Doctor Who/Recap/S4/E08 The Faceless Ones

"It's a flying beastie!"

- Jamie meets his first aeroplane

The Doctor contrives to land the TARDIS in the middle of a runway at Gatwick Airport, narrowly missing being flattened by an incoming airliner. As the travellers scatter to avoid being arrested, Polly witnesses a murder in a hangar and is then kidnapped by the murderer, a representative of "Chameleon Tours", while Ben vanishes mysteriously. The Doctor and Jamie try unsuccessfully to convince the authorities of foul play, before discovering that a number of young people have disappeared on Chameleon Tours holidays.

It turns out an alien race called the Chameleons have lost their own faces and identities due to an accident on their home planet and have been kidnapping the young people to appropriate theirs. The Doctor helps them to find another solution to their problem in exchange for releasing the human hostages.

Ben and Polly discover that they have returned to Earth on the very day they disappeared, and decide to stay behind while the Doctor gets ready to depart with Jamie: but hold on - where's the TARDIS?

Episodes 1 and 3 can be watched here.

Tropes

 * The Blank
 * Bound and Gagged: Samantha in Episode 5.
 * Doppelganger: The Chameleons' entire modus operandi.
 * Freeze Ray: The Chameleons use one that looks conveniently like a fancy ballpoint pen.
 * Grand Theft Me: What the Chameleons are up to.
 * He Knows Too Much: Why Gascoigne was murdered and Crossland
 * Imposter Forgot One Detail
 * Meaningful Name
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Captain Blade.
 * Newspaper-Thin Disguise: The Doctor and Jamie, to avoid pursuit. (Then the Doctor notices a Clue in the newspaper he's hiding behind, and the plot continues.)
 * Nice Hat: Samantha.
 * Not Quite Dead:
 * Not What It Looks Like
 * Overreacting Airport Security: Inverted, since this was well before the days of metal detectors and terror alerts. If anything, the airport police are a bit too lax, since they can't even catch the Doctor and Co. when the TARDIS materializes in the middle of Gatwick's only runway.
 * Plucky Girl: Samantha
 * Put on a Bus: Ben and Polly are both abducted early in the story because Anneke Wills and Michael Craze's contracts only covered the first two episodes of the story. A pre-filmed departure scene allowed them to return for a quick goodbye at the end of the last episode.
 * Rearrange the Song: The theme music's "spangles" debut in Part 2.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Gatwick's Commandant thinks the Doctor is nuts at first, but a demonstration by the Doctor featuring one of the Chameleon's freezing pens, and an appeal from Inspector Crossland convince him to cooperate. As the facts bear the Doctor out over the course of the story, the Commandant becomes more and more helpful.
 * You Look Familiar: Inspector Crossland (Bernard Kay) looks a lot like both Saladin and a Dalek-fighting resistance man.