Synopsis:
Camping in the remote Himalayan mountains of Tibet, an English explorer named Travers is woken by the cries of his friend, John. He emerges from his tent to see a huge shaggy creature strike John down. Travers finds his rifle snatched from his hands and smashed, and runs off into the night.
The TARDIS materialises the following morning a short distance away, and the Doctor immediately recognises their surroundings when they appear on the scanner. He seems delighted and begins rummaging in a large wooden chest in the corner of the console room.
Asked what he is looking for, he finally tells Jamie and Victoria that he is searching for a ghanta, and eventually produces a small ornately patterned bell. He explains that he has been here before, and must return this to the monks of Det-Sen Monastery.
He asks his companions to remain in the TARDIS whilst he sets off alone, wearing a large fur coat against the cold. He soon comes across the abandoned campsite and finds John's corpse.
Picking up a discarded rucksack, he then sees his destination from a nearby rocky ledge - the Buddhist monastery nestling in the valley below.
Tired of waiting in the ship, Jamie and Victoria decide to go after the Doctor. They see large footprints outside, as though some great animal had prowled around the TARDIS. Jamie decides to fetch a sword he had seen earlier in the wooden chest before they explore.
The Doctor has made his way to the monastery and has found it to be eerily quiet. He is then confronted by a group of monks, led by Khrisong. Travers is with them and, seeing the rucksack, he claims that it must have been the Doctor who attacked his camp the previous night - mistaking his baggy coat for animal fur.
Before the Doctor can explain his reason for coming here, he finds himself locked in a cell.
Jamie and Victoria find more animal tracks and decide to follow them, arriving at a cave. At the end of a passage, whose roof has been artificially propped up, they find a chamber in which there is a pyramid of metallic spheres.
They hear something moving about outside, and a massive rock is placed across the cave mouth.
The Doctor is visited in his cell by Travers, who accuses him of being a newspaper man, out to damage his expedition and steal his glory He has come to Tibet in search of the fabled Abominable Snowman. He dismisses the idea that it was one of these creatures which attacked his camp, as he is convinced that the Yeti are shy and timid.
Khrisong is discussing recent Yeti attacks with fellow monks Rinchen, Sapan and young Thonmi. Four of their brothers have now been killed. Khrisong is a warrior, charged with protecting Det-Sen, and he wants the Doctor executed - but his colleagues disagree and claim that only their abbot, Songsten, can decide this.
He decides to have the Doctor brought to him anyway and sends Thonmi to fetch him.
Jamie and Victoria hear the creature return and move the stone. It proves to be a massive furry mammal with powerful claws. It seizes Jamie's sword and snaps it in two. It is blocking their only escape route.
Victoria screams as it bears down on them...
Written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
Recorded: Friday 15th September 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 30th September 1967
Ratings: 6.3 million, AI 50
VFX: Ron Oates & Ulrich Grosser
Designer: Malcolm Middleton
Director: Gerald Blake
Guest cast: Jack Watling (Travers), Norman Jones (Khrisong), David Spenser (Thonmi), David Grey (Rinchen), Raymond Llewellyn (Sapan), Reg Whitehead (Yeti)
According to Mervyn Haisman, Henry Lincoln was an old friend of Patrick Troughton - Lincoln having also been an actor. The pair met up one day in Kew, SW London, and Troughton bemoaned the fact that his Doctor was always in outer space and he wanted to get back down to Earth. He asked Lincoln to come up with some story ideas that might be put forward to the production office.
Haisman had also been an actor before becoming a writer and he and Lincoln lived near each other, eventually forming a writing partnership.
They considered readymade terrestrial creatures, such as the Loch Ness Monster, before settling on the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, or Yeti.
Choosing a well known monster meant that the audience already had some idea of the beasts. Troughton was contacted and asked if the series had ever covered Abominable Snowmen before. The star was enthusiastic about a story featuring them. Sent a copy of the scripts whilst on holiday in France, he described the story as "sooper" and especially liked the final instalment. He asked the writers to contribute more stories.
Lincoln used his real surname - Soskin - when acting, but adopted the nom-de-plume of Lincoln to differentiate his acting and writing lives, using it for the first time on their first Doctor Who scripts.
Yeti are creatures of Sherpa folklore, whose footprints have been recorded by Western climbers. They are said to be large bipedal ape-like animals. Their bodies are covered in hair, which can be brown, grey or white.
The name derives from Tibetan for "rocky place" and "bear", whilst their common Western name comes from a mistranslation. A member of a 1921 Everest expedition, who had seen mysterious footprints in the snow at altitude, was informed that they were made by a metoh-kangmi, or "Wild Man of the Snows".
A journalist some years later mistranslated metoh as "filthy" or "abominable", and this was picked up by British newspapers.
In writing their Doctor Who story, Haisman and Lincoln appear to have been heavily influenced by the Nigel Kneale drama The Creature - broadcast in 1955 and now sadly lost. Hammer adapted it for the big screen two years later as The Abominable Snowman (of the Himalayas, in the US).
The play depicted an expedition to the region in search of the Yeti, centring on the conflict between two of its members. Peter Cushing played Dr John Rollason, who wanted to find the creature for scientific reasons. Out to exploit it financially was Tom Friend, played by Stanley Baker. Cushing reprised his role for Hammer, whilst Forrest Tucker played Friend to please US audiences.
Wolfe Morris played the chief Sherpa in both productions - and he will be along shortly as Padmasambhava in The Abominable Snowmen.
Both the Kneale play / film and the Doctor Who story have a monastery as main setting, with other scenes set on the mountains. Both feature a Western expedition out to find the Yeti, and both have a Lama who has psychic abilities, including some telepathic link with the Yeti. The film even has scenes similar to ones in this story, as when Rollason's wife finds herself drawn to the inner sanctum where the Lama resides - just as Victoria will be. The whole look and feel seems similar.
Following his trial run as producer, Peter Bryant resumed his story editing duties, initially assisted by Victor Pemberton. Innes Lloyd had been as enthusiastic as Troughton on reading the scripts as he foresaw extensive use of location filming and the opportunity for action sequences. It was also hoped that the Yeti might provide another popular rival to the Daleks.
Prior to writing, Haisman and Lincoln concentrated on how they wanted the Yeti to look, including their chest-mounted control spheres. They deliberately wanted them to appear quite cuddly - making their savagery more shocking to the viewers when it occurred.
As the creatures initially appeared to be wild animals, they needed someone or something to be in control - which led to the development of the Great Intelligence. The fear of possession was something the writers wished to include.
They conducted a lot of research into Buddhism, using names of historical figures from the religion.
The monastery is named after Trisong Detsen, an 8th Century Dharma King who helped establish Buddhism in Tibet. To enable this, he brought in the Indian master Padmasambhava. The other two Dharma Kings were Songsten Gampo and Rapalchen. Trisong can also be translated as Khri Srong.
No date was given for the story, although it was intended to be sometime in the 1930's as this was when a lot of reports of Yeti footprints were making the headlines.
Travers was given the first name Edward, but this is never mentioned on screen. Deborah Watling suggested that her father Jack play this role, after reading an advance copy of the script. Lloyd thought this a great idea as he was a noted movie actor as well as featuring in The Power Game and The Plane Makers. She basically went home and told him he was doing it.
Joining the series at this point were Sylvia James (make-up) and Martin Baugh (costume design).
Filming on the serial got underway on Wednesday 23rd August when the regular cast returned from their summer holidays. This was the first of three days at Ealing, when scenes in the cave were captured, along with all the model shots for the serial - including that of the monastery as viewed by the Doctor in this episode.
Four Yeti costumes were constructed from Baugh's designs, costing £100 each. Seven feet tall, they were made using a light bamboo framework covered in fun-fur. The costume zipped up the back, and the headpiece was separate. The actors could see through a gauze panel just below where the nose would be. Only one of the costumes had the chest cavity for the control sphere, which was concealed under a strip of fur. They were incredibly hot in studio, but the actors benefited from this out on location.
The claws were manufactured by Ulrich (Ricky) Grosser of the VFX team, using moulded latex.
The pyramid was a tetrahedron of 35 silvered spheres.
The locations chosen to represent the mountainous wilds of Tibet were Nant Ffracon Pass and Ogwen Lake in Snowdonia. The area had already seen some filming - often standing in for remote Asian regions, such as when it hosted Hollywood superstar Ingrid Bergman when The Inn of the Sixth Happiness was made there in 1958. It would later become the Khyber Pass for the Carry On... team, and Doctor Who would be back in 1983 to film The Five Doctors in the area.
Filming commenced on Monday 4th September, running through to Saturday 9th.
The location shooting for this episode concentrated mainly on the area around the TARDIS landing site and the wrecked camp. Reg Whitehead, on hand to play one of the Yeti, stood in as John's corpse. The opening scene of the attack on the camp involved a night shoot. A BBC photographer took many images of the TARDIS landing location and of the Doctor at the camp site.
Rain played havoc with the schedule, and everyone was disappointed at the lack of snow. When not needed, Troughton would go fishing. Despite having a fur coat to wear as the Doctor, he changed into a duffle coat when not filming.
Watling hated her tweed outfit, and Frazer Hines wore firemen's trousers under his kilt between takes due to the weather.
The TARDIS prop was not assembled correctly, with the notice appearing on the wrong door.
There was to be a short term change to the recording schedule for this story, with the first and second episodes being recorded on consecutive evenings. This meant the two episodes being rehearsed together that week at St Helen's church hall, and as such some actors were present who we won't be meeting until next time.
After the problems of the Christmas break coinciding with rewrites on The Power of the Daleks, the majority of Season 4 had been broadcasting only a week after recording, and Lloyd wished there to be a good three weeks between recording and broadcast this year.
With a sizeable part of the first episode taking place on location or at Ealing, only two main sets were required this week - the TARDIS and the monastery. The latter included a great central courtyard at the end of which sat a large stone Buddha. Through the main gates was a small exterior set. The last small set was the cell where the Doctor is confined. This required a high window and a barred opening on the door through which Travers could speak to him.
The TARDIS set now contained a new scanner - a TV monitor mounted in a black roundel. This was used to show stock footage of a wintry landscape - despite there being no snow at the location. Another new item was a wall unit covered in dials and meters.
Watling wore her costume from The Tomb of the Cybermen for the first TARDIS scene, and Jamie makes reference to the Cyber-tombs, suggesting that this story follows on immediately from the Cyberman adventure.
The title, writers and episode number were actually screened after the night-time attack on Travers and John, making this an early example of a pre-credits sequence.
Four recording breaks were planned, the first of which allowed Debbie Watling to change into her new outfit as the shot of the Doctor seeing the (model) Det-Sen Monastery was played into studio. Other breaks were to strike the TARDIS set and to allow cast members to move from set to set.
Sounds in the monastery were echoed, and a wind sound effect was used every time the monastery gates were opened.
No special music was commissioned - the chanting of the monks coming from BBC library recordings.
We don't know when the meeting between Troughton and Lincoln is supposed to have taken place, but the Second Doctor had more than his fair share of Earthbound stories through Season 4 - The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace, The Faceless Ones and most of The Evil of the Daleks.
This story will actually mark the start of a run of five consecutive Earthbound adventures.
It's the first appearance of the Second Doctor's fur coat which, coincidentally, will be worn again by Troughton next time he visits Snowdonia to film. There's a funny little moment when Jamie and Victoria think they've spotted one of the titular beasties on the scanner - only for it to turn out to be the Doctor in his coat.
Another humorous moment comes as the Doctor rifles through the wooden chest and comes upon an odd-looking object - claiming he's glad to see it again, even though he doesn't remember what it actually is...
Something else found in the chest is a set of bagpipes, which the Doctor is reluctant to allow Jamie to play. And yet he wanted Jamie to teach him how to play the pipes in the final episode of The Highlanders, but Jamie has clearly never seen this set before.
And little did we know it then, but the whole UNIT dating controversy starts here. More on that to come.
It's a bit of a slow burn episode this one, short on incident after the opening night attack, and the lone Yeti only features briefly. It is much more about atmosphere, setting the scene and introducing the guest characters. In this it also mirrors The Creature in many ways.
- This episode was broadcast in Wales at 6.45pm, whilst the programme for the rest of the country was brought forward half an hour from the previous four weeks. This saw Doctor Who replace Juke Box Jury and allowed Simon Dee's chat show and Dixon of Dock Green to follow. The later time in Wales was a deliberate move to a more prominent slot - all the better for showcasing the Welsh location filming.
- This is the shortest of the six episodes, at just over 22 minutes duration.
- Gerald Blake had been pencilled in to direct an earlier Doctor Who story - one that was never made. This was to have been David Whitaker's "The New Armada".
- Troughton's sons David and Michael were due to visit their father on location but David caught flu a day or two earlier and the trip had to be cancelled.
- Henry Lincoln had gotten into writing after being cast in a play which revolved around Egyptology. With an interest in history and archaeology, he was critical of the lack of research that had gone into it and was invited to rewrite much of the piece.
- David Spenser was the life partner of Victor Pemberton, assistant story editor on the serial. He first came to fame playing the title role in the Just William stories for BBC Radio. He can also be seen in the cult British science fiction film The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), which features Cyberman-like robotic invaders.
- Unusually, Radio Times did not provide its regular photo / preview piece for the new story - just the standard programme listing:
- There was, however, a small piece about the location filming elsewhere in the magazine:
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