The Abominable Snowmen

Episode 1

Once again, we're faced with an all-but-missing story; only episode 2 survives. And, as usual, the reconstructed episodes present us with immediate problems.

Hannah: Is that a tent or a handbag? It looks vaguely triangular, but you can't tell the scale.

We open with a TARDIS interior scene, stuffed full of wonderful Troughton mannerisms.

Hannah: (smirking) He's very Doctor-y.

The TARDIS has landed on a mountainside in the Himalayas, so the Doctor dons his big furry coat ("It looks like a dead badger") and goes out to visit the local Buddhist monastery. Meanwhile, Jamie and Victoria find some ominous footprints in the snow.

Hannah: It's got chicken feet! So there's a big thing that might be chasing them and, rather than hiding, Victoria wants to go and find out what it is. It shows her interest and curiosity in the world, but it doesn't reflect any common sense.

The Doctor stumbles across the campsite of Professor Travers, finally putting Hannah out of her misery.

Hannah: It is a tent, then. Not a handbag in the Himalayas.
Me: Yes, thank God we've cleared that up. Anyway, Travers is played by Jack Watling, Deborah Watling's father. Victoria is acting with her dad!
Hannah: They've not been in the same room yet.
Me: I just thought it was noteworthy.
Hannah: It is! I'm assuming he got the job because he's a good actor, not because his daughter is the companion.

Hannah finds the monastery somewhat impressive; its occupants, however, not so much.

Hannah: There's a nice big gong. I like gongs. Very pretty, very ornate. Has there been a gong in Doctor Who before?
Me: I have no idea.
Hannah: Are these some fake Tibetans?
Me: They're actors pretending to be monks, if that's what you mean.
Hannah: I mean they're Englishmen with stick-on moustaches. One of them looks like he's got two slugs slipping down his face.
Me: Yes, I'm not really sure why Khrisong's moustache doesn't meet in the middle.
Hannah: He seems annoyingly hot-headed, especially for a monk

The local Yeti have recently turned savage and started slaughtering the monks. Hannah has a theory, having seen pretty much every nature documentary ever made.

Hannah: I bet it's breeding season; they only breed something like once every twenty years and now they're rutting and getting really hostile. Or they've suddenly got some kind of disease.
Me: Trust you to come up with a biological explanation for the behaviour of a Doctor Who monster.
Hannah: Well, it's an Earth creature! As far as we know, anyway. Why not follow the laws of biology?
Me: No, that's a very good point.
Hannah: I mean, they could be aliens who have come to visit and got stuck there, or been left there by someone else, but there's no reason why they couldn't be Earth creatures that follow standard mammalian things.
Me: I must have missed the episode of Planet Earth where they covered this.

Episode 2

Jamie and Victoria are saved when a Yeti is buried under a pile of rock, except for one claw sticking out of the top of the rubble. While Hannah waits expectantly for the inevitable twitch, Jamie and Victoria notice a pyramid of mysterious silver spheres.

Hannah: I've got one of those, they're desk ornaments. Or possibly Yeti eggs?

When they leave the cave, Hannah is gratified when her prediction proves to be correct...

Hannah: Is he going to twitch now? Yep. I could write this.

...and then disappointed when the Yeti gets up.

Hannah: Oh, that's not as threatening.
Me: What isn't?
Hannah: You see it twitch and you think it might come back later, but it's already getting up and chasing after them.
Me: Isn't that more threatening?
Hannah: Well, there's no suspense.
Me: You were saying how predictable it was a moment ago.

The Yeti chases Jamie and Victoria down the mountainside. For some reason, Hannah seems to find this extremely funny.

Me: What is it now?
Hannah: I'm just imagining people in those inflatable T-Rex suits. Just their head bobbing around all over the place because there's nothing in it.
Me: What inflatable T-Rex suits?
Hannah: It's just a thing you can buy. I'm sure you've seen them.
Me: I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

But the most preposterous thing in this story isn't the Yeti; it's Khrisong's facial hair.

Hannah: I feel like the moustache is slipping even further down his face.
Me: Maybe it's some kind of Buddhist magic.
Hannah: Or weak glue. (under her breath) "Buddhist magic."

She also spots a bird taking flight from the mountain, and points out something I've never noticed before.

Hannah: That's a seagull.
Me: Yes, well, this was actually filmed in Wales.
Hannah: In a quarry?
Me: No, it's the Nant Ffrancon Pass in Snowdonia.
Hannah: Okay. So now we've got a Himalayan seagull.

The master of the monastery, Padmasambhava, is communicating with a spirit that recognises the Doctor from his previous visit three hundred years ago.

Hannah: So something is alive here, old enough to know when the Doctor came last. I want to know who it is!

The Yeti would feel a lot more threatening if they didn't look like giant furry teddy bears.

Hannah: Awww! They do look cute. Great big bumbly things. They look cuter than they're probably supposed to; they're not at all intimidating, and it makes the attack scenes look unconvincing.

In fact, when Jamie and the monks manage to capture one of the Yeti, Hannah even feels sorry for it.

Hannah: It's just this fluffy thing, it didn't even... it just walked up to them and they started hitting it with sticks! And they killed it!

When the Doctor examines the captured Yeti and realises that it's a deactivated robot, one of the spheres starts beeping and rolling towards it.

Hannah: Oooh. They're little rolling batteries. Sounds like they're just whistling to themselves as they trundle along.

I ask Hannah to sum up her feelings on the story so far.

Hannah: I had no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn't an accusatory mad Englishman, an angry monk intent on death, an abbot with a mysterious and possibly dark secret, and a load of balls.

Episode 3

Hannah: Seems like there's a big space conspiracy happening, but it seems strange for aliens to be using Yeti and monks to possibly take over the Earth. Weird plan. The voice seems creepy and threatening on a "take-over-the-world" level, but what sort of plan is being hatched in a small monastery on a remote mountainside in the Himalayas? It doesn't sound very high-impact.

I try to engage Hannah with the fan myth that Ralpachan is possibly being played by Harold Pinter, using his stage name of David Baron. (It's definitely not true, by the way; not only did he deny the rumour but he stopped using that pseudonym in 1959, eight years before this was made.) She manages to summon up some vague interest in this discussion, but she's much more concerned with the Yeti.

Hannah: They seem very slow moving, and yet they're able to sneak up on someone.
Me: They're very soft and fluffy, so maybe it's just good soundproofing. Besides, you don't know how well-oiled they are.
Hannah: They must be very sophisticated robots to be able to walk so well on a rocky mountain slope. They don't look very agile at all.

Padmasambhava is in the grip of the Great Intelligence, a disembodied consciousness that wants to take on physical form.

Me: Does that mean anything to you?
Hannah: Should it?
Me: The Great Intelligence returns as the main villain in Matt Smith's final series, voiced by Ian McKellan in the 2012 Christmas special and then played by Richard E. Grant afterwards.
Hannah: Really? Doesn't ring a bell.
Me: It was a recurring presence throughout the second half of that series.
Hannah: If you say so.

Episode 4

Me: What do you think of the music in this story, by the way?
Hannah: There isn't much.
Me: There isn't any at all.
Hannah: Why not?
Me: Well, it's either to make it more dramatic..
Hannah: It is atmospheric.
Me: ...or it's a cost-cutting exercise.
Hannah: This is the beginning of the series, isn't it? They should have had a fresh budget.
Me: It can't have been cheap to build all those high-tech Yeti robots.
Hannah: They're just actors in great big furry costumes! Why do they need to economise so soon?

A group of actors in great big furry costumes have surrounded the Doctor and Jamie.

Hannah: Oh no, they're trapped by things they can outrun.
Me: You don't need to be speedy to be threatening. Look at The Terminator.
Hannah: They're just big bumbling beasts! I know it's hard to tell when you're just watching still images, but it really feels like the Yeti could easily be outrun or outmanoeuvred. They're not adding much terror to the story. I mean, you can tell they're trying to convince us that the Yeti are big and strong and could probably snap you in half, but I'm not getting much terror, not really, because they look so cuddly.

When Padmasambhava gives orders that the Doctor, Jamie and Travers are to leave the monastery despite Khrisong's protests, Hannah seems to be losing interest.

Hannah: The middle of this story is just a couple of episodes of people arguing, standing around and talking; I wonder how static it would be, even if we did have all the footage. I know it's hard to judge when there isn't much actual footage to watch and you can't tell how active it was, but it feels very still; occasionally running back up the mountain to do something and coming back down again, and being waddled after by a great big furry thing.

Then Victoria finds herself face-to-face with Padmasambhava.

Hannah: He looks... human.
Me: What makes you think he isn't?
Hannah: Telepathic abilities. Communication with something else from somewhere else.
Me: He's a Buddhist monk; he encountered the Intelligence when he was travelling on the astral plane.
Hannah: Yes, but I thought it would be an alien that Songsten was talking to, and that the alien was the mediator between Songsten and this Intelligence thing. But no, it's just another monk, mediating between the abbot and this other being. He seriously needs to cut his nails; they don't look very human.

Episode 5

Hannah: Cuddly beast go smash.

A group of Yeti are tearing the monastery apart; one of the monks is killed when a giant Buddha statue falls on him.

Hannah: They didn't kill him, he just wouldn't get out the way.
Me: You're absolutely convinced that the Yeti are too cute to harm anyone, aren't you?
Hannah: They don't seem particularly capable. They're too fat to fit through the door.

The Great Intelligence has been possessing Padmasambhava for over three hundred years, keeping him alive long beyond his natural lifespan.

Hannah: So he recognises the Doctor and vice-versa, but this Doctor hasn't had a chance to come there before. I suppose he's telepathic and all that, so he recognises the Doctor even though he's got a different face.
Me: Or it could have been an unseen adventure between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. That would be after he regenerated, but before he picked Jamie up.
Hannah: Oh, so he could have had another little adventure with Ben and Polly. Okay. I'll go along with that.

The Doctor hypnotises Victoria to bring her out of a trance.

Hannah: I like it when the Doctor can do things, when he's jack-of-all-trades. All those times when it just so happens that it would be really useful if he had a particular skill, and it turns out he learned it two hundred years ago because he's so well-travelled. "Oh, I need to surfboard out of here. Good! I can!"

Actually, surfing might not be the worst idea at the moment, because the physical manifestation of the Intelligence (or, as Hannah puts it, "goopy mass") is starting to fill up the cave and spill out onto the mountainside.

Hannah: Well. There's a sticky cave, and an undead, more running around, and a few answers and still a lot of questions. Hopefully they'll be answered.

Episode 6

Hannah: I'm sure his moustache is even further around his face.

We learn that Padmasambhava and the Great Intelligence spent two hundred years building the Yeti to serve the Intelligence.

Hannah: At least it's explained where the Yeti and balls come from. That's something I was worried about.

The Intelligence is defeated when Jamie finds a pyramid in the control room and destroys it; the pyramid in the sticky cave explodes, blowing the top off the mountain.

Hannah: Eurgh. Like a creamy volcano.

The Doctor and his friends say goodbye to Thomni.

Hannah: N'aww. What a helpful fellow. But they're not taking him with them. Which is good, because they don't need to.
Me: What, you think Thomni would be a good companion?
Hannah: No! He's very helpful, but I don't quite get the adventuring vibe from him.
Me: From a Buddhist monk? You don't imagine him running around and blowing things up?
Hannah: He's done a little bit of something he's not used to; I don't know if he'd cope in the long-term. So were there ever any real Yeti, then?

As we watch Travers dashing off in pursuit of a real Yeti, Hannah ponders the whys and wherefores of the resolution.

Hannah: Why did he need two pyramids? He needed one to send all the communications to the Yeti and one as a beam-down point? They had the control room where they were moving all the Yeti and things, but then they had that pile of power balls and the little pyramid thing as a space for the Intelligence to manifest itself, so why did smashing up one pyramid somewhere else cause the other one to blow up? I don't see how smashing one would blow the other one up. Not really. I mean, the two little pyramids were probably talking to each other, but if you smash up one walkie-talkie it doesn't blow up the other end.
Me: I think the pyramid that Jamie smashed in the control room is supposed to be the model that controls the real one, like the Yeti models.
Hannah: I wish we could watch the actual episodes; that was not clear at all.

The Score

Hannah: I like it when we get to see human cultures that I wasn't expecting. Not a historic culture, but still... actually, when was this set? They never said.
Me: It's usually pegged at around the 1920s or 1930s.
Hannah: Very, very odd that a world domination type plan is happening on a remote mountain with a monastery and some Yeti. "What's the most convoluted and strange way that I can take over the world? I know, I'll find one of the few people in the world who can telepathically communicate with me, then find some nearby native creatures that I can impersonate and get him to spend three hundred years building fake ones so that they can be my hands." You're never entirely sure how much of an invasion force this Intelligence was actually going to be. But I love it; the people that wrote this have a strange imagination. "Oh, I know! Yeti! Monks! Fake Yeti! Yeah, transcendence and things."
Me: This was written around the time that Buddhism was becoming fairly mainstream in the western world.
Hannah: It may have been in vogue, but it's still a bit strange that they use it as the basis for some kind of invasion story. It's a mixed bag. I enjoyed watching it; I was probably quiet for a lot of it because I was just so interested in actually finding out the ending to the story, so it was definitely engaging. But there was a bit too much filler for what was going on. We spent the whole time being drip-fed answers and waiting to find out more information, and I didn't find it an entertaining tease a lot of the time; I just found it slow.

8/10

Hannah: I liked Victoria showing that she's naughty and sneaky and stubborn, but without being a stroppy teenager about it. She's not just one of these pretty sit-at-home ladies.