The Abominable Snowmen Episode Six

The one where Victoria learns the Jewel of the Lotus prayer...

I keep harping on about it, but Wolfe Morris really is the best thing about this story. The way he spits "Song-sten" gives me the willies, and the scene where Padmasambhava laughs maniacally at the death of Khrisong is truly creepy. His laugh sounds like a croak, a creaking gate, but is filled with malevolence. Wolfe Morris deserves much more praise for his performance in this story than he ever gets, especially as his connection to the Yeti myth goes back years. He played the character of Nima Kusang in the BBC Sunday Night Theatre play The Creature in 1954, and reprised the role when Nigel Kneale's script was remade by Hammer for the big screen as 1957's The Abominable Snowman (starring movie Dr Who Peter Cushing). His casting in Doctor Who was no coincidence.

Morris gets over Padmasambhava's internal conflict so well. His voice wavers and falters as the Great Intelligence tries to subsume his right-thinking self (the bit where he says: "You will no-o-o-o-o-o-w..." and just tails off as he loses control is heartbreaking and chilling).

The confrontation between the Doctor and the Great Intelligence sounds terrifying, and the images John Cura's telesnaps captured are haunting. Images of Patrick Troughton's face locked in a grimace of pain as the Doctor mentally fights the Intelligence; images of the Doctor crippled in pain when he first enters the sanctum (Troughton sells this pain very convincingly); images of a demonic Padmasambhava struggling to retain control. It looks very well handled by director Gerald Blake, and when the Yeti burst in and try to stop Thonmi and Jamie from smashing up the control device, it all gets quite apocalyptic.

Victoria tries to get her own back by attempting to destroy the High Lama's chess board, but even her somewhat cursory use of the Jewel of the Lotus prayer can't help her (Om mani padme hum - a chant much more familiar to me from Doctor Who's other Buddhist-tinged adventure, Planet of the Spiders). Again, writers Haisman and Lincoln give Victoria a bit of pluck by firstly refusing to leave the Doctor and go off with the monks ("No, I didn't think you would," says the Doctor), and then trying to save her friends by fighting Padmasambhava. What with being terrified by Yeti and double hypnotised, Victoria's been through quite a lot in this story!

I'm grateful that the story answers most of my questions from last time, such as where the Yeti robots came from. Poor old Padmasambhava has been well and truly used and abused by the Great Intelligence since they bumped into each other on the astral plain, and it took him 200 years to build the Yeti robots under the entity's guidance. Quite how he was able to manufacture these things without a smelting workshop or a Pritt Stick, I'm still not clear on.

The Great Intelligence is ultimately destroyed by Jamie and Thonmi smashing up the control and focus devices. Violence wins in the end, which is ironic for a story steeped in Buddhism, which forbids all forms of violence, even in extreme cases of self-defense (Khrisong wasn't listening that day). It's actually indicative of a lot of Troughton stories, which seem to end violently with a big bang, rather than the Doctor thinking up something clever. Think of how The Power of the Daleks, The Underwater Menace, The Macra Terror and The Evil of the Daleks ended - all with explosions of one size or other - and even though this explosion doesn't quite wipe out Detsen, there's surely not much of it left for the monks to return to.

I don't like stories where the Doctor defeats the enemy by blowing something up. It's lazy and disappointing. The Doctor is supposed to be one of the cleverest beings in the universe, capable of so much without ever carrying a gun or throwing a punch. But this incarnation of the Doctor seems reliant on defeating his enemies with a big explosion, then moving on quickly to let those left behind pick up the pieces. Surely the Doctor's being naive to think the Great Intelligence has been destroyed? It's only the entity's focus link with Earth that's gone, surely? The entity will still be out there somewhere, formless in space.

It'd serve the Doctor right if the Great Intelligence tried for revenge in the future. I don't think scores have been fully settled just yet. Of course, there'd be plenty more Great Intelligence to come... in The Web of Fear, Downtime, The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John and The Name of the Doctor...

Oh, and that last scene, where they spy a supposedly real Yeti cowering in the Himalayan hillside, and Travers rushes off after it. What exactly is he intending to do when he catches up with it? Does he intend to shoot and kill it, and take it back to London? He's been barging around with his rifle all the while, so it's plain to me that his intentions are not wholly respectful. In that one last scene, I went off Travers big time.

The Abominable Snowmen is an interesting story in the way it introduces new themes and ideas to Doctor Who (religion is rarely addressed in the series), but while its sedate pace can be enjoyable, there needs to be more going on, more layers of story, to make it more engaging. The entire thing is saved by Wolfe Morris's superlative performance, because if it was just sentient robot Yetis bumbling around of their own accord, there'd be a lot less to enjoy.

First broadcast: November 4th, 1967

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The final confrontation is handled very well and is quite tense.
The Bad: How do we defeat the alien menace? Let's smash a computer! Nah, it's weak and lazy writing, after five previous weeks where the Great Intelligence seemed so powerful.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 6.8 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Ice Warriors...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-abominable-snowmen.html

The Abominable Snowmen soundtrack is available on BBC CD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Abominable-Snowmen-Collection/dp/056347856X.