They land on the day of July 20th, 1966. Incidentally, this is also the day when WOTAN is taking over Earth with all his little war machines. Remember that one? William Hartnell meets Ben and Polly, and they join him on his travels. The Doctor is a busy fellow that day, and it's a good thing the two Doctors didn't meet, or there would be a rift in time and gigantic gargoyles -- keepers of the timeline -- would come and try to kill you.
So, this is a good a time as any to dump Ben and Polly. Ben doesn't have to be hung as a deserter, and Polly can go back to whatever she was doing. What was she doing? They're lucky they didn't die in some horrible catastrophe. They get dumped back into their own time. I agree that Jamie and the Doctor work well together and I'm willing to watch them some more. Except please stop wearing the kilt, ye Scottish rogue. I barely sniffled when Ben and Polly took off. I am definitely done with them. There wasn't really much that appealed to me about those two, but maybe it's because I'm too old and I don't appreciate the finer things in life.
It seems that an alien race's home planet has been destroyed, and they want to replace their species with human bodies. Superb! They are called the Chameleons. It seems strange that they would call themselves that, as the chameleon is a creature indigenous to Earth, so you would think they'd have a race name like the Uktaksababolis, or something similar. They're called chameleons because they disguise themselves in human form, so why would they call themselves chameleons? Wouldn't that be what other folks would call them? Why am I babbling about this?
The aliens use the promise of a fantastical trip to Europe to lure strapping young people onto their airplanes, and take them to their ship in space, freeze their bodies, miniaturize them, and send the airplane back for more. The Chameleons need precisely 50,000 human replacements -- no more no less -- so they've been working pretty hard at this for some time now. Logically they abduct young people, because they want their race to last as long as possible. If they stole all the people at William Hartnell's nursing home, they would barely last a day.
They miniaturize the human bodies! HAH! I wondered why that was, and my only theory is that when you steal 50,000 bodies on a ship, space is going to be a major issue. Apparently they need the humans to remain alive for the Chameleons to use their bodies, otherwise there's no reason to keep them tucked in dresser drawers. I do so love delving into Chameleon psyche.
Jamie does a lot of kissing in this episode. But he's not really into Samantha; he just wants her flight ticket. Wow! Way to pull off a Stephen! That's pretty crass of him. Apparently she's really into kilt-wearing boys from the 1700's and doesn't notice how strange he really is.
It's not too often when all the companions are incapacitated. All three of the companions end up in Narnia's wardrobes and it's up to the Doctor to rescue them. If I were the Doctor, I would have left them there. There are plenty of young girls to abduct in other parts of history. Ben gets himself captured right away, and the Doctor doesn't seem all that concerned. He mentions the need to find Polly, but he doesn't say anything like, "Oh, let's look for what's-his-name, too."
So the servant Chameleons were supposed to find a clever place on Earth to hide all the human bodies that they have stolen. This clever hiding place was a...parking lot...WHAT.
Incidentally this guy was also in The Keys of Marinus. Thanks for bringing that back into my memory bank.
The airplane flying in the sky to the space ship? Failure. It looked so unreal. They obviously had footage of real airplanes flying about, so why not just give up?
The ending is interesting, because the TARDIS has been stolen and now Jamie and the Doctor must go look for it.
Next time I jump on an airplane I am going to remember this episode.
Next Up: The Evil of the Daleks
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