The Abominable Snowmen

Dear Gary—

I have been looking forward to The Abominable Snowmen for some time—ever since I learned that these lost stories are available in reconstructed form. I know very little of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, but even my limited knowledge of him strongly associates him with the Yeti. I just did not know that the Yeti were more or less muppets (full-bodied muppets ala Big Bird and Snuffleupagus to be exact). To be even more exact, they are full-bodied muppet robots controlled by the Great Intelligence, a disembodied alien being intent upon conquering the Earth from his base located in a Tibetan monastery.

The Yeti are not the only revelation for me in The Abominable Snowmen, however. I also am getting a clearer picture of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor. He is more than just the Yeti and a recorder, the only two solid bits of information I ever really had of him before now.

“Doctor, you did know what you were doing, didn’t you,” Polly asks of him back in Patrick Troughton’s first story The Power of the Daleks. This echo of uncertainty follows Troughton’s Doctor.

“When you’ve been with the Doctor as long as I have you begin to realize you don’t know what he’s talking about,” Jamie offers up in our story. Troughton definitely gives the impression that he is making things up as he goes along.

“Have you thought of some clever plan, Doctor?” Jamie asks as the two are confronted with a Yeti. “Yes, Jamie, I believe I have,” the Doctor replies. What is this clever plan? To throw a rock at it. I think perhaps he has learned a thing or two from Vicki back in Galaxy Four who “observed, collated, concluded” and then threw a rock at the Chumbly.

“Would you walk up to a creature like that with just a screwdriver in your hand?” Current Doctor would, armed as he is with a sonic screwdriver. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, however, has not yet gone sonic. For Patrick Troughton a rock will have to do.

And a sonic-less Doctor still yields results. “I’m really rather pleased with myself.” Ah, there is the continuity binding Troughton to all Doctors past and present. Arrogance. But where Hartnell’s Doctor’s arrogance was born of supreme confidence, Troughton’s is born of almost childish delight. While Hartnell would “observe, note, collate, and then conclude,” Troughton simply states, “I know what I’m doing—I hope.” He is flying by the seat of his pants and reveling in his success.

The story of The Abominable Snowmen is a bit disappointing, though. I’m sure much of this is due to the fact that it is another reconstruction, and not having quite the same script strength of some of the other reconstructions it doesn’t hold my interest for long. It also doesn’t help that the monks of our story don’t even come close to resembling Tibetans .

The Great Intelligence is another ambiguous alien with ambiguous motives. Somehow the Yeti it has created (and which are controlled through the use of a chess board) will take control of the Tibetan mountain and from there conquer the Earth. The Great Intelligence has a couple of entranced monks doing its will as well. The other monks are divided into camps of those who trust the Doctor and those who do not.

The Doctor reveals that he had visited this monastery 300 years earlier, and as proof he has the ‘Holy Ghanta’ that the monks gave him for safe keeping the last time he was there. This serves to ally him with the monks as they unite to fight the marauding Yeti and to break the hold of the Great Intelligence. In the end it is rather easy as they just have to smash up some equipment located in the inner sanctum.

I do find it rather amusing, Gary, that in the midst of rampaging muppet robot Yetis we have the monks proclaiming that Victoria “is a devil woman.” And what is her crime? “Headstrong, that’s what she is.” Yes, I’m glad to see that this aspect of Victoria’s character continues to be developed. She is impatient when left behind in the safety of the TARDIS and urges Jamie to go out exploring. Then, when put under guard in the monastery, she gives her jailers the slip to investigate the mysterious and off-limits inner sanctum.

“I just don’t like mysteries,” she declares, and she is determined to get to the bottom of things. Headstrong. Devil Woman. I like it.

I also like that the next story has only two of its six episodes still missing. And I just want to take a moment here, Gary, to note that the Troughton years seem to have gone back to the longer six episode story lines. Some of the Hartnell stories that were six or more episodes long could drag on, but I’m finding that I don’t mind as much with Troughton, even in reconstructed form. I believe that this is partly thanks to some excellent scripts. Or maybe it is just that I haven’t been exposed to most of these stories before and am curious to learn more of Troughton’s Doctor.

Whatever the case, I send this out, Gary, and hope that it finds you somewhere in the swirl of time.