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| "He followed us home, mom, can we keep him?" |
Season Five, Story 2 (story code NN)
Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor
with Frazer Hines (Jamie) and Deborah Watling (Victoria)
Written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln
Directed by Gerald Blake
Producer - Innes Lloyd
Script Editor - Peter Bryant
Broadcast Dates, Viewership, Appreciation Figures
- Episode 1 - 30 Sep 1967 (6.3m, 50%) **MISSING**
- Episode 2 - 7 Oct 1967 (6.0m, 52%)
- Episode 3 - 14 Oct 1967 (7.1m, 51%) **MISSING**
- Episode 4 - 21 Oct 1967 (7.1m, 50%) **MISSING**
- Episode 5 - 28 Oct 1967 (7.2m, 51%) **MISSING**
- Episode 6 - 4 Nov 1967 (7.4m, 52%) **MISSING**
How To Watch
- Animated full color version is available on the Doctor Who Classic YouTube channel
- Loose Cannon reconstructions of the five missing episodes are available here, with additional narration by Frazer Hines from the audiobook release
- 2022 DVD release with all six episodes fully animated in color or b/w, with the surviving episode as an extra
- 2004 Lost In Time DVD release and the 1991 VHS "Doctor Who: The Troughton Years" both feature the surviving episode
Synopsis
The TARDIS lands in 1930's Tibet, near Det-Sen monastery amidst the Himalayas. The Doctor is delighted, as he can return a holy relic he acquired on a previous visit 300 years earlier. However, he is greeted with hostility by the monks and a visitor, rogue anthropologist Edward Travers (on the hunt for the mythical Yeti), and blamed for the murder of Travers' companion as well as a recent series of mysterious deadly attacks against the monks. The culprits are actually fearsome creatures believed initially to be Yeti, but turn out to actually be fur-covered robots powered by control spheres in their chests. The High Lama, Padmasambhava, old enough to remember the Doctor's previous visit, is actually controlling the Yeti under the influence of the Great Intelligence, which is building energy to become fully corporeal. The Yeti drive the monks from the monastery, killing several, but the Doctor and Jamie manage to destroy the source of the Intelligence's power, and it dissipates leaving the Yeti permanently deactivated. Freed from the Intelligence, Padmasambhava can finally die in peace, thanking his old friend the Doctor with his last breath. Travers finds a real Yeti, and our heroes depart.
Blather
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| Sigh... it was a different era... |
Fresh on the heels of the Toberman debacle, the next story has a large cast of Tibetan characters, all played by white actors. They appear to have used minimal makeup, mainly accents. Although not out of step with the casting practices of the time, it would be unthinkable today. That said, I'm not entirely sure that I'm okay with the 'correction' in the animation to completely re-conceive the Tibetan characters to make them look more authentically Tibetan. I don't think it's always useful or helpful to gloss over or 'repair' the aesthetics of past generations (unless they're Confederate memorial statues) when they weren't malicious, but I do appreciate that the animation team was, based on surnames at least, predominantly East Asian and South Asian. Otherwise, there's no disguising that white dude bias was at play in writing and casting. Let's see it, let's talk about it, let's understand what's changed in the nearly 60 years in between, and why that choice would not be made today. Of course, the problem is that we can't see it, or at least, five out of the six episodes.
(And then they do it again in Pertwee's finale "Planet of the Spiders", with two white actors playing Tibetan characters, except that they're kinda sorta not, because one is a renegade Time Lord and the other is a projection of the Time Lord's conscience... it's complicated.)
The casting, alas, isn't the only difficult part of the story, so the animation 're-casting' doesn't fix it.
First off, it's not made perfectly clear why the Doctor has the Holy Ghanta in the first place. There are times when it is hinted that had been given to the Doctor for safekeeping, but then they talk about it as though it were lost, which kinda suggests he stole it? Naughty. And from a storytelling angle, the Ghanta has no bearing on the story at all, except as a means of identifying the Doctor (it's unclear if his first visit was before or after his regeneration, Padmasambhava doesn't acknowledge that he has changed), and as far as I can determine the Ghanta doesn't do anything, like there was some secret object inside that helps our heroes defeat the evil forces... it's basically a calling card.
I think rediscovery would really help this story, because without incidental music or visuals, we have a lot of slow-moving and dialogue free moments. I have a feeling that it's an atmospheric and tension-ridden slow-builder, but the missing visual element works against our ability to appreciate it. Though the lack of music means the sound effects of the Yeti control devices are pretty spooky, and the chanting monks (sfx re-used in "Planet of the Spiders").
I do appreciate how the character of Khrisong evolves through the story. As effectively the head of security, his job is to protect the Monastery and his brother monks. He immediately blames the Doctor for the series of deaths, and is content to leave him to die at the hands of the yeti. Once he realizes his mistake, he works with the Doctor and helps him, ultimately giving his life. Songsten also is a pitiable character, being controlled by the Intelligence and forced to murder. And Padmasambhava's dying words are quite moving.
Another issue with the story (which was corrected in the sequel) is that the Yeti look so damn cuddly!
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| OMG LOOKIT THIS!! www.etsy.com/shop/YetiFactory |
I suspect, though, given the few telesnap images, we'd have to come to terms with how Padmasambhava's age makeup really didn't work. It looked like someone made a latex mask for actor Wolfe Morris, but then kept using it long after it had gone slack, and the edges of the mask are freely visible, but that's just in the filmed sequences; in the studio it looks like there's no mask at all, and it undercuts his sinister performance. This was one moment where the re-conception in the animation was an improvement, re-envisioning him as a cadaver kept alive by the Intelligence, which then turns to dust once the Intelligence is repelled.
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| He's looked worse... |
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| He's looked better... |
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| He's definitely looked better. |
Poor Victoria, as she would repeatedly endure, has no agency, exists to be a damsel in distress, and when she's hypnotized to say "There is great danger, you must take me away, take me away, take me away!!" in ep five and six it's... not much different from how she was the rest of the time.
Tidbits
There was longstanding myth regarding David Baron (Ralpachan). Because the Nobel Laureate playwright Harold Pinter had used the stage name David Baron in his early days as an actor, some supposed that Pinter himself actually played Ralpachan. He didn't, though it would've quelled the rumor long ago if they looked more different.
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| Harold Pinter |
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| Not Harold Pinter |
The week of location shooting in Snowdonia, Wales, did not go smoothly. Two days of rain quashed any hope for snow, delayed the shooting schedule, and rendered the hilly countryside quite muddy and hazardous, particularly for the Yeti operators.
To avoid the previous production block's ludicrously slim margin of one week between taping and broadcast, the studio scenes of episodes one and two were simultaneously rehearsed, then taped on the same weekend, creating a slightly more manageable margin of three weeks for the remainder of the production block.
Do you utterly despise The Da Vinci Code as much as I? Well, co-writer Henry Lincoln is partially to blame. He co-authored the non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which proposes that the Merovingian line of ancient Frankish kings were direct descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Jesus Christ, which unfortunately inspired Dan Brown's godawful novel.
An effects shot was made of Padmasambhava's head shriveling as he died, but it was considered too horrifying to use. The film is almost certainly lost, alas.
Setting this story in the 1930's seems a bit random, as the lack of 20th century technology could easily place this story 50-100 years sooner, though the Yeti did not become part of English popular culture until the 20's and 30's. This does set up Travers's return in more-or-less present day London in "Web of Fear," establishing at least 30 years' elapse of time, though it's generally assumed that the UNIT stories all happen five or so years in the future, i.e. the early-mid 1970's, and Sarah Jane declares "I'm from 1980" in "Pyramids of Mars" (a 1975 story), before "Mawdryn Undead" blows the UNIT dating all to hell.
Haisman and Lincoln were commissioned to write a sequel before production was even complete.
Haven't I Seen You Somewhere In The Future?
- Jack Watling, father of Deborah, returned as Travers in the sequel "Web of Fear," the first non-villain recurring guest character.
- Wolfe Morris (Padmasambhava) appeared with Patrick Troughton in the BBC's epic 1970 miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and also appeared in the 1957 Hammer film "The Abominable Snowman" - no relation.
- Charles Morgan (Songsten) also appeared as Gold Usher in "The Invasion of Time."
- Norman Jones (Khrisong) also appeared as Major Baker in "Ambassadors of Death" and Heironymous in "Masque of Mandragora."
- David Spencer (Thonmi) was the longtime partner of Doctor Who writer/editor/actor Victor Pemberton.
- The four credited actors in the Yeti suits have made multiple appearances as Cybermen, Ice Warriors, etc.
Do the BIPOC actors' characters survive? Technically not applicable, as all the Tibetan monks are played by actors of British descent.
Sausage Factor: 100% (the entire cast, save Victoria, is male)
Rating: Two and a Half OMG YETI STUFFIES out of Four
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John Geoffrion is a semi-retired semi-professional thespian, a professional data guy, and a Dad. He usually falls asleep to the Classic Doctor Who channel on Pluto.tv
I have this on DVD but haven't watched it yet. It seems like it's time to do so! I've not read or watch any movies based on The Da Vinci Code, so can't say anything on that, but you make it sound dreadful.
ReplyDeleteOne does have to wonder just how many actors of Chinese or Tibetan descent were readily available for a low-budget BBC series in late 1960s Britain. I mean, it's not as though it was Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteAh, The Da Vinci Code. I'll confess, I rather enjoy the film as harmless schlock, if for no other reasons than Ian McKellen and Jean Reno. Audrey Tautou is good, too, and Tom Hanks is at peak earnestness.
But the best part is wading through all the dissections of the film and the book as the entire thesis is shredded by any number of competent historians with no more effort than is required to stir the morning's coffee. I can spend a couple of happy hours perusing just the Goofs section of the IMdB entry, or the Wikipedia article. It really is utter rubbish, not the leaste part of which is the idea that 'Da Vinci' is Leonardo's surname.
Still! Brain-dead fun!
Dan Brown is what you get when you order Umberto Eco on Wish.
ReplyDelete