In Review: Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen (Blu Ray)

Synopsis: The Abominable Snowmen sees the Tardis pay a visit to the Himalayas where the Doctor decides to pay a visit to Det-Sen monastery. There, he and his companions find themselves in the midst of a mystery involving an ominous but familiar threat.

The Story

The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria pay a visit to the Himalayas where they find themselves accused of Murder by famed explorer Edward Travers who is there to study the mysterious yeti. However, it soon becomes apparent that the Doctor and his friends are innocent of the crime as the once docile Yetis turn aggressive and attack the monastery and the monks. After some investigating it is revealed that The Great Intelligence is involved and has taken The Doctor’s old friend as its human host and has been operating the various parts of its plan from the monastery.

The Acting

Patrick Troughton is as brilliant as ever as The Doctor and still remains one of my favorite actors in the role from the classic run of the show. However, in this story, it’s Deborah Watling who really stands out and gets a fair bit to do as Victoria. Indeed this is a far cry from the version of Victoria that most of us would have seen in the earlier ‘Tomb of The Cybermen’ story, which does get referenced in this story when Jamie (Frazer Hines) makes a passing comment.

Also good in his role is Jack Watling as Edward Travers who is determined to find his Yeti. Walking does a great job of bringing us the obsessed adventurer and gets a nice moment at the close of the episode.

Blu Ray Extras

Obviously, with 5 parts of this six-part story having gone missing back in the 60s. This animated set is the first time we have got to see the entire story and thanks to the creators of this animation. There are several options on how to view it, which are spread out across the three Blu-Ray disks. Disk One includes the Black and White animated version. Disk Two includes the colour version and Disk Three includes the restored surviving episode 2 and photographic reconstructions of episodes 1,3,4,5, and 6.

Other extras include The making of documentary, Audio Commentaries, some 8mm Home Movie Footage, an archive interview with the stories writer Mervyn Haisman, a Photo Gallery, a Teaser Trailer, and some PDF Rom Content.

Overall

When I first heard about The Abominable Snowmen Doctor Who story back in the 80s. It has been one of those stories that I had always wanted to see. So naturally, I pre-ordered this set as soon as it became available and was not disappointed.

I found myself glued to the TV as I watched this intriguing mystery story unravel over the six episodes. We get great performances from all the actors and The Yeti make for an interesting monster that is fairly harmless unless given their orders.

Overall The Abominable Snowmen has to be amongst the best second Doctor Stories. And I’m so grateful that the BBC managed to keep hold of all the surviving audio so this story could be animated.