Doctor Who: The Face of Evil (1977)

I recently watched Planet of Evil and one of the things I most disliked about the story was how much of the plot was propelled by the Doctor simply already knowing everything and slowly explaining it to Sarah over the course of four episodes. In only one instance does the Doctor learn anything new… and it happens off-camera when he falls into the planet’s black pit and has a conversation with the monster and strikes a bargain, none of which we get to see. Very unsatisfying.

So watching Face of Evil was a lot more enjoyable in that respect as there is a mystery for the first couple of episodes that we get to figure out alongside the Doctor. This has the effect of making us the de facto companion in a story that begins without one. I wish I could go back and experience this story for the first time, because it’s such an intriguing premise. We all now know the hook, but it’s fun watching it unfold. The small group of hunter-gatherers who nevertheless have pieces of advanced technology scattered throughout their village. As Calib wonders later in the story, “Are we their captors or their children?”

The Doctor may know the sequence for checking the seals on a Starfall Seven spacesuit, but we in the audience can certainly spot the futuristic technology lurking in this society (in this case, the Doctor’s greater knowledge of spacesuits doesn’t seem like an unfair advantage over the audience since it’s only one more piece in the collection of evidence that we’ve been gathering). We even get to see something the Doctor doesn’t: a lone villager beats on a gong that has the English words “SURVEY TEAM 6” stamped on the metal. It’s a much more active and engaging way of unfolding the story with the audience as opposed to the much more passive moments in Planet of Evil which insists on having the exposition simply conveyed through the Doctor’s soliloquies of his existing knowledge.

And it’s a very fast moving story. Part of this is because of the editing (the episode was running over length and lots of small things got cut in post-production, including a longer beginning to the cinematic zoom in on the aforementioned “SURVEY TEAM 6” gong reveal) but a lot of this is by design. We see the advanced technology in the episode’s opening scene. The introduction of the characters simultaneously introduces the power dynamic; we can almost immediately pick up on how all these characters interrelate in very little screen time. As slower paced as 1970s Doctor Who could be compared to today’s version, it could be very efficient when necessary.

Once the mystery of the origins of the Sevateem tribe has been revealed and the action in episodes three and four moves into the Tesh base, it’s a bit of a let down. We’ve already gone through figuring out how a long ago crashed spaceship led to one society’s view of itself and doing it a second time isn’t as captivating. Fortunately, not as much time is spent on learning about the Tesh and most of those action centers around the villain, Xoanon.

Xoanon as a villain works because of how sparingly he (they?) is used. In the first two episodes, he’s just a Tom Baker disembodied voice booming out of a reused space helmet prop. Even in the last two episodes, there are only very short scenes inside the Sacred Chamber itself, but everything outside of those sequences still revolves around Xoanon. As Ricardo Montalbán is claimed to have said after reading the script for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “I love it! Even when I’m not on screen, everyone’s talking about me!”

I rewatched Face of Evil not long after writer Chris Boucher’s sad passing in December 2022 and once again came away impressed by his ability to create compelling characters in a few quick brushstrokes and to place them into a fun puzzle of a story. The Face of Evil is a masterclass on how to bring the audience along while telling a story instead of just lecturing at them.