The Face of Evil

Plot

The Doctor, travelling alone in the TARDIS, arrives on a jungle planet and encounters Leela, a savage from the local tribe, who denounces him as the Evil One of fable among her people. She has been exiled from her tribe, the Sevateem, for profaning their god Xoanon who is kept prisoner by the Evil One and his followers, the Tesh, beyond a black wall. He speaks to them through the tribe’s shaman, Neeva. The Doctor finds a sophisticated sonic disruptor, which creates the force field that keeps creatures from attacking the village. The Sevateem will launch an attack on the domain of the Tesh to free their god, led by the combative Andor who suspects Neeva of being a false prophet.

In Neeva’s holy tent, the Doctor inspects the ancient tribal relics, artifacts from an Earth survey expedition. He finds a transceiver used by Neeva to hear the commands of Xoanon. It speaks with the Doctor’s own voice, conveying exhilaration on hearing the Doctor that "At least we are here. At last I shall be free of us." The Doctor tells some of the tribe the Sevateem are the descendants of a “survey team” which left a Starfall Seven Earth colony ship.

The Doctor and Leela arrive at a clearing beyond where carved into a mountain nearby is an impression of the Doctor's face, who cannot recall why his face is depicted so. They notice a figure in a space suit in the “mouth” entrance and follow it through a projection of a wall. Beyond is a rocket, which the Doctor recalls as belonging to the Mordee Expedition, his memory of earlier events now returning. Xoanon has detected the Doctor nearby, and when he reaches the ship the god-creature is both ecstatic that "We are here" while also manically pledging that "We must destroy us." The Doctor and Leela meet three representatives of the Tesh, who serve and worship Xoanon. The Doctor deduces both Sevateem and Tesh are descendants of the same crew from the Mordee Expedition, with the Tesh (or technicians) involved in the same deadly eugenics exercise as the Sevateem (or survey team). The invisible creatures that attacked the Sevateem are part of the same deranged scheme: Xoanon is a computer, designed to think independently. The Doctor had once repaired Xoanon but forgot to wipe his personality print from the data core, leaving the computer with a split personality. The Doctor, speaking as Xoanon with the communicator, instructs Neeva to tell Calib, who is now tribal leader, to lead the Sevateem survivors through the face in the mountain. With Leela keeping guard and holding the Tesh at bay, the Doctor ventures into the computer room of the ship to confront Xoanon. When Xoanon refuses to shut itself down, it channels a vicious mental assault at the Doctor, causing him to collapse, while Xoanon booms: "Who am I?"

The Tesh come under attack from Calib, Tomas and the survivors of the Sevateem, who now reach the spaceship too. This diverts the Tesh while the Doctor and Leela return to the computer room, where Xoanon briefly takes control of Leela’s mind. Most of the Sevateem come under the telepathic control of the computer too. The Tesh and Sevateem soon converge on the computer room too and interrupt the Doctor as he tries to repair Xoanon, realising the computer has now triggered the countdown to an atomic explosion. Elsewhere in the ship Neeva is alone but crazed, his faith in Xoanon shattered. The shaman uses the disruptor gun against one of the images of Xoanon/the Doctor projected through a wall. The ensuing blast kills Neeva but also interrupts Xoanon’s control of its subjects, allowing the Doctor to resume and complete his repairs. Xoanon’s circuits explode, knocking the Doctor out.

Two days later the Doctor wakes up to find himself aboard the spaceship in the care of Leela. She explains Xoanon has been quiet and he interprets this as success for his extraction experiment. They visit the computer room and find Xoanon’s identity and sanity restored. The computer confirms it was running a eugenics experiment and thanks the Doctor for his repair work. The Doctor then contacts the survivors of the Tesh and Sevateem and tells them Xoanon is now cured and able to support their new society. Leela then jumps aboard the TARDIS despite the protests of the Doctor, initiating take-off.

Continuity

The novelisation of this story suggests that the Doctor's first visit to the planet of the Sevateem takes place during Robot; early in that serial, Sarah Jane Smith witnesses the newly regenerated and still delirious Doctor starting to leave in the TARDIS. However, the Doctor returns so quickly, with his mind so addled as a result of his recent regeneration that he never consciously remembered his time away until his return.

The Doctor refers to a piece of broken-down equipment as "dead as a Dalek".

At the end of the story the Doctor can be heard whistling the tune "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow", which was the same tune Sarah Jane whistled in the last scene of The Hand of Fear.

Production

In early 1975 writer Chris Boucher submitted a storyline to the Doctor Who production office. Script editor Robert Holmes rejected the script as too short and unsuitable for the programme but was impressed by the imagination of the piece. He invited Boucher to work on another story, which was to be called The Prime Directive, based on an idea by Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe about the breakdown of a society controlled by a central computer. A few months later in October 1975, Boucher delivered the story, now titled The Mentor Conspiracy. Over the next three months Boucher and Holmes worked on the script, retitling it The Tower of Imelo. Hinchcliffe also had some input coming up with the idea that the Doctor had visited the planet before, but his visit had had a negative impact. The episodic scripts were then officially commissioned on 27 January 1976. As the script for the first episode arrived, the name had now changed to The Day God Went Mad. Hinchcliffe disliked the title, not due to religious connotations but more because it was out of keeping with other titles. Boucher later agreed that it was "pretentious".

With the final script delivered in May 1976, production at Ealing Studios began on 20 September with the closing scene of episode one the first to be filmed. This included a model shot of a mountain side which had the Doctor's face carved into it in the style of Mount Rushmore, an idea from Hinchcliffe. The Ealing filming involved scenes set in the alien jungle, which was originally to be recorded in a real forest, but after the success of the previous season's Planet of Evil, it was decided to create a jungle in the film studios. Another filmed sequence for episode one included a scene where the Doctor threatens one of the tribesmen with a knife. Lead actor Tom Baker refused to threaten someone with a weapon and instead substituted it for a jelly baby, much to Hinchcliffe's annoyance who wasn't present at the day's filming. Episode one also introduced the character of Leela, who wasn't intended to be a new companion, but a one-off character for whom the Doctor would interact. The idea was to introduce the new companion in the final story of the season (which later became The Talons of Weng-Chiang) and feature two short-term "companions" in between. Abandoning this plan, the production team decided to make the feisty Leela the new companion instead, thus director Pennant Roberts set about auditioning 26 actresses for the role before finally settling on Louise Jameson. Jameson was surprised at the level of attention she received from the press and the subsequent male interest due to her wearing a skimpy leather costume (designed by John Bloomfield) in the series. The actress was required to wear red contact lenses to turn her blue eyes to brown which caused her great discomfort and was unable to wear them for long periods.

By the time the story went into the television studios, the title of the serial had changed yet again to The Face of Evil. The set designer for the serial was Austin Ruddy in his only Doctor Who outing. Hinchcliffe was impressed with the sets and considers him the best designer after Roger Murray-Leach. In episode three, several actors were employed to take on the voice of Xoanon, including Pamela Salem, who had also auditioned for the role of Leela and would then appear as a cast member in the following serial. Also among these voices was a young boy, Anthony Frieze who was a pupil at the school in which Pennant Roberts' wife worked. Recording for the four episodes at BBC Television Centre began in late September and continued until late October. The final work to be completed on the serial was dubbing in early December 1976.

Cast notes

Lloyd McGuire later played Generalleutnant Tendexter in the audio play The Architects of History. David Garfield, who played Neeva, played the alien Von Weich who headed the German troops held in the First World War zone in The War Games. Leslie Schofield also appeared in The War Games, in the role of Leroy.

Broadcast and reception

The story was repeated on BBC Four over the Christmas period 2015, with the four episodes shown over two nights, attracting viewing figures of 0.14m, 0.18m, 0.06m and 0.09m respectively.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping wrote of the serial in The Discontinuity Guide (1995), "A little masterpiece, often undeservedly forgotten by the weight of the surrounding stories. A magnificent cast shake every ounce of subtlety and invention from the script." In The Television Companion (1998), David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker praised the casting and use of the image of the Doctor's face, calling it "unsettling". While it was overall an "impressive tale that manages to intrigue and delight", they noted that the Tesh made "little impression" and the conclusion to the story was "somewhat unlikely". In 2010, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times was more negative, calling the episodes "stagnant at best and for the most part knuckle-gnawingly dull", with shortcomings in every area of production. He felt that the two "saving graces" were the cliffhangers to the first and third episodes and Jameson as Leela. DVD Talk reviewer John Sinnott gave The Face of Evil four out of five stars, praising Baker, Leela, and the story's social commentary on religion. Dave Golder, writing for SFX, noted its more adult tone and called it "strong, compelling stuff". In 2010, Charlie Jane Anders of io9 listed the cliffhanger to the first episode — in which Doctor's face is revealed to be that of the Evil One — as one of the greatest cliffhangers in the history of Doctor Who.

In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in January 1978.

Home media

The story was released on VHS in May 1999 and on DVD on 5 March 2012.