Doctor Who serial The Abominable Snowmen was first broadcast in 1967 – now missing from the archives bar one episode, the six-parter has been recreated for a new release, with animated visuals being matched to the original soundtrack.
The story sees the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) arrive at a monastery in Tibet in 1935, where they battle robotic Yeti.
Fans will notice that the animated version features radically different character designs for the Tibetan monks featured in the story, with the project’s co-director Gary Russell explaining that he wanted to “rectify [the] mistake” made by the live-action original of casting white actors in these roles.
- Buy Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen on DVD, on Blu-ray and as a limited edition steelbook
Speaking at a BFI Southbank screening, Russell explained that he and the animation team on the project “looked at [real] Tibetan monks from the 1930s” to inspire the new designs.
“It’s actually my only real bugbear about [original director] Gerald Blake’s directing: what was he thinking?” said Russell. “Why did he cast white people to play Asian characters? It’s not even ‘a thing of the 1960s’ because there were plenty of Asian actors living and working in the UK, [appearing] on television.
“The directors and producers of that time say, ‘Oh well, there just weren’t the actors around at the time to do that sort of thing’ – absolute rubbish. There were, and they should’ve been given that job.
“It was never even an issue for me. That was an obvious thing that we were going to do – we were going to rectify that mistake that was made in 1967, because it’s just bloody insulting.”
One other character – master of the monastery Padmasambhava (played by Wolfe Morris), who has been kept alive for centuries by the Great Intelligence – also gets a substantial redesign, with Russell explaining that the character’s newly-wizened form was inspired by the classic Tales from the Crypt comic series.
“I’m a big fan of EC Comics so I was looking at the Crypt Keeper and things like that,” he revealed.
Of the original story, only episode 2 is believed to exist – however, Russell advised the teams working on the new animation not to watch the surviving footage.
“It’s a very different beast – the designs are completely different, but it’s the whole thing… animation and live-action are not directed the same way, they’re not made the same way, so if you try to replicate what the director did in the live-action episode 2, they would look very odd as animated episodes. You have to make it flow as six episodes of animation.”
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Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen is available now on DVD, on Blu-ray and as a limited edition steelbook.
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