Doctor Who, season 5 continues …

The Abominable Snowmen is a 6-part early Doctor Who adventure that is mostly missing from the BBC archives.

In order to watch the serial, I’ve found the “Loose Cannon” reconstructed version of the missing episodes (all episodes except episode 2).  This version employs the audio of the story matched against telesnaps (still images), descriptive text captions, existing footage where available, and sometimes a little added pieces of CGI/animation.

The telesnap reconstructions for this episode are joined by some animated Yeti footage.  It’s not quite as successful as the Dalek footage from Evil of the Daleks, but it still makes for a break from the telesnaps.

The episode is used to solidify the story so far.  The monks encounter a couple of Yeti, finding themselves unprepared for them, which leads them to begin trusting the Doctor.  Travers understands that these Yeti are not the ones he’s been searching for.  And we discover more about the voice that commands the Abbot, and that it controls the Yeti (and how it controls them).

An episode that, in isolation, doesn’t achieve a whole lot but it’s serves an important purpose to the narrative.

As we’ve seen with some of Troughton’s other 6 and 7 part stories, when used properly, the extra length of the serial is not a problem.

Next time … The Abominable Snowmen continues