The Faceless Ones (Animated)

Released in the UK March 16th, 2020

The BBC has announced that “The Faceless Ones”the eighth serial in Doctor Who’s fourth season, Patrick Troughton’s first as the second Doctoris the next story from Doctor Who’s early history that will be restored with an animated remake, in the vein of releases for serials like “The Macra Terror,” “Power of the Daleks,” or the unmade Tom Baker story “Shada.” Coming out on Blu-ray and DVD next year, “The Faceless Ones” will be a complete animated recreation of all six episodes in the serial, utilizing off-screen recordings of the audio to create a “restored” re-imagining of the original broadcast.

First broadcast in the UK in April and May of 1967, “The Faceless Ones” saw the Doctor and his companions (Jamie, Ben, and Pollyit’s the final adventure for the latter two of those) face identity-thieving aliens known as the Chameleons in ‘60s London who are using an international travel agency as a front to kidnap and steal the identities of humans. Just two episodes of the original broadcast remain in the BBC’s archivesepisodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 were lost as part of the same junking process that saw over 100 episodes of Doctor Who’s earliest years destroyed or recorded over by the BBC to make way for storing more recent programming in the 1970s. Currently, 97 episodes from William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton’s run on Doctor Who remain lost to time.

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