This one has a special place in my heart, and it’s all because of
the Target novelisation. Terrance Dicks’ “Doctor Who and the Abominable
Snowmen” was the first novelisation based on a Troughton story to be published
back in about 1975, and that’s exactly when I read it. Now, you have to remember
that I was in the primary school at the time, so not necessarily the most
demanding or discerning of readers. Nonetheless, the story struck an instant
chord with me, and it’s one that I’ve often wished would be found. I can
remember the story in the novelisation very clearly, not least because I found
out last year that the book was available for the kindle for a couple of quid,
and so I downloaded it more quickly than you can say Padmasambhava.
As for the TV story, well, again, I do have some previous with this
story. Many years ago, and we must be talking about the early 1990s here, UK
Gold had a Doctor Who weekend, one of the delights on offer being that they
were showing episode 2, the only existing episode of “The Abominable Snowmen”. I
vaguely remember being slightly disappointed, although not why I felt so.
One more word before we start then. A quick google brings me the
joyous piece of information that Henry Lincoln, co-writer of this story, is
indeed the same Henry Lincoln who went on to make a decent packet of money with
that piece of glorious hokum, “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail”.
After Watching
Oh, isn’t it nice sometimes when something you enjoyed so much as a
kid isn’t revealed to your adult self to be a piece of rubbish. Or put it
another way, I thoroughly enjoyed that. I loved the start of the story, where
it was obvious that the Doctor had been having adventures which we knew nothing
about. When he realizes he has landed near the Detsen monastery in the
Himalayas he remembers he has been there before, during a time of strife and
troubles, when he took their holy ghanta – a sort of decorated bell – into safe
keeping. So his motivation for leaving the TARDIS to visit the monastery is
clear, he is fulfilling his promise to return the ghanta. That isn’t the most
complicated plot device, but it does, in a very understated way, underline what
must be a great source of sadness for the Doctor. Even when he does land in a
familiar place, all the people he knew there are likely to be long dead, or not
even born yet. Also it underlines how Padmasambhava’s life has been extended by
the Great Intelligence, since he was there the last time the Doctor visited, a
couple of hundred years earlier.
This story illustrates what Doctor Who – indeed the best family
dramas – can do. It is perfectly possible to take the story and enjoy it as
just an adventure story, which it is, but there is some more to it than that.
If you take Padmasambhava, here we have what was obviously once a good man, who
has been taken over by the Great Intelligence, and had his life prolonged
several times beyond its natural span. All what is left of his own will wants
to do is to accomplish the nefarious purposes of the great Intelligence, so
that it will leave him and he can die. Now, this never occurred to me when I
read the book, but the Doctor, although he gives conflicting reports of his own
age, may well be centuries older than Padmasambhava.
I don’t find the Yeti scary. That’s not surprising. I don’t find the
Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warrirors, Sontarans scary now, although they have each
sacred the bejesus out of my in their time when I was a lot younger. I find it
really hard to decide whether the Yeti would have scared me that much when I
was younger. I suppose that when you cover anything, however big, in that kind
of fake fur you are always inviting comparison to a giant teddy bear. Or the
honey monster. Or some of the larger muppets. They’re probably much scarier in
close up, where you can see what appear to be nasty looking claws. I really
like the idea of the control spheres, though. It just adds another layer of
sophistication to the threat that the monsters pose, that when you think
they’re harmless because they have been deactivated, all it takes is for one of
those wee silver balls to roll its way into the chest cavity and whoops
apocalypse.
Well, let’s get down to brass tacks. The plot. The TARDIS lands
close to the Detsen monastery in Tibet. The Doctor has been here before, and
recognizes the chance to return the Holy Ghanta he agreed to look after for
them. When they reach the monastery they don’t get anything like the warm
welcome they expected. The monastery is having a bit of a problem with them
pesky yetis, and the situation isn’t helped by the presence of Professor
Travers, a British yeti hunter, played by Victoria’s (Deborah Watling’s) real
life dad.
It transpires that the aged master monk, Padmasambhava, who was
there when the Doctor previously visited the monastery a couple of centuries
earlier, was whizzing along the astral plane one day, minding his own business,
when he was met and taken over by the Great Intelligence. Over many years,
working under the Great Intelligence’s influence, Padmasambhava has stealthily
built the yeti robots, that will carry out what needs to be done to enable the
Great Intelligence to take on corporeal form, and then consume the whole world
nyaaahh haa haaaahhhhh! After much toing and froing and all kinds of how d’you
doings the Doctor helps the monks stand firm against the yeti when they attack
the monastery, and together they defeat Padmasambhava, and along with him, the
Great Intelligence.
It’s maybe not a great work of science fiction, but there’s the rub.
This is an adventure story, and as such it gives director and cast an ample
amount to work with to create a very exciting and enjoyable Doctor Who story,
all the more praiseworthy considering that this is a 6 part story. I found the
whole thing very atmospheric. This is a little surprising since, my
overwhelming image of the Himalayas is huge jagged peaks, and snow. Lots of
snow. In this story there is not so much as one flake in sight . . . and nobody
mentions it! What a stroke of genius! You can’t help noticing the lack of snow
at first, especially, I found, in episode 2, which is the one episode currently
in the archives, but after a while, because all of the characters seem to think
that this is perfectly normal, and because nobody else mentions it, then you
really just come to accept it, even though the Himalayas never really stop
looking like rolling welsh hillsides – which is exactly what they are, I think.
The cast give it their all though, without necessarily going over
the top. I didn’t realise that Wolfe Morris, who played Padmasambhava was the
brother of Aubrey Morris. Even if you don’t know the name, you’ll know the
face, as Aubrey Morris is an English character actor who has been in tons of
stuff over the years. I remember him particularly as the captain of the
Golgafrinchan space Ark in the tv version of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers’ Guide
to the Galaxy”. That was Aubrey, though, and this is Wolfe. He’s quite
different physically from what I expected – some wizened, drained little husk
of a man – being a little on the large side – but he makes up for it with the
way that he uses his voice. The Padmasambhava voice that he uses most of the
time is calm, soothing, almost mellifluous. However the voice he produces for
the Great Intelligence is almost the complete opposite – in many ways the pure
evocation of motiveless evil. Quite a tour de force when you consider that
these voices are being produced by the same person, often within the same
sentence.
Thematically, well it’s not the most complex story, and for me
basically boils down to the main theme, that of men of peace – Buddhists –
being confronted with the need to take action, and stand up and defend against
violence, using whatever force they can bring to bear. As much as “The Daleks”
is about the Thals shedding their pacifism to take control over their own
destinies, so it is here, with the monks in the place of the Thals. As I
mentioned earlier, though, the figure of Padmasambhava adds another thematic
level to the story.
Sometimes with a partially missing story, you get the idea that it
wouldn’t necessarily be enhanced all that much if the episodes were found. I
honestly don’t think that this is the case with “The Abominable Snowmen”. This
is a story that I thoroughly enjoyed.
What Have We Learned?
The Himalayas can be a
snow free zone.
The Great Intelligence is
neither great, nor particularly intelligent.
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