forget.
P: So I’m amazed that the man who ran away, after having the freeze ray pointed to him, was more or less forgotten after returning to the control room.
E: They were probably more interested in the freeze ray.
H: I don’t think the Doctor’s forgotten about him.
R: And I don’t think the three planes that he was guiding in to land have forgotten about him. Or the crash victims families!
H: To be fair, he was doing with whatever he was doing when the Doctor tapped him on the shoulder. But that is a point. Did you like the moment when he was trying to attach the button, and he was reaching and missing, and reaching and missing. And finally he had to resort to the old accidentally bumped into you gag.
R: By the way, least effective murder button, ever. All it did to him was “ow, my back.”
SG: Maybe it would eventually kill him.
R: Through what, back spasms?
H: It appears that the button was actually really, really hot from Jamie’s reaction. But it’s almost as if these weird aliens aren’t used to killing people.
E: They’re much better at kidnapping them.
R: <silly accent> I am not from your country. Which of your eyes contains your brain?
P: <silly accent> We shall do experiments to find out how to kill them. Where’s the probe?
H: In all seriousness, captain Blade says that killing the guy was an accident. It’s almost as if he didn’t think the ray would kill Gascoyne, but since they’re not used to humans…
Sp: It’s the same way that they’re not used to building computer banks on earth. So they’re light enough so that when you push on them the whole wall gives way.
R: You’re not supposed to notice that.
H: Also, you have to remember it’s not like they could do multiple takes. They’re still a week ahead of transmission and filming everything in order. And given how great the sets actually look, it’s not surprising they have to cut some corners somewhere.
P: Yeah, they built this entire airport just for this show. In fact they’re still using it.
<stunned silence>
R: I thought the things between Jamie and Samantha were really good this week.
Sp: I missed the bit where inspector what’s his name of the yard..
H: Crossland.
Sp: gained the Doctor’s trust so quickly.
H: It kinda happened last week, sorta. The Commandant mentioned what the Doctor had been saying, and Crossland said “really?”
Sp: Crossland’s dial just seemed to spin immediately to “give this man whatever he needs, I trust him implicitly.
K: I think the Doctor has an unspoken power to get people to trust him.
Sp: To cloud men’s minds.
H: Also it’s an indication that Crossland was meant to see him as an intelligent man. A cue to the audience. So, final thoughts?
E: I enjoyed this episode, for one. I thought the banter between Jamie and Samantha pretty much made the whole episode for me. I thought it was really funny. And those guys were really good at kidnapping people. I have to give them credit for that.
P: Okay, so first of all, here the inspector is accusing the pilot of murder in the middle of the plane, with all of the passengers around…
R: Dude, those tickets were really cheap, okay!
P: And like, the pilot wanders off to the cockpit, the detective follows him, nobody panics, and the plane departs anyway.
R: Things have changed.
P: Things have changed a lot in the last 45 years! First of all, if your pilot looks even slightly inebriated you’d get off the plane. But he’s a killer? That’s okay.
R: Dude, it was the 60’s. All of those guys were completely sloshed and reeking of smoke.
P: Air traffic control highly ineffective. Their radar picture should have been fairly static and not everything moving all at once. If it had a 130 mile range, then that should have been 260 miles worth of picture, yet I saw things moving across the screen in just a few seconds.
K: And at 100 miles an hour…
P: It should have taken 2 hours to move across the screen. And they’re moving closer to the 200, but still. Okay the pilot in me with itchy skinned and full of legitimate questions. Okay, the freeze pen was really cool. It was good to see them pull the gun out used the the first scene and actually use it in the third scene. And it was so good that it was almost like the pictures were really moving. Oh wait, they were!
K: What was up with the fuzzy close ups?
H: I’m not sure, but I have a theory. In all seriousness, I’m wondering if there was an issue with the episode being returned with some spots degraded or some splices, and the restoration team restored it as best they could. But I’m not sure.
P: I don’t know the name of the movie, but I’ve seen this plot used again.
Sp: Scooby Doo?
R: Millennium.
P: Right. Also the Doctor has all the proof he needs in one blue box, but we don’t go there.
A: That would be too easy.
Sp: We don’t know where the blue box is.
P: You can’t block a freezing cold gas with just a handkerchief.
Sp: Galifreyan handkerchief.
R: If it’s that freezing cold, what you do is you put the handkerchief over it, and then you spit or breath heavily on it, so the handkerchief freezes and blocks the vent.
P: Okay, not to specific, but enough.
R: But I readily admit that’s a giant heap of baloney.
SG: So, one of the questions I had was that the Doctor in the beginning of the episode, notices there’s a camera and blocks it off. But in subsequent times does not. So you know you’re being monitored, but you don’t continue to be stealthy.
Sp: He doesn’t care that he’s being monitored. Including the time when he covered the camera. The only reason to cover the camera was to bring the guard out.
K: Clever.
H: In addition to that, the second time they go back to the hanger, he knows that Crossland is distracting everybody.
Sp: So, the stage direction for the aliens was actually unnerving. In a good way. Because the aliens seem to be looking, and speaking, directly to the audience, most of the time when they were plotting.
P: Do you think they could see the TV camera?
Sp: No, I put my coat over it.
H: I also liked the way they talked very oddly to each other.
Sp: Oh, I thought they were Welsh.
P: I thought they were French.
Sp: There was an excessive amount of smoking in this episode.
SG: I do love him walking about in the airport smoking. That’s changed.
P: Was he smoking on the airplane?
SG: No, the teenagers gave him dirty looks and he stopped and put the pipe back in his coat pocket.
H: “He,” by the way, is inspector Crossland.
SG: Oh, Historian, you and continuity.
Sp: Someone’s got to keep the timeline straight. The second doctor prances a lot. Lots of prancing and mincing.
H: I wouldn’t call that mincing.
SG: He also reminds me of Barnabas Collins.
Sp: I thought that too. Right at the beginning, when he had his collar up. And the messy bowl cut.
H: And yet, Barnabas’s first appearance on Dark Shadows wasn’t until after this episode aired, and in the United States.
Sp: Anyway. Prancing. Mincing. Lots of it.
MS: Can I say something?
K: I didn’t know you watched the episode.
MS: Yeah. I looked up. Lots of times from my DS.
H: Okay.
MS: And well, it was… it’s like one minute everybody’s packed on the plane. And then “see for yourself” and he cranks something. And the inspector goes <look> and nobody’s there. One minute they’re there, and the next they’re gone. I think the next episode the Inspector is going go like “Gasp! Are they doing magic!?”
H: So you liked the cliffhanger?
MS: whatever.
<laughter>
H: The next generation, ladies and gentlemen. The next generation.
E: That makes me feel old.
H: Welcome to it.
R: “He… is… far… above… the intelligence… of… normal… beings.”
H: See, that’s what I was talking about before about the aliens being aliens. I thought that was keen.
R: <Blank stare>
H: Okay. But that’s definitely what they were going for.
R: Ah, thank you for clarifying. I see “Manos the Hands of Fate” in a whole new light.
H: Well, you have to compare it to the rest of the episode.
R: There were places where that worked. That wasn’t one of them.
K: What happened to the hat?
H: Remember, they had to keep using the same photos. It’s possible that something happened to the hat in the last episode, and we just didn’t see it.
SG: Hat?
H: Sam’s hat. The big cake thing.
Sp: It’s holding their place at the line at the kiosk.
K: Transmat?
Sp: <silly accent> No, it’s like how David Copperfield made an entire building disappear by a slowly rotating platform.
K: Everything else I can think of has already been covered.
H: Well, I think it’s a unique cliffhanger. We never see one like this again, or have before. No one is exactly in danger, it’s just something weird that happened. It’s a strong third episode in a story that’s moving at a decent clip.
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