Yeti (Doctor Who)
| Yeti | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who race | |
.jpg) A Yeti on display at the Doctor Who Experience | |
| First appearance | The Abominable Snowmen (1967) |
| Last appearance | Downtime (1995) |
| In-universe information | |
| Home world | Earth |
| Type | Robots |
| Affiliation | The Great Intelligence |
The Yeti are fictional robots from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. They were originally created by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen, where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. The Yeti resemble the cryptozoological creatures also called the Yeti, and serve the Great Intelligence, a disembodied entity from another dimension, which first appeared trying to form a physical body so as to conquer the Earth.
The Yeti's concept arose as a result of a discussion between Troughton, Lincoln, and Haisman, and soon was pitched to the show's production office. The serial was taken on out of a desire for more on-location shooting, necessitated by the Yeti's debut script, and the fact the team needed a replacement for the Daleks, another monster that had recently been written out of the series. Producer Peter Bryant, predicting they would be a success with audiences, commissioned another serial featuring the Yeti to follow shortly after their debut. Disagreements arose between Lincoln and Haisman with the BBC in 1968 over a serial introducing another new monster led to the writers' departure from the series and the retirement of the Yeti as antagonists in the main series, though one appeared in a cameo in 1983 serial "The Five Doctors", and they have recurred frequently in spin-off media, including the 1995 direct to video film Downtime.
The Yeti were incredibly popular monsters at the time of their introduction to the series, with actor Jon Pertwee known for quoting that "There is nothing more frightening than to find a Yeti sitting on your loo in Tooting Bec" in regards to the success of the series' earthbound formula. The Yeti have been the subject of analysis.
History
[edit]The Yeti appeared twice in the fifth season of the series as adversaries of the Doctor's second incarnation (Patrick Troughton). They are introduced in the 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen guarding a cave near a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, scaring or killing travellers. The Yeti robots are protecting a pyramid of spheres that house the Great Intelligence, who has also possessed the body of the High Lama Padmasamabhava (Wolfe Morris) ever since encountering the man on the astral plane some centuries ago. Using Padmasambhava the Great Intelligence moves small Yeti pieces around a chess-like map of the monastery and mountainside. The Great Intelligence intends to create a physical body for itself, but these plans are foiled by the Doctor and his companions.[1] With the Intelligence banished back to the astral plane the Yeti fall dormant. Several Yeti curiosities are taken back to England by Travers (Jack Watling), who had come in the hopes of encountering the real Yeti.
In The Web of Fear, aired in 1968 and set forty years after The Abominable Snowmen, the Yeti artifacts that Travers brought to England reawaken due to the return of the Great Intelligence.[2] The Yeti then subjugate London and engulf the Underground in web. The only resistance offered is by a band of soldiers, led first by Captain Knight (Ralph Watson) and then by Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), with scientific support provided by Travers, his daughter Anne Travers (Tina Packer) and later the Doctor. The invasion of the London Underground is revealed as a trap designed to draw in the Doctor so that the Great Intelligence can drain the Doctor's mind, but it is again defeated and banished.[2]
A Yeti is also one of the creatures featured in the 1983 episode "The Five Doctors" and is encountered by the second Doctor and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) as they cross through the Death Zone.[3]
Spin-off media
[edit]Yeti and the Great Intelligence are featured in the 1994 spin-off video Downtime, produced by Reeltime and featuring Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) with a now deceased Professor Travers (Jack Watling) serving as a vessel for the Intelligence. Here the Great Intelligence plans on infecting the Internet so as to use it as a new body, using control spheres to transform humans into Yeti servants. Downtime was novelised by Marc Platt as part of Virgin's Missing Adventures range in 1996.
The Yeti also appear in the 1995 Missing Adventure Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton, where the summoning of a creature from the universe to come goes wrong and instead sees the Great Intelligence merged with that entity. This creates an altered London based on contradictory physical laws and populated by demons and sorcerers, forcing altered versions of the Sixth Doctor and his companion Mel (transformed into the Valeyard and a technomancer named Melaphyre) to restore London before the reality tears itself apart. Millennial Rites follows the New Adventure All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, published in 1994, in identifying the Great Intelligence with H. P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, a being from the universe before this one. The Great Intelligence also appeared in a back-up comic strip in Doctor Who Weekly #31–#34. Yeti robots were also among the monsters to appear in the 1997 video game Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors.
Collectable models of the Yeti were released as merchandise.[4]
Conception and development
[edit]Creation
[edit]
The Yeti were created after Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman had spoken with then-lead actor Patrick Troughton, who expressed disappointment in the lack of Earth-bound stories in his first season as the Doctor, Lincoln chose the stories of the yeti as a suitable concept around which to create a serial for the program,[5] as it was a creature people would be familiar with and could reasonably be adapted as it never was found.[4] The two brought up the idea with Troughton, who was interested in the idea and had wanted to be in a story with yeti himself. Producer Innes Lloyd was interested in doing an episode set in the Himalayas, and also saw the monsters as a potential replacement for the Daleks.[4] The Yeti, alongside other contemporary villains such as the Cybermen and Ice Warriors, were one of many antagonists Lloyd wished to use to replace the Daleks, which had recently been written out of the program.[6][7]
The Yeti's debut serial was subsequently commissioned for six episodes. Lincoln and Haisman, before they had started scripting, ironed out designs for the Yeti, including the original concept for the Yetis' control spheres. They wanted the Yeti to look cuddly and friendly so that their strength would come as a surprise to viewers. The pair quickly realized the Yeti would likely not be sentient, thus creating the Great Intelligence in order to act as their controller.[4]
Three days prior to the airing of The Abominable Snowmen, the production team predicted the serial would be popular, and thus already commissioned a sequel episode to include the Yeti. Producer Peter Bryant, knowing his tenure as producer was over soon, wanted to also bring in more monsters before he was out of the role, as he believed they were popular with the public.[4] Disagreements arose between Lincoln and Haisman with the BBC in 1968 over a serial introducing another new monster, The Dominators, leading to the writers' departure from the series and the retirement of the Yeti as antagonists.[5]
Design
[edit]
The Yeti costumes by Martin Baugh in both of their appearances.[8][9] The original Yeti costume used latex hands and feet, with Cybermat props being re-used for elements of the control spheres in the costume's chest. The costume used a bamboo base and were largely one piece, with a head piece placed on top of the main body. A small slit was available underneath the Yeti's "nose" to act as eyeholes for the actor. Four of these Yeti costumes were produced for the serial. A central box was placed in the costume's chest for the control sphere, which was largely covered by the costume's fur, which could be lifted as needed for shots requiring the control sphere. The costumes were hot, requiring actors to dress lightly underneath to avoid overheating.[4] Bad weather on location made the Yeti costumes "flop" and thus appear more "cuddly" than originally portrayed. The slopes needed for the serial's location also became slippery, making filming hazardous for Yeti actors. Hairdryers were used to re-fluff the Yetis' costumes after they got too wet. A real yeti, seen at the end of the serial, re-used the original Yeti costume, though with much of the stuffing and framework removed to allow it to run away, as the fully formed Yeti costumes could not move quickly.[4]
For their re-appearance in The Web of Fear, the costumes had already started to deteriorate, and many had criticized the "cuddly" Yeti designs. As a result, the next design was made to be "rougher", with glowing eyes.[9] They used yak hair for their construction instead, were slightly smaller size-wise than the originals, and wield "web guns" to attack. They were constructed by freelance prop builders Jack and John Lowell. The Yeti used "web guns" in this serial to attack.[4] The team ran into problems with the Yeti, as several action sequences could not be performed, such as a scene where a Yeti lifts and throws a soldier, due to how heavy the costumes were. Director Douglas Camfield grew to dislike the Yeti, finding them limiting in stories. An original Yeti costume was used in the serial as a display piece in a museum, with the old model being transitioned to the new model during the serial's events.[4]
Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop also developed a Yeti roar for the Yetis' second appearance. created by slowing down the sound of a flushing toilet.[10] The control sphere sound effects were also done by Hodgson, and were used in both Yeti serials.[4] The Yeti were portrayed by various actors across their two appearances.[4]
Reception and legacy
[edit]After the death of co-creator Mervyn Haisman, The Guardian's obituary called the Yeti his 'lasting legacy' to the series, noting how the monsters quickly found popularity among viewers.[5] Third Doctor actor Jon Pertwee is known for commenting that nothing frightened an audience more than "a Yeti on your loo in Tooting Bec", which he used to defend the successful Earthbound format of the series.[4][11] Writing in A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television, critic John Kenneth Muir stated that the concept of a "hairy beast" actually being a robot was so popular it inspired other similar creatures, such as a robotic sasquatch on the show The Six Million Dollar Man.[12]
Simon Morgan-Russell, writing in the piece An Enemy Within: The London Underground and Doctor Who's "The Web of Fear", stated that the original Yeti designs featured in The Abominable Snowmen were the epitome of antagonists in the Classic era, stating that they were "awkward, hulking monsters, slowed down by the weight or inflexibility of the actors’ costumes". Morgan-Russell stated that while the Yeti were terrifying figures for children, the threat levelled in their subsequent serial for adults was stated to be more of a result of the social and political climate of the time and how the serial tackled these issues.[13] Graham Sleight commented that the voiceless Yeti robots, and similar monsters such as the Autons and the maggots in The Green Death, are controlled by another entity and are merely there to provide a threat, leading to the Yeti and similar monsters being less interesting than monsters that could talk or reason with the characters.[14]
Media historian James Chapman stated that the Yeti's presence was the start of Doctor Who's recurring motif of using science fiction to explain real-world mythology due to the creatures being revealed as robot minions. He reflects that their second outing, in The Web of Fear, made the Yeti terrifying as a result of their presence in the familiar environment of the London Underground, with their presence being stated by Chapman to have made the Piccadilly line into as scary as "what Psycho had done for motel showers."[15]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Writer Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, Director Gerald Blake, Producer Innes Lloyd (30 September – 4 November 1967). "The Abominable Snowmen". Doctor Who. London. BBC.
- ^ a b Writer Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, Director Douglas Camfield, Producer Peter Bryant (3 February – 3 September 1968). "The Web of Fear". Doctor Who. London. BBC.
- ^ Writer Terrence Dicks, Director Peter Moffatt, Producer John Nathan-Turner (1 February – 25 November 1983). "The Five Doctors". Doctor Who. London. BBC.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ainsworth, John (1 June 2016). Doctor Who: The Complete History: The Abominable Snowmen - The Ice Warriors - The Enemy of the World - The Web of Fear. Hachette Partworks, Panini Publishing.
- ^ a b c Hayward, Anthony (9 December 2010). "Mervyn Haisman obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
- ^ Chapman, James (19 September 2006). Inside the TARDIS: The Worlds of Doctor Who. I B Tauris. p. 53. ISBN 184511163X.
- ^ Jeffery, Morgan (31 August 2012). "Doctor Who's Greatest Dalek Episodes: Friday Fiver". Digital Spy. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
- ^ Britton, Piers (1 June 2003). Reading Between Designs: Visual Imagery and the Generation of Meaning in The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who. University of Texas Press. pp. 136. ISBN 0292709277.
- ^ a b "The Web of Fear: Introduction". BBC. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
- ^ Kevin Davies (director) (1993). Doctor Who: Thirty Years in the TARDIS (Documentary).
- ^ "Obituary: Jon Pertwee". The Independent. 20 May 1996. Retrieved 4 May 2025.
- ^ Muir, John Kenneth (15 September 2015). A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television (in Arabic). McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-0454-1.
- ^ Morgan-Russell, Simon (10 September 2019). "An Enemy Within: The London Underground and Doctor Who's "The Web of Fear"". Journal of Popular Film and Television. 47 (3): 163–170 – via Taylor and Francis Group.
- ^ Sleight, Graham (30 October 2012). The Doctor's Monsters: Meanings of the Monstrous in Doctor Who. I B Tauris. pp. 6, 7. ISBN 978-1848851788.
- ^ Chapman, James (19 September 2006). Inside the TARDIS: The Worlds of Doctor Who. I B Tauris. p. 67. ISBN 184511163X.
