41:The Web of Fear

Before Watching

You may remember the big fuss a couple of years ago when the BBC announced that they had recovered all the lost episodes of “Enemy of the World” and all bar one of “The Web of Fear” Now, as you know if you’ve been with me for any great length of time,  I loved the Target novelization of “The Abominable Snowmen” when I read it in about 1975. I really looked forward to reading “The Web of Fear” when it was published, and then, as often happens when you build up to a sequel, I wasn’t quite so taken with it when it first came out. Still, let’s be positive. Looking at the ingredients for “Web of Fear”– Patrick Troughton – Fraser Hines – Yetis – London Underground – First appearance of the Brigadier (only a colonel in this one) – they’re enough to give me the confidence that this should be a pretty positive experience, especially bearing in mind how much I enjoyed Haisman and Lincoln’s “The Abominable Snowmen” which was mostly recon.

After Watching

My opinion? Well, despite the generally extremely positive fan response to this story when it first went online, and the DVD first came out, I found it to be a bit of a curate’s egg if I’m totally honest. As I watched I found myself thinking that this story has got some great positives, but also some flaws. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.

Flaws

For one thing it’s a 6 parter, one of which doesn’t exist. The BBC telesnaps reconstruction is perfectly functional, but it’s not great, especially considering that on some of the Troughton DVDs – “The Moonbase”, “The Ice Warriors” and “The Invasion”, for example, they have actually used animation to go with the audio of the missing episodes. Animation of the kind that was used in “The Moonbase” or “The Ice Warriors” would have certainly been an improvement on what they’ve given us. This was a bit disappointing. While we’re on the subject, there were no extra features on my DVD which was a huge disappointment. It smacks of rush releasing the thing. I think that this calls for a small digression. You can get Doctor Who stories in two places on DVD. There are the DVDs which came with the Doctor Who DVD Files Magazines – and what you get in these are what you pay for – the episodes themselves with no special features. Then there’s the official BBC DVDs, which in my experience are often excellent in terms of the special features and bonuses that you get. For example, at the same time as I bought this one, I also bought the Legacy Collection, which is actually the current Shada DVD, and the amount of bonuses you get in that one gives you real value for money, which “The Web of Fear” doesn’t. Still, I digress, and back to “The Web of Fear”.

I’ll be honest, it was all getting a bit samey too. I mean there is some amazing set design work which has gone on for this serial. None of it was shot on the London Underground, and yet it looks so like it that London Underground famously wrote to the BBC complaining about unauthorized filming in their tunnels and stations. But, I was getting so sick of tunnels and stations that it came as a real relief when the soldiers had to face a yeti attack above ground. Being more positive, this actually came at exactly the right time in the story to break it up a little.

The yeti themselves sadly didn’t quite live up to the yeti I created in my imagination when I read the books. When you’re a die-hard fan of classic Doctor Who you should be pretty good at silencing the inner voice which cackles ‘man in a suit – man in a suit!’ every time you see an alien, but I sometimes found it difficult in this one. I’m not convinced that the yeti redesign for this story, headlamp eyes and all, is really an improvement on what we saw in “The Abominable Snowmen”. 

The ‘comedy Welsh’ soldier played by Derek Pyott really got up my nose at one point, and I almost found myself hoping that Lethbridge Stewart would take out his pistol and shoot the cowardly git for insubordination.

- and yet –

The story aims for an atmosphere of claustrophobia, and boy, does it get one, which is a real departure from what we saw in “The Abominable Snowmen”. I liked the basic premise at the start of the story – that Professor Travers brought a yeti back to England after his adventures in “The Abominable Snowmen”. Years later he was forced by financial circumstances to sell it to a private museum. He tries to buy it back, but the current owner (and I’m sorry to play the racism card again here, but he is a rather insulting Jewish caricature) refuses. Well, needless to say, the yeti becomes reactivated and causes mayhem, and this is the start of the Great Intelligence’s next attempt to gain corporeal form and take over the world nyaah haaa haaa.

There’s nothing original about my next point, but it is one which should be stressed every time that anyone writes seriously about this story. Speaking as a lifelong lover of the London Underground railway, these sets are extremely convincing. In fact parts of some of the stations which are overdue for a makeover still look like this. We’ve seen how contemporary London serves as a wonderful backdrop to both “The Dalek Invasion of earth” and “The War Machines” and this is a very new twist on that idea. Because of the setting, there is an ongoing contrast between the gloomy murk of the tunnels and the harsh artificial lighting of the station areas, and this only adds to the atmosphere.

I remember the late Michael Winner being interviewed by Barry Norman about his film “Death Wish 2” once, and he said words to the effect of – Well, it’s a sequel, Barry, and we all know about sequels. In Rocky 2, Rocky didn’t go off and become a missionary, so  in Death Wish 2 it’s ugly old Charlie Bronson shooting up the muggers again.- All of which is a very entertaining way of making the point that sequels very often retell the same story as the original, sort of like the law of diminishing returns. Actually, in subtle yet important ways, “The Web of Fear” does not tell the same story as “The Abominable Snowmen”. In this one the identity of the traitor under the control of the great Intelligence is not made clear until very late on, after several red herrings – one of whom is the Colonel/Brigadier himself – are presented to us. For another thing, this time The Great Intelligence is now after the Doctor’s body. I bet he says that to all of the Time Lords. The Doctor is really up for a mental battle with it as well, and it takes Jamie to pull him away from the machinery. Would he have defeated the Great Intelligence? We won’t know.

I’m sure I read rumours that plans were afoot for Haisman and Lincoln to write a third yeti story with a final showdown between the Doctor and the Great Intelligence – (we’d have to wait for Matt Smith for this final showdown to happen). I don’t know how much truth there is in that. I know that there next, and last, story for Doctor Who was “The Dominators” which we’ll be reviewing in a couple of weeks, since it’s the first story of season 6.

What have we learned?

Let sleeping yetis lie.

That Lethbridge-Stewart chap is a useful character. We could use him again , you know.

Has the Doctor had his last encounter with the Great Intelligence? Not yeti. 

38: The Abominable Snowmen

Before Watching

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.