Settings: Gatwick Airport (The Faceless Ones)

With The Faceless Ones, we return to present-day Earth, and the setting of a modern airport. Like everything else in season 4, most of the story is missing, although both the surviving and missing episodes have been animated for some time, making it readily available. It’s generally regarded as a middling episode, with some praising the mystery elements, and others finding it too long for its plot at six parts, as well as cutting out two of the three companions. But few people seem to actively dislike it, and an airport is, if nothing else, at least different from what we’ve seen so far.

(This series of posts will take a break after this, taking the companion departure, rather than the season finale, as a good place to do so. I’ll be back in a few months with Evil of the Daleks.) 

Where & When

The story is set on the 20th July 1966, with a minor plot point revolving around the fact that this was also the final day of the earlier serial The War Machines. The Earth-based sections are set entirely on the grounds of Gatwick Airport in London, although there is also a brief journey to near-Earth orbit.

Settings: The War Machines

The last serial of the third season is another one available to watch in its original form. Fan opinion tends to divide between ‘middling’ and ‘good’, which is a positive for the Hartnell era. It’s significant in being the first full-length story with a contemporary setting where the protagonists can interact with the people around them. Naturally, this makes for a different type of story than space opera sci-fi or most time-travel games. Moreover, it’s one where the focus is not on the setting, since that’s merely today’s world (or what was today’s world at the time of broadcast). Although this will become more common later, this is the only instance in the Hartnell era, so let’s see how that affects things.

Where & When

The date is specifically stated: the main story takes place between the 12th and 14th July 1966, with the brief final scene six days later, on the 20th. The action is almost entirely confined to the West End of central London, from Bloomsbury to Fitzrovia.