Terrance Dicks - Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen

Light flooded into the tunnel, silhouetting the enormous shaggy figure in the cave mouth. With a blood-curdling roar, claws outstretched, it bore down on Jamie.

The Doctor has been to Det-Sen Monastery before, and expects the welcome of a lifetime. But the monastery is a very different place from when the Doctor last came. Fearing an attack at any moment by the legendary Yeti, the monks are prepared to defend themselves, and see the Doctor as a threat.

The Doctor and his friends join forces with Travers, an English explorer out to prove the existence of the elusive abominable snowmen. But they soon discover that these Yeti are not the timid animals that Travers seeks. They are the unstoppable servants of an alien Intelligence.

This novel is based on a Doctor Who story which was originally broadcast from 30 September4 November 1967.

Featuring the Second Doctor as played by Patrick Troughton, and his companions Jamie and Victoria

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Published in 2011 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company
First published in 1974 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co., Ltd.

Novelisation copyright Terrance Dicks 1974
Original script Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln 1967
Illustrations Alan Willow 1974
Introduction Stephen Baxter 2011
The Changing Face of Doctor Who and About the Authors Justin Richards 2011
Between the Lines Steve Tribe 2011

BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 849 90192 5

Commissioning editor: Albert DePetrillo
Editorial manager: Nicholas Payne
Series consultant: Justin Richards
Project editor: Steve Tribe
Cover design: Lee Binding Woodlands Books Ltd, 2011
Cover illustration: Chris Achilleos
Production: Rebecca Jones

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This novel is based on the Doctor Who serial The Abominable Snowmen. I was not quite 10 years old when this serial was first broadcast by the BBC from September 1967. All these years later, I can remember the family watching the programme together in our living room, and I recall vivid images and scenes from the show: in this case the brooding mountain-top monastery, the enigmatic monks, the mixture of strange monsters and alien high-tech, the unfolding mystery: That horrible creature What was it? I dinna ken, lassie. But it was verra strong. Did you see what it did to my sword?

Snowmen was a highlight of the second season starring Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor. Troughton has always remained my own favourite Doctor, thanks to his charismatic mix of physical comedy, kindliness, cheeky quick wits, and, when he needed it, a deep authority. But Troughton was blessed with some excellent scripts and cracking productions. Snowmen was sandwiched between a Cyberman adventure and the debut of that eerie foe from Mars, the Ice Warriors. It was (almost) enough for us fans to forgive the BBC for apparently killing off the Daleks at the end of the previous series Of course, as the Doctor knows, you can never write off the Daleks.

Shot in August and September 1967, this story featured a lot of location work, with Snowdonia in Wales standing in for Tibet. Professor Travers was played by the real-life father of Deborah Watling, who played the Doctors companion Victoria. Even before Snowmen was screened, the production team were so pleased with it that they commissioned a sequel, The Web of Fear, shown later in the same season, which features the Yeti infesting the London Underground: London, in fact the whole of England, might be completely wiped out!

In 1973, when Target Books, a new imprint publishing childrens titles, got the chance to publish novelisations of the Doctor Who serials, a call to the production office at the BBC brought an enthusiastic response from Script Editor Terrance Dicks, who volunteered to write some of the books himself. The first serial to be novelised was Jon Pertwees debut adventure Spearhead from Space (published as Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion and reissued along with this novel). It was the first book of any kind Dicks had written.

And it was the start of a seventeen-year association between Target and Dicks, who went on to write an astounding sixty-four novelisations, including Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen and Doctor Who and the Web of Fear. He also wrote Doctor Who tie-in books, stage plays and audio plays, and later contributed original Doctor Who novels for Virgin Publishing and the BBC, in addition to writing his own original childrens books.

Working on Doctor Who was clearly a labour of love for Dicks as well as a steady source of income, always invaluable for a freelance writer. In a history of the Target books published in 2007, Dicks said that some of the scripts for the new era of the show had been written by people who grew up reading my Who novelisations at their mothers knee. Some of them have been kind enough to tell me so It was nice to still be a small part of the legend.

Dicks deserves to be remembered, for his work showed a great deal of skill. He rendered the television stories into clear, straightforward, compelling prose. The novelising writer had to work in seamless introductions to the shows premise for new readers, as well as background character sketches of the companions. Sometimes other changes were necessary. In Snowmen, the writers had used the names of figures from the real history of Buddhism. Doctor Whos then producer, Barry Letts, suggested Dicks change these slightly to avoid any risk of offence.

Dicks always worked hard to make his novels a proper reflection of their sources in the TV serials. He was quoted in that Target history as saying, I see the task of the novelisation as reproducing the effect of watching the TV show in the readers head. Sometimes, with no budgetary restrictions, you can even improve on it.