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.

In episode 4, we discover that the Abbott’s master, Padmasambhava (the voice we hear), is taking orders from the great “intelligence”.  Travers learns of the Abbott’s actions, while the Doctor and Jamie make it to the TARDIS while inanimate Yeti appears to guard it.  The Doctor learns more about the spheres, and their use by the Yeti, and he uses this to escape when the Yeti .  The monks are told to leave the monastery, and Victoria is lured into the Inner Sanctum.

The warrior monk, Krisong, believes that he can handle any threat and refuses to leave the monastery.  In episode 5, he learns that this is wrong and he regrets disobeying orders.  With the Doctor and Jamie using the sphere to triangulate the source of the Yeti’s control, the unknown intelligence controlling Padmasambhava decides that the Doctor is too much of a threat.  First using Victoria as emissary, she’s then used to try and get the Doctor to leave the monastery.  The Doctor sees through Victoria’s brainwashing, but not before she convinces Khrisong and everyone else to leave.

The Doctor enters the Inner Sanctum and Padmasambhava just has time to explain how the “great intelligence” took control before he’s killed.  After the Doctor leaves, Padmasambhava’s body rises back up.

The Doctor breaks Victoria’s brainwashing before going with Travers to triangulate the control signal.  They run into a bunch of Yeti, and the Doctor discovers they’re being controlled from within the monastery.

In the final episode, everything comes to a head.  Under control of the intelligence, Abbot Songsten kills Krisong because of his disobedience.  The Doctor convinces the monks to leave for their own safety.  The Yeti surround the monastery and the Doctor, with his friends, confront the controlled Padmasambhava for the final showdown.

Taking the episodes as a whole story, it does feel that the adventure has taken quite some time to get to its resolution, but there are many interesting characters with several layers of story being peeled back as the weeks progress leading to a satisfactory, if somewhat simplistic, conclusion.  In conclusion it’s another great early Troughton story, and it’s unfortunate that it’s one of the missing ones.

Next time … The Ice Warriors