Though it’s a Blu-Ray release bringing back to life the second multi-part story of Doctor Who’s classic fifth season (affectionately known to longtime fans of the original series as “the monster season”), The Abominable Snowmen is currently the end of the road for this kind of release: the fully animated re-creation of classic B&W stories whose original episodes are missing either in their entirety or partially. In the case of The Abominable Snowmen, only the second of six episodes still exists, so the animation has a lot of heavy lifting to do. Fortunately, thanks to the show’s legion of fans dating back to the original broadcasts in the 1960s, there exist audio recordings of every episode, so after some restoration of that audio, the audio side of the audiovisual of this story is already in the bag. That leaves the episodes themselves to be recreated visually to match the soundtrack – like creating a new cartoon to match a 50-year-old audio track.
But The Abominable Snowmen had some unique challenges, especially through a twenty-first century lens. The story is set in and around a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, with cast of characters primarily indigenous to that region. In 1967, the BBC took no issue with filling those roles with white actors, and wasn’t going to worry enough about altering their appearance to devote much of the show’s already never-quite-enough budget to much in the way of makeup. Now fast-forward to the 2020s, when the work on the animation is being done, and the producers of the animation suddenly have a choice: do what they usually do and base the animated characters on the appearance of the original actors who played the parts, or… maybe don’t do that. The latter option was ultimately chosen here, redesigning the characters completely to appear indigenous, with little to no regard for the actual appearance of the performers who played the part on television. While I understand (and sympathize with and approve of) the choice made by the animators here, it opens a fascinating can of worms. If you’re pushing for complete authenticity, how about re-recording those characters’ dialogue with actors of appropriate ethnicity? It reminds me of the momentary worry I have before trying to introduce a friend to, say, the later BBC2 production Monkey. Sure, the campiness was backed into the original Japanese production, but the English language version of the show is loaded with such stereotypical accents (put on by British actors), is it better to leave Monkey buried in 1979 with the likes of The Black & White Minstrel Show (a BBC variety show which, as late as the late 1970s, featured white actors in blackface)? And what about The Abominable Snowmen? Do the accents affected by the cast also have that cringe factor? The actors’ appearance was unacceptable but their accents in the audio track were acceptable? Wherever you land on the issue, it’s a fascinating case study in the ongoing debate of whether media, once released, should be revised. But in this case, new visuals had to be created from scratch, and other than the live-action second episode (which can be viewed in this package, although an animated version was made as well), this is a case where the loss of the original media means this is the new default presentation.
Other revisions are made as well; I can’t help but think that the sixth episode’s scenes of the Great-Intelligence-inhabited Master Padmasambhava are probably a lot more visually striking than the BBC could have afforded to make those scenes in live action in 1967. There are some very modern nods to things like The Matrix (there’s a moment where Padmasambhava holds out a flattened hand and stops a bullet in mid-air that had been fired at him) that I can’t help but instinctively think “that wasn’t in the original episode”. And yes, Padmasambhava’s character design here – since it can be more cadaverous and horrific in animation than it could be with an actor in makeup in the sixties – does seem to owe a little something, visually speaking, to a certain Supreme Leader Snoke. What can you say, it was fifty years ago, a lot of people were still Snoking.
It’s always interesting, since there is one surviving live action episode, to compare how things are depicted and framed in the animation. In the earliest experimental animated re-creations released on DVD, and effort was made to at least somewhat match the directorial intent present in any surviving footage or off-screen photos. But sometimes that’s just not practical – here’s an example from the second episode, where a scene that plays out in an extreme long shot on film is done in a much closer shot in animation. In live action, the makers of The Abominable Snowmen were quite proud of their authentic location (not really the Himalayas, but the mountainous Snowdonia region of Wales), and there was undoubtedly considerable pressure that, having splashed out to do so much location shooting, every shilling of that production value should show on film. Animation doesn’t have that constraint – it didn’t go on location, everything is a background painting – and ultimately the animated version has a bit more helpful spatial context for where the different scene locations are with regard to one another.
At other times – such as when the Doctor is being freed in episode two – the staging of that scene is changed drastically, possibly for the cost-saving measure of not having to animate multiple characters in the same scene. The Abominable Snowmen boasts more reasons for changes to scenes – not just artistic or budgetary, but also cultural – than any of the animated releases that came before it. As always with these animated Blu-Ray releases, you have the option of watching the episodes in full-color 16:9 widescreen, or black & white 4:3 if you prefer an experience somewhat closer (note “somewhat”, considering the changes made) to the original broadcast. And of course, the second episode as originally aired can be viewed in live action.
A wonderful selection of bonus features is available, some of which are familiar, some of which have gotten an upgrade, and the brand-new “flagship” documentary, “Troughton In Tibet”, which really does hammer home what a fantastic location the production had at its disposal in the sixties. With plentiful artful drone shots and a visit to the original location with interviewer Toby Hadoke and Frazer Hines, who played Jamie for nearly Troughton’s entire tenure, the documentary is visually stunning. Now, I get it – it’s quite a drive up the A470 from Cardiff (the home base of modern BBC Wales-produced Doctor Who) to Snowdonia National Park – but the documentary almost seems to be daring the makers of future Doctor Who to revisit this location that worked wonders for this story’s authenticity in 1967.
Other bonus features include newly restored, HD versions of the brief home movie films shot by Frazer Hines and director Gerald Blake on location in 1967, as well as an interview conducted with The Abominable Snowmen‘s co-writer, the late Mervyn Haisman, as part of British Sky Broadcasting’s “31Who” rerun event in 1994. The interview, interestingly, is conducted by John Nathan-Turner, the producer of Doctor Who from 1980 through its end in 1989, here combining both his production knowledge of having made the show with his more fannish knowledge. Long before Davies or Moffat or Chibnall, JN-T – love him or hate him – was the original fanboy-in-chief in the showrunner’s chair. This brief interview is a neat reminder of that.
So why is this – so far as we know – the last animated release?
The animated re-creations of lost Doctor Who episodes are an expensive endeavor. Even though the BBC owns Doctor Who overall, the use of the original audio requires residual deals to be cut anew with the representatives of still-living actors, and the estates of those no longer with us. The animation itself, even though it tends to be fairly simple – a bit more Filmation than Bakshi in most cases – is a long, laborious process to recreate every 25-minute episode in full.
And let’s face it: this isn’t new material. The audience willing to pay full price for an animated version of a fifty-year-old serial isn’t as large as the general audience that’s willing to pay full price for a Blu-Ray release of Jodie Whittaker’s latest season. The audience that cares to see these classic episodes remade in this way is shrinking; the demographic willing to buy these releases is literally aging and dying out.
And the BBC itself is in peril at the moment in a way that it has never been before, with its primary funding source – the license fee – having been legislatively put on life support; the license fee will be abolished in 2027 and the BBC will be forced to seek “alternative funding”. Getting new Doctor Who made in that operating environment will be a challenge; diverting even a small amount of funding to re-animating lost fifty-year-old episodes simply won’t be possible. Needless to say, many questions need to be answered, and many hurdles cleared, regarding the BBC’s future in its entirety before any discussion about this particular niche series of releases will be practical.
It was a lot more fun when the Doctor’s enemies were great hairy beasties up in a cave, as opposed to lawmakers trying to score cheap points by striking their pet hate taxes from law, without a better understanding of the value that the fee in question was creating, both culturally, commercially, and in terms of jobs.
If this is the end of the road for re-animating lost Doctor Who, there’s hardly a better story to have gone out on. Huge strides have been taking in animating Patrick Troughton’s very distinctive features since the release of The Invasion on DVD. Though still obviously done somewhat on the cheap, the artistry that went into these releases has only grown over time. I would prefer to see all of the missing episodes finished like this, perhaps leaving the door open to animating, say, early Big Finish audio adventures, but for the immediate future, it ends with The Abominable Snowmen, which stands highly recommended as an example of how well these re-creations were done.