Synopsis:
Victoria enters the chamber where the Yeti has been lying dormant. However, the metallic control sphere has found its way to the creature and is back within its chest unit. It comes back to life and breaks free of the monks' ghost-trap...
Thonmi answers her screams and sends her to fetch Khrisong as he tries to fend it off, sustaining a minor injury as he does so. The Yeti forces its way to the courtyard where Thonmi and Victoria open the gates to allow it to depart before it can cause any further harm - but against Khrisong's wishes.
On the mountain, the Doctor and Jamie pause for a rest - worried that they have not seen any Yeti for some time.
Two of the creatures are standing near the cave entrance, observed by Travers. He sees Songsten arrive with another two Yeti. One leaves, whilst the other three remain as sentinels outside the cave as the abbot enters.
The Doctor and Jamie reach the TARDIS - only to discover a Yeti standing guard right beside it.
In the inner sanctum, Padmasambhava is alone, but he is communing with the unseen Great Intelligence - asking when it might complete its work and so set him free.
Songsten places the glass pyramid in the centre of the pyramid of spheres and withdraws. The pyramid begins to glow. After he and the Yeti have gone, Travers ventures inside.
The Doctor tests a theory by throwing a stone at the Yeti, noting how it does not respond. He realises that it is currently dormant and awaiting orders, so is safe to approach. He is able to remove its control sphere and takes it into the TARDIS.
In the cave, Travers is overpowered by a strange throbbing vibration as the pyramid splits open - emitting a steady flow of glowing liquid. He crawls outside.
The Doctor exits the TARDIS with a hand-held detector. The sphere begins to bleep and this registers on his device. However, the sphere starts pulling towards the Yeti. At one point the Doctor comes between them and is almost crushed, but he gets Jamie to insert a rock in the chest cavity - cutting off the signal. He realises that the sphere back in the monastery will have also tried to reunite with its host and so they rush back down the mountain, taking the sphere with them.
At Det-Sen Khrisong is angry with Thonmi for disobeying his instructions. He is criticised by Sapan and Rinchen for having little authority over his warrior monks. They are also worried about the two young people, suspecting them of some plot.
Nearing the monastery, the Doctor's device picks up another signal - one of Songsten's Yeti turning back - and realises that he may be able to locate the source.
Back in her cell, Victoria tells Thonmi of how the stranger who took the Ghanta and the Doctor are one and the same, despite the passage of 300 years. She explains how he has a time machine. The young monk has no difficulty in believing this as it is said that Padmasambhava can free his mind from his body, to travel great distances.
Khrisong wonders where the abbot has got to all this time, but Sapan and Rinchen suspect he has been with the master. After they leave the courtyard, Songsten arrives at the gate, and once again hypnotises Ralpachan into forgetting that he has seen him. He goes straight to the inner sanctum where Padmasambhava tells him that the Great Intelligence is now taking on form, and all the monks must leave this place - as well as the Doctor and his friends.
The Doctor and Jamie are confronted by Yeti and find themselves trapped between them. The Doctor decides to throw away his sphere in the hope that they will go after it - and fortunately this proves to be the case.
After being brought some food, Victoria falls ill. However, it is just a ruse and she slips out the door and locks Thonmi in the cell.
Songsten informs the monks of the decision to leave Det-Sen as they cannot defeat the Yeti. Khrisong argues that the Doctor has just returned with equipment which will help them, and vows to stay and fight. It is reported that Victoria has escaped, and Sapan and Rinchen are convinced she is evil. They believe she deliberately released the Yeti from their ghost trap, and then allowed it to leave the monastery.
They demand that the Doctor and Jamie be confined until she is found. Travers arrives at the gates and once inside he collapses, after first mentioning a pyramid.
Khrisong is still insisting on staying to fight, and Songsten tries to remind him of his vows of obedience.
Padmasambhava communes with his abbot, telling him that if the monks will not leave then they must be driven out. On his map, he positions four model Yeti by the entrance to the monastery.
Alone in the courtyard, Songsten opens the gates.
Victoria meanwhile has approached the inner sanctum once more. This time, Padmasambhava invites her inside...
Written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln
Recorded: Saturday 30th September 1967 - Lime Grove Studio D
First broadcast: 5.25pm, Saturday 21st October 1967
Ratings: 7.1 million / AI 50
VFX: Ron Oates & Ulrich Grosser
Designer: Malcolm Middleton
Director: Gerald Blake
Critique:
In the initial draft of this episode it was the warrior monk Khedru, not Ralpachan, who was hypnotised into allowing Songsten to pass unnoticed back into the monastery.
An extra cell scene saw Thonmi tell Victoria that the master lama was 300 years old, and she realised that he must therefore know the Doctor. She wanted Thonmi to warn Padmasambhava about the robots. In this version Thonmi already knew that the Doctor was a time-traveller.
This episode contains a considerable amount of the filming which took place in Snowdonia in early September, particularly around the location where the TARDIS prop had been set up. Troughton and Hines are mostly only seen on film throughout this episode, with only the closing monastery courtyard scenes recorded in studio. This is the same for Jack Watling.
In a 1985 interview with Doctor Who Monthly, Frazer Hines recalled how members of the public used to congregate to watch location filming. On one occasion during the making of this story, Gerald Blake decided to have a bit of fun and started acting like a Hollywood movie director, shouting out "No, I want that mountain moved seven inches to the left".
Prior to going out on location, filming had taken place at Ealing on Friday 25th August for scenes in the mountain cave, involving Charles Morgan and Jack Watling.
The small perspex pyramid prop was rigged to split apart on cue with an electronic detonator, and then fire-fighting foam was pumped up through the larger pyramid of spheres. This effect was supervised by Bernard Wilkie, joint head of the VFX department. The BBC had recently acquired the foam producing machine, and it had already been used for the dying Cyberman in The Tomb of the Cyberman. We'll be seeing quite a bit of it this season, and into the next...
Monday 25th September was supposed to be a day off for the regular cast, but Troughton, Hines and Watling attended Ealing for pre-filming on The Ice Warriors that day - with Watling also being taken out of rehearsals on the Thursday and Friday.
So confident was he of the success of this story that Peter Bryant, on Wednesday 27th, commissioned a sequel from Haisman and Lincoln for broadcast later in the current season.
Only a single Yeti was required in studio on Saturday 30th, with Reg Whitehead playing the creature which comes to life and escapes from the monastery in the opening section.
Wolfe Morris appeared on screen for the very first time at the conclusion of the episode, portraying Padmasambhava. He was given an aged and wrinkled latex mask which increased the size of his head - noticeable around the mouth area in close-up.
Despite much of the episode having been pre-filmed, there were still eight recording breaks planned, mainly to allow actors to move from set to set or to reposition cameras.
Two small deletions were made in editing. The first was to the sequence in the cell where Victoria and Thonmi talk about the Doctor and Padmasambhava, with him questioning why she should be encouraging him to disobey his superiors. The other was part of a filmed sequence of the Yeti moving over the mountainside, just before the Doctor and Jamie became trapped between them.
As middle episodes go, this one isn't simply watching the plot tread water for 25 minutes.
We finally get to see the mysterious Padmasambhava for the first time, and he's a very creepy figure - lit by torchlight in the darkened inner sanctum. For the first time also we hear mention of the Great Intelligence, which is apparently behind these events and is manipulating the ancient lama, and through him the abbot.
There's a lot of nice location filming on show, and the Yeti feature prominently, having only really been used for the odd set-piece up to now.
Victoria continues to annoy, however, going so far as to trick the one person who has been going out of their way to be friendly towards her.
This instalment also contains some classic Doctor / Jamie dialogue:
Jamie: "Have you thought up some clever plan, Doctor?".
Doctor: "Yes Jamie, I believe I have".
Jamie: "What are you going to do?".
Doctor: "Bung a rock at it".
We also get a variant of his famous "When I say run, run. Run!".
- The ratings remain stable, though the series dropped from 51st most watched programme for the week down to 60th.
- It was around this time that the production team were informed that the series would be continuing into 1968, and plans for a replacement series dropped - allowing for the commissioning of the second Yeti story as well as Victor Pemberton's "Colony of Devils".
- One other story being considered around the time that The Abominable Snowmen was being produced was a submission from Douglas Camfield, whose last work on the series was as director on the mammoth The Daleks' Master Plan. Writing in partnership with Robert Kitts, he had proposed "Operation Werewolf". This was a historical story with sci-fi trappings, rather than a supernatural tale. The TARDIS would have brought the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to Normandy on the eve of the D-Day landings, where they would have uncovered a plot by the Germans to transport an invading force of their own into England using a transmat system. The time-travellers would have joined forces with the French Resistance and a descendant of Jamie - Fergus McCrimmon - to defeat the scheme. Only a draft first episode was ever written - "The Secret Army". Other episodes would have been "Chateau of Death", "Lair of the Werewolf", "Friend or Foe", "Village of the Swastika" and "Crossfire".
- Following the criticisms levelled at the series during the recent Talkback programme, Junior Points of View on Friday 29th September reported the response from 278 children praising the series, compared to 31 against. 12 year old viewer Anthony Smythe also featured, bravely attempting to explain how the Doctor could travel through time.
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