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Doctor Who serial The Abominable Snowmen<\/a> was first broadcast in 1967 \u2013 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Fans will notice that the animated version features radically different character designs for the Tibetan monks featured in the story, with the project\u2019s co-director Gary Russell explaining that he wanted to \u201crectify [the] mistake\u201d made by the live-action original of casting white actors in these roles.<\/p>\n Speaking at a BFI Southbank screening, Russell explained that he and the animation team on the project \u201clooked at [real] Tibetan monks from the 1930s\u201d to inspire the new designs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually my only real bugbear about [original director] Gerald Blake\u2019s directing: what was he thinking?\u201d said Russell. \u201cWhy did he cast white people to play Asian characters? It\u2019s not even \u2018a thing of the 1960s\u2019 because there were plenty of Asian actors living and working in the UK, [appearing] on television.<\/p>\n \u201cThe directors and producers of that time say, \u2018Oh well, there just weren\u2019t the actors around at the time to do that sort of thing\u2019 \u2013 absolute rubbish. There were, and they should\u2019ve been given that job.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was never even an issue for me. That was an obvious thing that we were going to do \u2013 we were going to rectify that mistake that was made in 1967, because it\u2019s just bloody insulting.\u201d<\/p>\n