Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen

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The Abominable Snowmen is the second serial of Season 5 of the classic Doctor Who series. Originally broadcast in six weekly parts from 30 September to 4 November 1967. It was written by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln and directed by Gerald Blake. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield, Jack Watling as Professor Travers, and Wolfe Morris as Padmasambhava.

The TARDIS lands in the Himalayas in 1935, where the Doctor returns a sacred bell to a remote monastery and finds fear growing over attacks blamed on abominable snowmen. Strange footprints, silent Yeti, and a nervous scientific expedition point to a hidden force, the Great Intelligence, using the Yeti as its tools. The Doctor works to win the monks’ trust, Jamie scouts the mountains with courage, and Victoria discovers clues inside the monastery. With calm patience and quick thinking, the Doctor uncovers the mind behind the menace and fights to free the monastery from control. Only Episode 2 survives in the BBC archives, but the full story has been reconstructed using animation and surviving audio.

Episode 1

The TARDIS sets down in the high Himalayas. Snow whips across the rocks as the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria bundle up and take in the vast, echoing silence. The Doctor grows reflective; he has been here before, a long time ago, and carries a small bell (the ghanta) he promised to return. He heads for the remote Det-Sen monastery and meets the novice Thomni, only to be seized by warrior monks led by Khrisong after a Yeti attack nearby.

In the confusion, the Doctor is accused of spying and murder. Meanwhile, Jamie and Victoria are found by Professor Edward Travers, a gruff explorer convinced the legendary abominable snowmen are real. He thinks their arrival has scared the creatures away and pushes on toward the mountains. At Det-Sen, the Doctor is taken before the High Lama Padmasambhava, who speaks softly from behind a screen and greets him as an old friend, yet begs him to leave at once.

The Abbot Songsten insists the monastery’s safety depends on obedience. Outside, great footprints circle in the snow. The Doctor returns the ghanta, winning some trust, but Khrisong keeps him under guard. As night falls, an immense, furred shape watches the monastery walls, and a plan moves beneath the chanting and bells.

Episode 2

Travers hunts Yeti in the passes and reluctantly accepts Jamie and Victoria’s help. They discover a cave marked by triangular stones and abandoned wooden crates that hide smooth metal spheres: odd treasures for wild mountains. Back at Det-Sen, the Doctor argues that the Yeti are not what they seem and that the danger comes from within as much as without. His return of the ghanta softens the monks, but Khrisong refuses to lower his spear.

The Doctor gains a chance to examine a captured Yeti. Up close it is wrong, too regular, too heavy. He finds an empty socket in its chest. At dusk a silver sphere rolls into the courtyard as if following a scent. It taps gently at the Yeti’s chest plate, hunting a way in. Thomni helps the Doctor hide it, but during prayers the sphere vanishes. In the inner sanctum, Padmasambhava sits motionless, voice calm and ancient, while unseen devices pulse behind him.

Songsten carries sealed instructions no one else may read. Out on the slope, more hulking silhouettes gather. The Doctor sketches a theory: the Yeti are controlled from a distance, the spheres are their hearts, and someone, something, inside the monastery is guiding them toward Det-Sen’s gates.

Episode 3

The missing sphere finds its mark. With a snap of latches, the captured Yeti’s chest closes; its eyes glow, and it lurches to life, smashing through a door before the monks can react. Panic ripples along the cloisters. Khrisong rallies the defenders, tying warning bells across the paths, while the Doctor follows scorched traces to a hidden panel of wires and coils.

He tells Thomni that a bodiless “Great Intelligence” is using the monastery as a focus through Padmasambhava, who is too venerable and gentle to resist it alone. Travers, embarrassed by his scepticism, returns with Jamie from the cave and acknowledges the Yeti are automata, not animals. Jamie pockets one of the spare spheres and vows to help the Doctor find a way to turn the creatures against their master. Victoria, seeking the truth, slips toward the sanctum and hears Padmasambhava speaking to an unseen voice, pleading for the lives of the monks even as he orders the Yeti to surround the walls.

Songsten obeys the private instructions to the letter, moving sacred objects to new positions. By sundown, the monastery is ringed with silent guardians. The Doctor warns that the siege is only the beginning; something larger is waking in the mountains.

Episode 4

The assault begins. Yeti loom out of the snow and batter at the gates while monks fight with spears and prayer flags whipping like pennants in the wind. In the first clash Khrisong dies, cut down as he tries to drag a Yeti back from the threshold, and the defenders recoil in grief. The Doctor seizes the moment to examine the remains of a damaged creature and confirms the spheres broadcast orders from a control point connected to the sanctum and the cave.

He and Jamie jury-rig a sphere with a simple switch, hoping to break the chain. Travers, now an ally, maps the cave passages and marks a chamber that hums like a hive. Within the monastery, Victoria reaches Padmasambhava and glimpses the truth: a frail, compassionate man held upright by an inhuman will. He begs her to leave before the Intelligence uses his mouth to speak again.

Songsten, still under the influence, opens an inner door and the Yeti step, reverent and terrible, across a line no creature has crossed in years. The Doctor gathers those who will trust him and lays out a plan: neutralise the control chamber in the cave, then confront the Intelligence without destroying the High Lama’s body.

Episode 5

Jamie and Thomni lead a party to the cave with Travers, threading through drifts while Yeti patrol above them like moving boulders. In a central chamber they find a lattice of pyramids and cables, the air prickling as if charged with thunder. Jamie snaps leads and plants the altered sphere, hoping to command a single Yeti as a counterweight. At Det-Sen, the Doctor completes delicate adjustments and coaxes Victoria’s courage with a promise: he will try to free Padmasambhava without harm.

The Intelligence answers by extending itself. A pressure mounts in the monastery, extinguishing lamps and dulling voices. Chants falter. A rank of Yeti files into the courtyard and simply stands, waiting. Songsten denounces the Doctor as the cause of their suffering; several monks waver and then rally to Thomni’s side.

Jamie’s device clicks. One Yeti hesitates, turns, and bows to him like a soldier awaiting orders. With a grin, Jamie sends it forward to clear a path and then races back toward Det-Sen. The Doctor loosens the final screws on his improvised control and asks Victoria to stand ready by the door. To end the siege, he must go into the sanctum and face the Intelligence where it lives.

Episode 6

The Doctor steps through the curtains. Padmasambhava opens his eyes, and the room chills. The Great Intelligence speaks with his voice, promising knowledge if the Doctor will yield and threatening to draw off his mind if he will not. The Doctor stalls gently, reconnecting a lead here, moving a bell there, inviting the man beneath the power to remember.

Outside, Jamie arrives with his single obedient Yeti and uses it as a battering ram against its kind while Thomni and the monks force Songsten’s hand and break his trance. In the cave, Travers wrecks the pyramid lattice. The control field lurches; the ranks in the courtyard sway. Padmasambhava clenches the chair arms as the Intelligence tries to anchor itself in him and reach for the Doctor. At the last moment the Doctor throws his switch. The altered sphere and the damaged lattice throw the feedback inward.

The Yeti freeze where they stand, then collapse like discarded mannequins. In the sanctum, the old man sighs, freed, and thanks the Doctor with his last breath. The Intelligence ebbs like mist and is gone. Afterwards, the monks light butter lamps for the fallen. Travers, stepping onto the ridge, finally sees a living, shaggy silhouette far off and laughs aloud. The travellers slip away into the snow.

Themes

As chilled folk-horror, The Abominable Snowmen is an atmospheric high point of Season 5. It is less iconic than The Tomb of the Cybermen and not as white-knuckle as its sequel The Web of Fear, but more haunting and contemplative. The misted Himalayas, Padmasambhava’s eerie possession, and Patrick Troughton’s gentle curiosity give it a quiet power that lingers.

Among siege tales it sits comfortably beside The Ice Warriors and Fury from the Deep for patience and mood, trading spectacle for mythic texture. It’s a story that breathes, and that confidence places it just a notch below the era’s absolute heavy hitters.

Linking past to future, it follows The Tomb of the Cybermen and points straight toward The Web of Fear, where the Yeti return and the series pivots toward UNIT via Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, leading into The Invasion. More importantly, it establishes the Great Intelligence, whose shadow stretches far ahead into The Snowmen, The Bells of Saint John, and The Name of the Doctor.

From the quiet of Det-Sen Monastery, the TARDIS team steps next into the tightening rhythms of The Ice Warriors and then The Enemy of the World: proof that this serene, uncanny adventure is both a self-contained haunt and a doorway to the battles to come.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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