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Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones
Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones
Jul 6, 2025 10:12 PM

Author:Terrance Dicks,Anneke Wills

Doctor Who: The Faceless Ones

Anneke Wills reads this exciting novelisation of a classic TV adventure for the Second Doctor.

In the summer of 1966, thousands of young people are taking their holidays with Chameleon Tours — and not one of them is coming back.

When the TARDIS lands at Gatwick Airport the Doctor is drawn into a web of intrigue and deception. To add to his troubles, Polly mysteriously vanishes. Or does she? The girl at the Chameleon Toursdesk looks like Polly, and even sounds like her, but she claims she comes from Zurich. Who is she really? Who is behind these abductions, and for what sinister purpose?

Soon the Doctor and Jamie must face a desperate group of faceless aliens — the deadly Chameleons . . .

Anneke Wills, who played the Doctor's companion Polly in the BBC TV series, reads Terrance Dicks's novelisation based on an original serial by Malcolm Hulke and David Ellis.

(P) & © 2019 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Novelisation copyright © Terrance Dicks 1986

Original script copyright © David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke 1967

Reading produced by John Ainsworth

Recorded at Television Centre

Post-production & sound design by Simon Power for Meon Productions

Executive producer: Michael Stevens

TARDIS sound effect composed by Brian Hodgson

Cover illustration by Tony Masero

Reviews

Praise for Pittacus Lore

—— -

Tense, exciting and full of energy

—— Observer

Relentlessly readable

—— The Times

A franchise to eclipse Harry Potter

—— Big Issue

Number Four is a hero for this generation

—— Michael Bay

‘Solo is easily one of my favorite Star Wars books of the year, and one of my favorite Star Wars movie novelizations period. Making a novelization exciting is always a tricky business because authors need to keep readers engaged with a story where they already know what’s coming. Solo pulls this off by adding just the right amount of extra detail to keep each scene fresh and interesting without veering too far from the original movie and turning this into a completely new story. I’d recommend picking up Solo: A Star Wars Story whether or not you enjoyed the movie earlier this year, because I think it will make you love it more either way.’

—— Geek Mom

His Lancelot is no airy tale of magic and romance, but a muscular telling of warriors and survival, beautifully rendered in a prose that is both visceral and lyrical. This is historical fiction at its very best.

—— ELIZABETH FREMANTLE, author of The Girl in the Glass Tower

Intense and powerful . . . written with deep expression and enormous feeling. It is a marvellous historical adventure.

—— Sunday Express

Kristian is a writer with rare power to grab you at the opening of the story and to keep the pace going. Lancelot is a powerful reworking of the King Arthur myths. The pages turn by themselves.

—— JUSTIN HILL, author of Viking Fire

My impression as I was reading Lancelot was of a flare being held up in the gloom of this peculiarly dark passage of history. Every detail illuminated, every motive believable, every heart laid bare. A bright intensity but passing away, guttering, about to go out. And, by the time his tale comes to its conclusion, that seems to be his point. A gentle lament at the onrushing of a dark and inexorable tide which comes to extinguish a bright and golden age of Britain forever. Lancelot is a gem of a book. If there were six stars, it could have them all. Or, to use the words of Spinal Tap, “This one goes to eleven.” Loved it.

—— THEODORE BRUN, author of The Wanderer Chronicles

Truly magical . . . reads with the authority and gravitas of Manda Scott's Boudica books, such that I found it utterly believable throughout . . . it was a stroke of genius to retell this legend through Lancelot's POV, the betrayer rather than the betrayed.

—— ANNA STEPHENS, author of Godblind

Giles Kristian’s brilliant take on the Arthurian love-triangle is impressively fresh and original . . . the language is arrestingly beautiful, poetic and poignant; the fights are satisfyingly bloody; the background is a believably muddy, pagan and benighted post-Roman Britain, against which Giles unfolds a tender and tragic love story. We know it will end badly, but reading this enchanting and elegiac novel, you can’t help rooting for Lancelot and his love and hoping it will all work out somehow by the final page.

—— ANGUS DONALD, author of Outlaw

Authentic, epic, and wonderfully Arthurian.

—— CHRISTIAN CAMERON, author of The Ill-Made Knight

Kristian is one of the finest storytellers in the genre . . . this is a novel that you feel as much as you read. What we end up with is utterly staggering . . . Giles has surpassed the Cornwell trilogy in a single title.

—— ROBIN CARTER , Parmenion Books

Fiercely beautiful and gripping.

—— ANNA SMITH-SPARK, author of The Court of Broken Knives

It’s difficult to think of any author more gifted to retell Lancelot’s story than Giles Kristian . . . [he] writes so beautifully. He brings these post-Roman years so vividly to life. I love the way in which the recent Roman past haunts this landscape. There is myth here, there is the Druid Merlin, and we’re reminded of many of the famous Arthurian legends, such as Excalibur, but Giles Kristian evokes a time rooted in history and in the land around us even now . . . his writing comes closest to the feeling, mood and beauty of the Old and Middle English verse that I love so much . . . there is power here, deep expression and enormous feeling. I cried and cried as the story ended in the only way it could.

—— KATE ATHERTON , For Winter Nights

This is a story that is packed full of imagery and meaning. Kristian’s prose is unique – stunningly beautiful without ever feeling overdone . . . a wonderfully textured story from a perspective I had never encountered before. Truly masterful storytelling.

—— FANTASY HIVE

[A] gem of a novel. With a sure sense of place, and a convincing portrayal of life lived at the edgy margins, it vividly plots the landscape of the heart en route to a gripping and ultimately redemptive finale.

—— Daily Mail

Raw and redemptive.

—— Sunday Business Post

Gripping and beautiful.

—— Image magazine

Ryan's third novel is an elegant, unflinching, entirely brilliant look at the waywardness of desire. . . . searing honesty that is raw but utterly riveting.

—— Psychologies magazine

A powerful story that will pull you into a whirlwind of emotion and pain, but also the faintest glimmer of hope.

—— Irish Country magazine

Shines through its female characters.

—— Irish Tatler

A stunning story that deserves great success.

—— Good Housekeeping

All We Shall Know blew me away, left me blubbering on my commute and wide awake at 2 a.m. . . . He excels at first-person narrative, and it's this that makes All We Shall Know unforgettable.

—— Stylist magazine

An intense, dramatic story . . . rather touching.

—— Mail on Sunday

His best yet . . . I kept re-reading paragraphs and whole pages to savour Ryan's remarkable prose. The book imbues profanity with poetry, and the characters, for all their flaws, are beautifully and sympathetically drawn.

—— Hot Press

Unflinching.

—— Radio Times

A wonderful novel.

—— S Magazine

In a word, this book is stunning.

—— The Bookseller

McEwan muses on love, empathy and the morality and ethics of artificial intelligence… very good.

—— Richard Dismore , Daily Mirror, *Book of the Month*

An important literary contribution to the AI debate, one of the great questions of our time.

—— Country and Townhouse

Precisely rendered and well observed… [McEwan] neatly delineates humanity’s remorseless self-demotion from the centre of the universe to flotsam.

—— Lionel Shriver , Standpoint

[An] undeniably another excellent novel from McEwan, who demonstrates that he can conjure up challenging characters, witty dialogue and moral ambiguity when dealing with sex robots just as brilliantly as he does on literary turf.

—— Hilary Lamb , Institution of Engineering and Technology

Dexterous, utterly gripping and intensely thought-provoking.

—— attitude, *Book of the Month*

Deeply unnerving… What starts out as a darkly funny ménage à trois becomes an unsettling examination of the human condition. Bold, clever.

—— Laura Powell , Sunday Telegraph

The latest novel from my favourite author tackles the subjects of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human. He does this in a surprising, original way, and Adam, the strong, seductive “robot”, is a character that will haunt me for a long time.

—— Victoria Hislop , The Week

[This] new, gripping, beautifully written and constructed, disturbing, and provocative novel…is a thrilling read… the chilling conclusions that hyper-rationalism can come to are brilliantly described.

—— Roger Jones , BJGP

McEwan maintains his status as a master of fiction.

—— Maria Crawford , Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2019*

A new collection of stories that explores the complex - and often darkly funny - connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.

—— The Week, *Summer reads of 2019*

Ian McEwan’s sublimely playful new novel transports you back to the Eighties but with some major changes, including eerily life-like robots… Dark and slyly funny, it’ll also give your brain a workout.

—— Neil Armstrong and Hephizbah Anderson , Mail on Sunday, *Summer Reads of 2019*
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