Hot Picks

- There's No Such Thing as Zombies 2020

- Ready for My Close Up 2019

- Watch the Skies 2022

- Dream Hacker 2025

- Love and Comminication 2022

- If I Could Ride Again 2025

- Freak Off 2025

- Lavender Men 2025

- Lost Cos 2023

- Sound of the Surf 2022

- The Stillness 2025

- Frankie Freako 2024

- The Texas Witch 2025

- Cannibal Mukbang 2023

- Bleeding 2024

- No Choice 2025

- Nahual 2025

- Bitter Souls 2025

- A Very Long Carriage Ride 2025

- The Matriarch 2024

- Oxy Morons 2025

- Ed Kemper 2025

- Piglet 2025

- Walter, Grace & the Submarine 2024

- Midnight in Phoenix 2025

- Dorothea 2025

- Mauler 2025

- Consecration 2023

- The Death of Snow White 2025

- Franklin 2025

- ApoKalypse 2025

- Live and Die in East LA 2023

- A Season for Love 2025

- The Arkansas Pigman Massacre 2025

- Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness 2012

- The Darkside of Society 2023

- Jackknife 2024

- Family Property 2: More Blood 2025

- Feral Female 2025

- Amongst the Wolves 2024

- Autumn 2023

- Bob Trevino Likes It 2024

- A Hard Place 2025

- Finding Nicole 2025

- Juliet & Romeo 2025

- Off the Line 2024

- First Moon 2025

- Healing Towers 2025

- Final Recovery 2025

- Greater Than 2014

- Self Driver 2024

- Primal Games 2025

- Grumpy 2023

- Swing Bout 2024

- Dalia and the Red Book 2024

- Project MKGEXE 2025

- Two to One 2024

- Left One Alive 2025

- Talk of the Dead 2016

- A Killer Conversation 2014

- First Impressions Can Kill 2017

- Star Crash 1979

- Strangler of the Swamp 1946

Doctor Who - The Face of Evil

episode 89

UK 1977
produced by
Philip Hinchcliffe for BBC
directed by Pennant Roberts
starring Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, David Garfield, Victor Lucas, Brendan Price, Leslie Schofield, Colin Thomas, Lloyd McGuire, Leon Eagles, Mike Elles, Peter Baldock, Tom Kelly, Brett Forrest, Rob Edwards (voice), Pamela Salem (voice), Anthony Frieze (voice), Roy Herrick (voice)
written by Chris Boucher, music by Dudley Simpson

TV-series
Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Tom Baker), Doctor Who (classic series), Leela

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Available on DVD!

To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned)

Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!


On a nameless planet, young and fierce warrior Leela (Louise Jameson) is cast out from her primitive tribe, the Sevateem - that's inexplicably littered with relics from a spaceship - for speaking out against their alleged "god" Xoanon and their attack against "the wall", which is demanded by their shaman Neeva (David Garfield), Leela's sworn enemy. On the run, Leela runs into space-and-time traveler Doctor Who (Tom Baker), who has landed on the planet by mere chance, and seeing his face she immediately mistakes him for "the Evil One" - being convinced of his good nature only when he saves her from an invisible creature only hunting by sound. However, the Doctor is soon captured by the Sevateem, who also mistake him for the Evil One, and now it's up to Leela to save him. An attempt by the Sevateem to re-capture him turns up fruitless, yet Neeva claims he has been killed as an omen that the attack on the wall will be successful - and so they attack.

The Doctor and Leela meanwhile drop into the Sevateem village, and seeing the relics the Doctor begins to understand - but still wonders why everybody's taking him for the Evil One. When the Sevateem return, the Doctor offers his help, but that's where chaos breaks loose, as Xoanon (who is an actual being, and shaman Neeva actually speaks with him) releases his invisible creatures onto the Sevateem.

The Doctor sumises if there are all these relics from a spaceship among the Sevateem, the spaceship has to be nearby, probably behind "the wall", which is actually adorned by a giant sculpture of his head - making it all the more likely that he has meddled with the affairs of this planet before.

The Doctor and Leela climb inside the sculpture's mouth and find a teleporter to the spaceship, where they find another tribe, the Tesh, who have the power of telepathy but other than that are just as primitive as the Sevateem. And the Doctor finds a supercomputer, which he has centuries ago fed his mind into, and the computer has since gone schizophrenic, and has separated the survey team (Sevateem) from the technicians (Tesh) to see which is more equipped for survival, shutting them off from one another and creating animosity between the two camps in the long haul. It's now up to the Doctor to turn off the computer that is Xoanon and thus restore order on the planet, but Xoanon is less than likely to want that ...

 

Budgetary restrictions and bland direction notwithstanding, this is a near perfect episode of Doctor Who: The idea of a supercomputer that has made himself God of a primitive tribe is not only inspired but even proto-cyberpunk, and while the story's logic might not be absolute perfection, but makes perfect sense within the confines of the episode. But what The Face of Evil is actually really good at is world-building: Despite the rather cheapish sets and some ridiculous costumes (especially the Tesh), the very alien world this story takes place feels lived in, the lives of these primitive tribes make sense, thanks of course to a well-crafted script, but also strong performances and a emphasis on atmospheric filmmaking that belies the economically built sets. And the result of all of this is quite simply rather awesome.

 

As an added bonus, this episode gifted the Doctor his arguably best companion, Leela, who as a logical continuation of Sarah Jane Smith's at times forced textbook feminism really acts like the brawns to the Doctor's brains, thus reverting gender conventions, in a narratively motivated way (which goes for Leela's entire run).

 

Quick Links

Abbott & Costello

The Addams Family

Alice in Wonderland

Arsène Lupin

Batman

Bigfoot

Black Emanuelle

Bomba the Jungle Boy

Bowery Boys

Bulldog Drummond

Captain America

Charlie Chan

Cinderella

Deerslayer

Dick Tracy

Dick Turpin

Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Orloff

Doctor Who

Dracula

Edgar Wallace made in Germany

Elizabeth Bathory

Emmanuelle

Fantomas

Flash Gordon

Frankenstein

Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies

Freddy Krueger

Fu Manchu

Fuzzy

Gamera

Godzilla

Hercules

El Hombre Lobo

Incredible Hulk

Jack the Ripper

James Bond

Jekyll and Hyde

Jerry Cotton

Jungle Jim

Justine

Kamen Rider

Kekko Kamen

King Kong

Laurel and Hardy

Lemmy Caution

Lobo

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lupin III

Maciste

Marx Brothers

Miss Marple

Mr. Moto

Mister Wong

Mothra

The Munsters

Nick Carter

OSS 117

Phantom of the Opera

Philip Marlowe

Philo Vance

Quatermass

Robin Hood

The Saint

Santa Claus

El Santo

Schoolgirl Report

The Shadow

Sherlock Holmes

Spider-Man

Star Trek

Sukeban Deka

Superman

Tarzan

Three Mesquiteers

Three Musketeers

Three Stooges

Three Supermen

Winnetou

Wizard of Oz

Wolf Man

Wonder Woman

Yojimbo

Zatoichi

Zorro

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned)

The links below
will take you
just there!!!

Find Doctor Who - The Face of Evil
at the amazons ...

USA  amazon.com

Great Britain (a.k.a. the United Kingdom)  amazon.co.uk

Germany (East AND West)  amazon.de

Looking for imports?
Find Doctor Who - The Face of Evil here ...

Thailand  eThaiCD.com
Your shop for all things Thai


Thanks for watching !!!

 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

Amazon

Amazon UK

Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!