The Abominable Snowmen episode 1 discussion:
MS: The Yeti is a mutant dog gone mad.
Sp: “Who dared disturb the domain of the pillow pet!”
R: I just found it amusing that even on a TV show the photographs of the Yeti are blurry.
P: <laugh>
Cz: Oh. Haha! I got the joke!
P: It’s only because he lives a life out of focus.
Sp: So the soundtrack took the week off.
K: Maybe that’s why, or at least one of the reasons why, I find this story so frustrating.
P: The sound of wind was heard.
Sp: But no music. And the monks seem to be a multicultural group.
H: You mean, white, white, white, and white? <running gag> “They would never do anything to offend the Tibetans.”
Sc: Tibetan Buddhism is pretty international religion.
H: Although it’s pretty clear that this is not taking place in modern times.
K: Earlier than the 60’s I think.
Sp: I just wanted them to pick an accent and run with it.
A: At first I thought it was part of the setup. Suddenly there’s all these white guys running the temple, and then, oh, they’re not supposed to be.
Cz: I thought so too! But then they started chanting.
H: So there’s an important first for the history of Doctor Who in this story: In the location filming, Wales stood in for Tibet. It’s the first filming in Wales.
K: Alas, I’m pretty sure they weren’t in Cardiff.
H: No. It’s was in Snowden.
P: Well, there’s an apt name. Here’s a den… in the snow… we’ll call it.
Sp: Cardiff!
H: As you could see from the stills, there was no snow. There was supposed to be, but there wasn’t any. It was pretty cold though, apparently.
K: I wanted to see Jamie play bagpipes!
P: I wanted to hear that!
A: Yeah!
P: That was actually a pretty funny scene.
Cz: Why did the Doctor have that guy’s stuff in his TARDIS.
K: He only had the bell. The bag he found at the tent with the body the Doctor also found.
Cz: Oh! I get it.
Sc: Getting back to Wales, I remember this story from reading the book. So in my mind I always thought of it being in the Himalayas. So it’s funny to see it in Wales. Because there was snow and Mount Everest and stuff in my mind.
Cz: Wouldn’t they have trouble breathing?
H: Well, they might not have been that high up.
Cz: Lame sauce. If you’re gonna to be in the Himalayas, you gotta be in the Himalayas.
Sp: Alright so not a hell of a lot happened this week.
K: Hahahahaha!!!
H: It’s almost as if we were in first episode setup.
K: Hahahahaha!
Sp: We had the funny business in the stagecraft sense of business around the trunk and all the bits the Doctor carried with him and all that. And then mangled accent theater in temple proper. And Travers delivering minor plot dump through the cell door. And then about 18 minutes of spelunking.
K: Hahahahahaha!
H: We know you don’t like this story Ketina. You can stop “hahahaing”
Cz: I kinda liked it, man.
H: I think it moved pretty well, but that’s just me.
A: I liked it.
P: We’re not at wrap up yet! C’mon. So like what about the fact that the Yeti has bird feet. That was interesting to me.
H: I haven’t even mentioned my bit of casting trivia.
Sp: Lay it on us, Historian.
H: The guy who plays Travers…
Sp: Is actually part Yeti on his father’s side!
H: That is way more interesting than where I was going.
Sp: You’re welcome.
H: Anyway. The gentleman who played Travers is named Jack Watling. He happens to be the father of Deb Watling, the young woman who plays Victoria.
A: Cool.
H: I’m getting the feeling you didn’t really enjoy this one, Spoo.
Sp: There just wasn’t much there there. Between the lack of music and the first episode exposition, and the slow pace of monk talk…
H: “Monk talk! Weekends on Fox!”
Sp: That would be more interesting than what we saw, yes.
R: The high video quality of the recon did not do the set design of the monastery any favors.
H: I though the set design was actually fairly impressive, all things considered. But yeah, you could see seams.
A: Keep in mind people originally saw this on much small screens.
R: Like I said, it was the HD. But yeah, you could really tell that the outside of the monastery was made of the finest quality Himalayan cardboard tree planks. The one that really struck me was in the interior courtyard the big square columns painted “round.”
H: I didn’t notice, but I’ll take your word for it.
A: I didn’t notice, but that’s an awesome description.
R: It’s an old level designer trick from the low polygon days. That might be why it caught my notice. I think the set design was really ambitious. And as I said, the only reason we’re probably seeing this is because we’re seeing all of this in much higher resolution than they would have had at the time.
H: To be fair, these are pictures taken off a television screen at the time. So it’s hard to say.
K: I liked the Buddha statue. I thought that looked cool. Although the scale looked hard to read. At first it looked really big, but then you see the Doctor standing in front of it, and it was not so big.
H: To be fair, it’s possible that some of these sets are CGI constructions by the recon team. I’m not so sure.
R: Mostly I just really enjoyed the banter in this episode.
H: So, are we now into final thoughts?
Sc: I liked it.
Cz: I felt like it moved faster than some of the older ones. But only a smidgen. And I liked it. That’s all.
MS: Yeah.
H: What are your final thoughts for the episode?
MS: Nothing.
H: Did you like it?
MS: Yes.
H: Did you like anything specific about it?
MS: ummm… not specifically.
H: Did you have a favorite part?
MS: Everything.
A: I liked the episode. It was very comfortable, because it was so standard Doctor Who episode one setup, so it was easy to sit here and let it wash over me.
R: “Don’t do anything stupid” Doctor leaves. “Jamie, let’s go do something stupid!”
<laughter>
Cz: No, she wasn’t that bad. Jamie was bad in the end.
P: Yeah, I found the “let’s not leave the TARDIS.” “I’m leaving.” “Oh, well, then I guess I better go with you.” to be amusing.
Sp: Historical questions, that made me think of.
H: Uh oh.
Sp: How early on did the Doctor establish that the habit of leaving the companions behind in the TARDIS, instructing them to stay there, and then knowing that they would eventually wonder out on their own anyway. This feels like a Doctor Who trope, and I can’t decide how far back it goes.
K: The Romans.
H: That’s one of my candidates. The TARDIS wasn’t specifically involved…
K: But there was a “stay there” moment with the companions.
H: Except the Doctor didn’t know that they had gone anywhere, because by the Doctor and Vicki got back after Ian and Barbara had finished their adventures.
P: The same exact position is reverse before entering the cave.
H: Victoria starts out wanting to go into the cave, Jamie says no, they go in, Jamie says “let’s explore more of the cave” and Victoria says “No, let’s go, I’m scared.”
R: Admittedly, Jamie has a good point about it being humans in the cave not “beasties.”
H: I liked the line about “I’m not afraid of a man.”
Sp: Yeah. This episode is important to the companions backstory because it establishes that Jamie is not afraid of men, and Victoria is not afraid of bears. If we could find a way to combine Jamie and Victoria, they could enter any downtown bar anywhere.
H: That’s terrible!
Sp: I know.
H: Alright.
P: I kept seeing, at one point, the gong in the background while they were in the courtyard of the monestary. And I’m sitting there thinking, “if they show you a gong <gun> in the first act…”
H: Well see if by episode three…
Sp: “Maybe someone could strike the gong, and Chuck Barris will shoo everybody off the stage, and we can cut out a little early, huh.”
A: And then Gene Gene the Dancing Machine can come out.
H: No no! The unknown comic! The unknown comic!
R: Kids, never use your time machine to go the ’70s.
<discussion of the horrors of the 1970’s for those in the crowd too young to have lived in them.>
H: Okay, getting back on track…
Sp: <peers at the screen thinking…>
K: I’m just curious, Spoo, if you’re going to agree with my already existing assessment of this story by the time we’re finished.
Sp: Why did the Yeti have a big pyramid of bowling balls in his cave?
H: Keep watching! Maybe you’ll find out.
R: “My babies! They’re killing my babies!”
Sp: Horta eggs! It’s a Star Trek / second Doctor cross over! Horta hears a Who!
<groans!>
R: So basically a Horta is a Yeti that’s been lit on fire?
Sp: I did like the CG Yeti. It had about 3.5 seconds of believability to it, and that’s about what we saw. “Oh no! Jamie look out!” and then “Yo Gabba Gabba!” And then stop.
P: I like how the episode name is the Abominable Snowmen, and we have yet to have used that word.
Cz: Wait. There wasn’t even snow!
R: The Abominable Grassman.
P: Is that coming back to the 70’s?
H: Moving on to Ronelyn.
R: “If no one else is going to do something about this, I will!” Krisong is the worst Buddhist ever! “I can’t just sit here!” Buddy, you got into the wrong profession.
P: You’re talking about a religion where people occasionally set themselves on fire.
H: Remember he’s meant to be a temple warrior.
R: Tibetan Buddhist are pretty laid back.
Sp: Obviously this is meant to cue us that he’s the traitor.
P: He’s the one that’s eventually going to get the mask ripped off.
R: Oh god, I hope the Yeti doesn’t turn out to be “Old Man Whithers.”
K: Okay. I have to discuss this one for a bit. The Historican, Ronelyn, and I watched this recon of this story about 5 ½ years ago. This story is what gave us the idea to do the TARDIS project in the first place.
Sp: But you hate this story.
K: I’m getting to that. We also watched this story all in one chunk. This story is why I agreed to watching one episode per week.
H: Although I want to note that you were absolutely convinced that we’d be watching more than one episode a week by “Inside the Spaceship.”
K: I believe it. But then I would remind myself of the Abominable Snowmen, and remember why I only wanted to watch one episode a week.
P: So, what’ you’re saying is a full arc of this story all at once is mind numbing?
K: Yes!
H: So, let me ask you, now that we’re watching one episode a week, do you feel any better about this first episode. I’m going to ask you that every week, now that you’ve brought it.
K: No. But I didn’t dislike the very first bit when we saw it previously. This wasn’t where I had the problem. I did like this part, pretty much based on what we’ve already discussed. I do think the recon is weak, because there’s a LOT of subtitles and a lot of long panning frames with very little action and very few picture changes. Not necessarily blaming the recon folks – it might just be all they had to work with.
P: We know next week’s episode exist. The cliff hanger had the moving bits and no one died, so it wasn’t a censor cut.
H: I actually thought the long pans and whatnot made for a more interesting visual. I thought it helped the recon move along nicely. They took a picture and panned across it to get some movement on the screen. And the captions are just a factor of when the recon was made. Anyway. So, unsurprising I liked this story, but I liked this story. I think it’s got a lot of interesting meat with it, especially with the exotic setting. It informs us a lot on how the British of the time saw the Tibetan setting. It’s clearly influenced by things like “Lost Horizon” and the like. Clearly a historical “Great explorers!” and things like that. I think there’s a lot of interest in this story that hopefully you guys will find as we go.
Sp: So this is some sort of giant colonization metaphor?
H: No.
Sp: And the Yeti are big hairy savages and things? Blunderbusses? Bang? No?
H: Not really. No.
Sp: Clearly this episode gave me too much time to think. Sorry.
