Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 725: Downtime

Dear diary,

I’ve been curious about Downtime for ages. Back when I was first getting in to Doctor Who it seemed like the most amazing thing in the world - the return of three former associates of the Doctor, and of the Yeti after almost 30 years. Of course, at that point there were only two Yeti episodes surviving in the BBC archives, so the thought of a complete story featuring them instantly won extra brownie points. Over the years, I must have seen this story more times than I’ve seen some real episodes of Doctor Who, and you know what? I’ve always been confused by it.

Partly, I think, that’s because I’d never experienced the two Patrick Troughton Yeti adventures. I therefore had no clue why the little wooden carving of a Yeti was so important (and, watching again here, I note that it’s never actually explained), and I was forever getting confused by the fact that Victoria is looking for her own father - who’s long dead - but finds Professor Travers, played by Deborah Watling’s real life father, who goes on to talk about his daughter; meaning Anne. Can you see where my confusion came from? Please say you can.

And yet, somehow, Downtime always remained oddly fascinating to me. I think a certain amount of that comes from the fact that it’s the ultimate example of the programme surviving in any climate. In 1995, it had been six years since the BBC had actively produced a proper new episode of Doctor Who, and through all the false starts of various film projects in the preceding half-decade, didn’t really have much interest in the property. And yet you get a group of fans clubbing together, getting a licence to use various elements that aren’t directly owned by the BBC, and making something new with them, that sits firmly - and comfortably - within the Doctor Who world. I think it’s something to be admired, and actually, it comes off rather well.

Because this time around, I’m actually surprised by just how much I’ve enjoyed this! Truth be told, the main reason I wanted to watch it again was to see if my half-memories of earlier viewings fitted neatly in to the Great Intelligence timeline that I was pondering back during The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear last year (more on that in a moment). But then as I watched, it suddenly became less about simply ticking this one off on the list of things I needed to see for the marathon, and more about simply enjoying it. Certainly, having experienced those earlier Intelligence stories, I’ve managed to follow the plot of this one a whole lot better than ever before, but there’s numerous other things that had troubled me in the past that all fit together perfectly well here - I guess I was too busy worrying about things I didn’t understand before that I missed some important dialogue.

It’s also great to use this story as something of a send-off to ‘classic’ Doctor Who. The TV Movie being isolated out on its own in the middle of the 1990s means that it doesn’t really feel like it belongs lumped in with those earlier Doctors, and the recent reappearance of McGann in the programme means that he feels, if anything, closer to the new series than the old. The appearance of Sylvester McCoy in the film just makes it feel a little bit like a handover between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. So this story is perfectly placed to have a reappearance for Sarah Jane Smith, the Brigadier, and Victoria Waterfield. All three were on hand to celebrate the programme for Dimensions in Time, but in regards to the actually main narrative of the show, the Brig hasn’t been seen in six years, Sarah Jane for more than ten, and our last sight of Victoria was on a beach almost thirty years ago! Bringing them all back together here for a new story alongside an old foe really does work, and introducing Kate Stewart, who’ll go on to be a recurring presence in the revived series later on, makes it feel like another vital part of the ‘Wilderness Years’.

Indeed, I’ve been somewhat struck by just how much this feels like proper Doctor Who, and I even found myself slightly mourning the fact that it’s never had a DVD release with some special features. Several key members of the cast are sadly no longer with us, but it would be nice to see if given some kind of treatment, because it comes across as so much more than ‘just another fan film’.

So. The big question - for me at least - is how this fits in with the timeline I proposed last year. Back then, I suggested that following the defeat of the Intelligence on the Underground, it retreated back onto the Astral Plane, but continued its link with the ‘many human hands’ at its disposal. I think that’s borne out here - Travers has been summoned back to Det Sen and kept alive beyond his years, and Victoria is later brought to the same location, and used to carry out the task. The plan seems to be using the fledgeling internet to carry the Great Intelligence and take over the world… which isn’t a million miles away from the plan we see in The Bells of Saint John. Yeah, I’d say that this fits in rather nicely with what I’ve assumed before - and I’m glad about that! I’ll keep reviewing the situation when we reach Season Seven in a few month’s time, but I think for now this is going in as part of my personal ‘canon’ when it comes to Doctor Who.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 186: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Six

Dear diary,

This final episode of the story has made me even more convinced that my new timeline for the Great Intelligence might just work. There's a point where we're told Padmasambhava had slaved for around 200 years to build the robot Yeti and 'all the other wonderful machines'. Yeah, yeah, I know it's meant to be referring to the Control Spheres and the little Yeti playing pieces, but in my mind now, he also build a machine that allowed the Great Intelligence to possess the snow, thus setting him off on his course to London and Doctor Simeon. What do you mean 'grasping at straws'?

Sadly, though, trying to fit the Great Intelligence's appearances together in a coherent timeline has been the thing I've enjoyed most about The Abominable Snowmen. It's a real shame, but I just couldn't seem to get into it. I think - and I've said this about the story before - that it's one which would fare better with me if I could actually watch it. The tele snaps give the impression of it looking very dark and mysterious, with some wide open locations (they look nice enough in the surviving episode) and some interesting performances.

In other ways, the story is almost designed for audio, with the beeping spheres, the dark ominous voices and it's digetic soundtrack. There's a lot in there which you can very easily imagine Big Finish doing in a release, and they're experts at making Doctor Who for an audio medium.

This final episode, especially, is ripe for listening to through headphones (and probably the perfect example of why so many people think the series would work best on autumn evenings, when the nights have drawn in and there's leaves blowing around outside). The final confrontation between the Doctor and Padmasambhava is extremely effective, as the Doctor warns his companions to trust him, before heading out of the room, and almost immediately issuing a bloodcurdling scream.

It's rare that we see the Doctor in such a situation - he's not always one step ahead of the game, but he is the one who usually comes up with a plan and reassures us that everything is going to be all right. In the same way that the TARDIS is automatically our 'safe' place at the start and end of each tale (even the Doctor uses it here, when trying to convince Victoria that she's safe), the Doctor is the man who makes things all right. With the exemption of that early-Season-Three period in which he seemed to lose at the end of every story, the Doctor is the one that you can feel safe with. To hear him in such pain and terror… that's chilling.

And yet, in spite of several really brilliant moments like this in the final episode, and throughout the story, The Abominable Snowmen just hasn't really grabbed me. Throughout, people have mused to me that it's a favourite of theirs, but the one thing that seems to come up time and time again is that The Web of Fear does the Yeti story better. I'm hoping I'll think so too in a few weeks time…

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 185: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Five

Dear diary,

The more I look at the tele snaps for this story, the more I think the Yeti look brilliant. They just do! There's a shot early on in this episode where three of the beasts make their way across the courtyard of the monastery, and it just looks brilliant. What with the Cybermen in the last story and the Ice Warriors coming up in the next one, there's certainly a lot of tall monsters around in this season.

I'm also finding that I like the idea of the Yeti being controlled by the small models more and more, too. Though I've never seen The Abominable Snowmen before, I have seen Downtime more than once (for my sins, though I still think it would have been great adapted into a Sarah Jane Adventures story - imagine Yeti stomping their way up Bannerman Road!), and I'd never quite understood the point of the little wooden Yeti that's so key to the plot there.

Actually, there's quite a lot about Downtime that's confused me over the years, and I think that might be one of the resins I've never really managed to get my head around the Great Intelligence. For some reason, my mind goes all over the place in Downtime, and gets confused about Victoria looking for her dead father in Det Sen Monastery, where she encounters the long-dead Travers (who's played by Watling's real-life dad… see how I manage to confuse myself?), and then there's some stuff about the Yeti invasion of London, which is still to come for me in the marathon…

As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm still struggling to tie up the Great Intelligence we see here with the one from The Snowmen, The Bells of St. John, and The Name of the Doctor. Piecing together what I've gotten from this story and what I vaguely recall from the last series of Who, this is what I think the Intelligence's timeline is like. Anyone care to point me in the right direction? I've made a bit of a guess in relation to how the Intelligence came to Earth, so bear with me…

1) The Great Intelligence is a formless entity that floats around the stars. It may or may not be (depending on how you class the books) a being left over from a previous universe. While it's very intelligent, it longs to have a physical form.

2) While it's floating around, wondering how to gain a physical body, he encounters Padmasamabhava's mind on the Astral Plane, somewhere around the 17th Century. Using the monk's mind, he is drawn to Earth but cannot materialise. He intends to replace humanity with Ice People (that's his plan in The Snowmen, I think…), and so possesses some snow in the Himalayas, and directed it to London (Britain is a great empire at this point - you want to take over the world? London is a good place to start…).

3) The snow is then made into a snowman by the young Simeon, who grows up under the Intelligences guidance. The Doctor manages to defeat the Intelligence, dropping a big hint about the London Underground (while also seeming to not realise who the Intelligence is) and then muses that it will learn to live without a host body.

4) Upon defeat, the Intelligence draws back to the Astral Plane, where he's still in contact with Padmasamabhava, and has kept the monk alive for centuries. He starts work on a new plan which will allow him to take the form of a load of foam. Y'know, just 'cos. He then builds robot Yeti to protect his pyramids - the means through which his new form can enter the world.

Now, I've not seen The Web of Fear yet, but I think I can more-or-less guess where things go from here (broadly speaking, anyway). I don't want to make some massive assumptions and look like a complete fool if I'm wrong, though, so we'll pick this timeline up in a couple of weeks when the Intelligence makes a comeback. It's taking some thinking, but I'm pretty sure I've got it worked out nicely, now, and it makes sense!

The problem is, while I quite like the grand idea of it (and if things go the way I think during The Web of Fear, there's suddenly more justification for the Great Intelligence committing suicide to destroy the Doctor at the end of the most recent series), I'm still just not all that involved in The Abominable Snowmen as a whole. Ho hum, one more episode to go, and I'm expecting lots of Yeti action, so that could be good!

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 183: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Somewhere in my mass of notes for The Tomb of the Cybermen, I made a remark that it was a slight twist on the base-under-siege format, as the 'heroes' and the 'villains' were both inside the base, and it was more about trying to stop them from getting to a certain part of the base, or using a certain type of equipment. When the first episode of this tale told us that the Yeti had been getting more aggressive and heading closer and closer to the monastery, I thought we were in for a more run-of-the-mill adventure, with the bad guys attacking the base.

So the presence here of the Yeti being controlled from within the monastery is a welcome surprise. As I said yesterday, I know who is behind it all, but not how he operates, and I didn't realise he was going to be actively inside the building. It does make me wonder quite why the Great Intelligence would be brining the Yeti closer and closer to the place he (or, at least, his mouthpiece) is hiding in, though…

I'm also trying to piece together the Great Intelligence's timeline. In The Snowmen (How did I not figure out the surprise appearance until well into the episode - given that title?), the Doctor comments that the Intelligence will learn to operate without a physical form. This was in the late Victorian period - thirty or forty years before this tale is set. I thought, what with the disembodied voice and all, that we'd be seeing just that: the Great Intelligence working without a body. Don't get me wrong, I didn't actually expect it to match up perfectly with a story made forty-odd years later, but I did think that these event would have been taken into account when writing that Christmas special.

As it is… I'm not completely sure. It feels like a massive step backwards for the Intelligence. Yes, the robot Yeti are quite impressive and the control spheres are pretty cool, but they're nowhere near as advanced as the sentient snow he'd been using decades ago. Is it just because he's weak? Equally, were told here that the Intelligence will finally be able to gain physical form, and end its wanderings in space… I know it could have been floating around the stars ever since the Doctor destroyed it's previous host body, but the wording here imp lies a long period of not having any kind of physical form.

These things would probably bother me less if I hadn't seen the Christmas episode so recently (well, last Christmas), and they're only minor niggles for now. I'm also very aware that I'm only half way through The Abominable Snowmen at this point, and things may tie up neater towards the end. Hopefully.

I'm not all about complaining today, though, because Victoria's being given plenty to do again! Hooray! She's been a bit of a yo-yo so far, flitting between simply being there to scream ('Jamiiiiieeeeee!') and being a good companion - for much of today's episode she's firmly in the latter camp. 'Aren't you a little bit curious?' she asks when trying to find her way to the inner sanctum, and she's later warned off being too inquisitive. When she finds out that the Doctor and Jamie have gone off to hunt a Yeti, she's really not pleased to be left behind. We're a far cry from the feeble prisoner of the Daleks we had a couple of stories ago, and I'm very pleased to see that she does have potential…

a 

a  a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 182: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

As much as I've been enjoying listening to the soundtracks over the last couple of months (it's become a way of life, and having an episode on during my walk home each day has become something of a routine), it really does help when there's an actual, surviving episode to go on. I think I was rather spoiled by having all of The Tomb of the Cybermen to watch, so it felt like a bit of a step backwards to have little to base yesterday's episode on than tele snaps and location photos.

I've found myself far more drawn to this episode of the story than I did yesterday. In part, it's possibly because there's a bit more going on today than we had yesterday, but it doesn't hurt that if we do encounter a less interesting part of the story, it's got some lovely direction to fall back on. This is Gerald Blake's first time directing on Doctor Who (and he won't be back until The Invasion of Time!), but he's off to a great start, really injecting the story with some atmosphere.

The dark corridors of the monastery really are the perfect setting for a Doctor Who tale, and the rest of the building holds up in its design, too. There's a section of narration on the soundtrack to Episode One where Frazer Hines describes the Doctor looking up at a large statue of a Buddah, and I vaguely pictured something of a manageable size… but there really is a massive statue at the back of one set!

Equally, the location footage looks great. The story gets a lot of stick for using the mountains of North Wales as a stand in for the Himalayas and while, no, it doesn't quite work, I'm ready to admit that it gives it a good shot, and it certainly looks impressive enough anyway. I seem to say this a lot as the shoe continues to broaden out into more varied (and lengthier) location shooting, but it really does have a feel of being completely unlike any other place we've seen before in the series. Mind you, doesn't Victoria say something about footprints in the snow in the first episode?

And then you've got the Yeti themselves. Often called out for being quite cute (which, yes, they are) they still come across as pretty impressive here. The cliffhanger reprise gives us a chance to see one of them lumbering into the cave towards Jamie and Victoria, and it looks as good as I could have hoped it might from picturing it yesterday. Admittedly, they look a little less imposing when they stand around outside the monastery and watch their friend be trapped, but they still look quite good. It's a pity that we've never had that action figure of them - I'd snap one up.

The Yeti's spheres are pretty impressive, too, perhaps even more so than the creatures themselves. We get to see a couple of instances of them moving here without any apparent outside help, and it works well both times. I'm not sure if it's more impressive to see that it actually can move through the thick mud (K9 would wince at the idea!) or the shot of it rolling along the edge of the Buddah statue, at some speed. I'm guessing the story would see more of this going on in the later (missing) episodes, so I'm glad we get to see at least a few brief snippets of it happening in the part that survives: at least it shows me that they could do it well!

Because I've been a fan for several years, I'm more than well aware that the omnipresent voice echoing through the inner sanctum of the monastery is that of the Great Intelligence, but it doesn't take anything away from it - it genuinely is quite imposing. 'Do not be afraid,' it booms at one point, when it's hard to be anything else! Having just gone through the most recent series of Doctor Who, I keep expecting Richard E Gran't face to appear in the smoke from the candles at some point. Maybe as an anniversary treat, they could have him re-dub all of the Great Intelligence's lines?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 181: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode One

Dear diary,

I think it's more than fair to say that whatever had to follow The Tomb of the Cybermen for me was going to have a tough job to keep me impressed, and I'm sorry to say that the first episode of The Abominable Snowmen has left me rather flat. To tell the truth, I think it really is as simple as me being disappointed that it isn't another episode of Tomb, because there's plenty here that would be right up my street in any other circumstance.

There's two areas of the story's setting that should particularly appeal to me. The fact that it all takes place in-and-around a remote monastery in the Himalayan mountains means that I've got an instant hook - take a Google Image search of these monasteries, there's some beautiful examples of them. They're just the right setting for a Doctor Who story, and especially suited to a base under siege tale - there's no one else for miles and miles around. I'm listening to today's episode on audio, so I've been picturing a desolate mountainside shrouded in snow and fog, though I fear tomorrow's episode may not tie in with that, if the location photos are anything to go by!

Quite aside from the location of the story, it's set in a period of history that really interests me - that late 1920s/early 1930s period where there were still areas of the Earth, to be explored. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know that we've still not been into the very depths of some rain forests, or to the peaks of every mountain, and the bottom of the sea leaves us with a vast area to explore, but this period in time is the dying days of the stereotypical 'explorer' image, when you can still sail out to sea and discover a new island which a satellite would have located in seconds today.

Then there's the idea of hinting for the Yeti. I've never really known where I stand on the idea of the Abominable Snowman. I don't think I believe in its existence, or if I do then I think it's probably just a type of rare monkey, and nowhere near as mystical as people think. But I love the idea of those early 20th century explorers going out to look for the creature, and the suggestion that the Doctor is from a newspaper, and there to sabotage the mission for a 'cheap headline' is great - and very in keeping with the era.

We've also got an opening scene that I really should absolutely love - it takes time to show us the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria all hanging around in the TARDIS and having fun together. It feels like an age since we've been able to spend some time inside the ship with our regular cast (I have to admit that I didn't really notice it fading out, but I think The Chase was probably the last time that we really had anything quite like this. Possibly I could cite the opening to The Moonbase where they joke about the Doctor over-shooting Mars).

It's not all fun and games, though, and there's plenty of drama to be found once the Doctor is inside the monastery and being held prisoner by the monks. It's always of interest when the Doctor is separated from his friends and left alone with no allies, and in a setting quite unlike any we've had in the series before, it's always nice to have something new. Jamie and Victoria's exploration of the Yeti cave isn't of as much interest to me, though, and I'm sorry to say I zoned out a little during this (Victoria's screaming soon snapped me back to attention, though!).

Here's hoping that the chance to watch tomorrow's episode will allow me to pull this story out from the previous one's shadow, and set me on a better course for the rest of the tale…

a