I wrapped up my viewing of The Faceless Ones this morning, and it is easily my favorite Second Doctor story so far. Thankfully, Ben and Polly do get a proper send-off at the end of the story, unlike Dodo in The War Games. Granted, they both disappear for all of episodes three, four, and five and for all but the last few minutes of episode six, but at least they do get a final goodbye scene with a heartfelt farewell. 

Let's talk about that.

The Faceless Ones - Episodes 5 & 6

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

With Jamie now captured and copied in the Chameleon satellite, the Doctor is on his own to solve the mystery of the Chameleons. Soon enough he discovers that, in total, there are fifty thousand young people who have been kidnapped by Chameleon Tours. They have all been miniaturized and are being held on the satellite to take back to the Chameleon home world for copying. There is one last Chameleon flight scheduled for the season, upon which all 25 Earthbound agents will be taken up into orbit before leaving the earth permanently.

The Doctor bluffs his way onto that airplane, while on the ground the security staff is frantically searching for the 25 frozen humans that the Chameleons have hidden somewhere. Ultimately they are found stashed in various cars parked around the airport's long-term lot. The Doctor uses them as a bargaining chip in order to recover all of the missing humans, and in the end he promises to help the Chameleons solve their planetary crises as long as they choose some other method that does not involve murdering thousands of innocent people. There is quite a bit more drama than that, but that is the nuts and bolts of it.

In the end, Ben and Polly decide to stay behind in London -- particularly because it is the very day that they left with the Doctor back in The War Machines. This means, by the way, that the entire time that the Second Doctor is running around Gatwick searching for shape-changing aliens, the First Doctor is running around another part of London chasing down robot tanks and facing off with WOTAN. I'm just saying, it's a busy day in London for law enforcement.

Unfortunately for the Doctor and Jamie, the TARDIS has gone missing. The last shot of the episode is them walking off to go searching for it. Tragically, what they don't know yet is that they are about to wander into yet another Dalek story. Even worse, it's seven episodes long. That means that nearly one third of this fourth season consists of pepperpot Nazis. There truly is no God.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Second
Companion(s): Ben Jackson, Polly Wright, Jamie McCrimmon
Episode(s): The Faceless Ones - Episodes 5 & 6
Steps Walked: 6,883 today, 555,161 total
Distance Walked:  3.45 miles today, 263.66 miles total
Weight: 281.48 lbs (five day moving average), net change -25.82 lbs