#time to see if i can locate one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

galacticlamps · 1 year

Text

There's something I've almost made a number of posts about during this Abominable Snowmen rewatch, but kept putting it off because I wanted to make a more cohesive analysis of rather than a bunch of messily related thoughts, but naturally now that I've finished it, it's become pretty long, so I'm putting it under a read more.

Basically, this is mainly about how the monastery setting functions to influence the audience's perception of the other characters & threats in this story, and helps turn it into what I believe to be a really well-executed and criminally underrated serial

To start with the elephant in the room: the monastery is obviously a somewhat exotic location for a Doctor Who serial. It's Earth, but it's far away from the BBC's production & main audience, and between its geographic isolation and religious associations, inherently somewhat shrouded in mystery. It's also the past, though I think it's somewhat easy to forget that this is a historical sometimes, both because it's not that far back in history compared to when it was produced & because of the aforementioned reasons that already distance it to equal or greater extents.

At first glance, the 'audience surrogate' characters would seem both obvious and limited. The Doctor & co are the first candidates - but with this particular team in which 0 of them come from an Earth contemporary with either the production or setting of the story, they're hardly everyman characters here; they can hook us into being visitors to this place but not provide us with a perspective on what life in it is like or should be outside of the strange circumstances that follow them everywhere. Then there's Travers, who's both an Englishman and a native of the time period, even if he’s very much a stranger to the region – and in many ways, he would seem best placed to act as an English audience’s window into the setting, the ‘regular guy’ whose world will be upset by the villain and restored by the Doctor.

But intentionally or not, I don’t think Travers actually fills that role in the story very well at all, and what happens instead is infinitely more interesting and makes for a better story overall.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, for now my point is just that despite all odds & appearances of the monastery being this mystical otherworldly setting that Englishmen traverse continents and mountains or time and space to get to, it’s an exceptionally grounded and lived-in setting that the audience can quickly acclimatize to, which only adds to the fear & tragedy later on in the serial when it’s endangered.

This probably sounds silly, but much like it’s a bit hard to believe the bridge of the Enterprise is actually rattling around in space in the original series of Star Trek, Det-Sen monastery feels overwhelmingly solid, stationary, grounded, & enclosed. I don’t know what it is that breaks the illusion that the void of space is on the other side of those walls or that the courtyard & gates are at least partially exposed to the elements of the Himalayas, but the concrete floors under the carpet and the studio ceiling above seem to have an almost physical presence in these sets that’s hard to overlook. Maybe it’s because we have so much location footage to compare it to in this serial so we know what it looks like when they’re actually on the mountainside, slipping over uneven terrain and shouting over the wind that’s blowing their hair & costumes around at random, or simply a case of visual distinction between the quality of the film they used for those shoots vs the studio recording process. It might even be something about the reverb inherent in the room and the way it affects the audio, or something else entirely – I don’t know. I’ve never tried to put my finger on why exactly, but in both cases I’ve always felt a particularly strong awareness that these are sets - built environments safely sheltered inside a sound stage, pretending to be more fragile than they are. And I don’t mean this as an insult – I think it lends the original Enterprise a sense of homeyness that’s appropriate for its status as a constant, not to mention the nostalgia - much like the Tardis, I don’t think it’d do for them to feel flimsy, even if stories occasionally ask us to believe these environments are in a precarious state.

But Det-Sen is a one-off location, so its underlying feeling of stability affects the narrative in other ways, and this stark and immediate physical difference between the indoor environment and the danger of the mountains that are supposedly right on the other side of those gates makes it a perfect base for a base under siege story. The further away that cave in the mountains feels, the safer the characters are inside – and the harder that it is to believe anything could breach the gates and disturb the implausible peace here, the more effective & disturbing it is when they do.

Of course, it isn’t the physical set alone that’s responsible for this dichotomy – the narrative & its characters also present the monastery as such a strong constant that when the Great Intelligence threatens to destroy it and the world, the two feel almost one and the same.

Far from just being the background this story takes place against, the serial is overwhelmingly populated by characters that sell us on the idea of Det-Sen’s importance and stability even further - not only do the monks outnumber the visitors in terms of named characters, but there are also 6 nonspeaking warrior monks and an additional 6 nonspeaking lamas - all in all, about 20 different people living & working there that really flesh it out as a location. We're even told the Doctor's been here before, centuries ago - they have a very established way of life.

By contrast, the Tardis team blunders in and, as usual, can give no account of where they've been or how they got there - and then of course, there's Travers.

I can’t honestly tell how much of what really works about his character is fully intentional - it would take a certain level of self-awareness from the BBC that I don't want to attribute without some evidence. But at the end of the day, he's an Englishman and an explorer – the kind of guy we’d expect to represent intelligence and progress - and yet his entire life's work, the quest he's already spent 20 years of his life on, (which fans of Web know he'll spend even more on in the future), which has killed his companion already and which he willingly risks his own life for time and again in this serial - is, at bottom, incredibly stupid: he wants to be credited with the discovery of an animal the locals have been fully aware of for centuries.

When the monks talk about the yeti, they do so with calmness, certainty, and authority. They know what they're talking about. The yeti have always been their neighbors, and they're a peaceful, reclusive species. And yes, this is one remote monastery in one remote corner of the globe - perhaps these monks are the only people who regularly see the yeti or believe in them at all (ignoring the pilgrims that are supposed to've been visiting here for centuries), and perhaps Travers as a scientist simply wants to broaden the world's knowledge. But if the way he treats the Doctor when he suspects him to be a member of the British press is anything to go by, it's a bit more than that. He needs to be the one to break the news - and maybe it wasn't always like that, maybe he only became so interested in the credit after the search for them cost him so much – but whatever the cause, by the time we encounter the character, he’s desperate & single-minded enough that common sense can go out the window when it suits him. He doesn't even seem particularly devastated when they find out the evil Yeti are robots - he worries about them potentially endangering the real animals, but the fact that the existence of robotic yeti obviously implies a person or people with enough resources & skills to create something like that who is also acutely aware of the real species they're presumably meant to blend in with doesn't phase him at all, or compromise his need & ability to be the one to 'discover' them.

To be clear, I’m not trying to paint him as a bad person – if anything I think he’s a compelling & convincingly-drawn character, and within the story he frequently does the right thing to help defeat the enemy and save the day. I just find it interesting how his obsession with the Yeti & the leaps in logic it causes him to make prevent him from being the relatable character the audience shares the perspective of, where he otherwise might’ve been by default as the only Englishman - and in that regard he contributes to bolstering up the monks & the monastery as forces of sanity and cohesion. He is, like them, a mere victim of the Great Intelligence, but his presence at Det-Sen still feels like a symptom of a world turned upside down.

On the whole the monks get along fine with Travers, and evidently understand that in his world of Western British science, the yeti are still a “discovery” to be made which their familiarity with the species does not factor into or impede. Whatever fame & significance the discovery would bring him are indeed real prizes within his reach, so he isn’t inherently suspicious or looked down upon for wanting them - but they're also still a ludicrous thing to prioritize, given the circumstances, and the monks can see that, not being worried about proving anything to anyone themselves.

Still w/regard to Travers’ character, neither they nor anyone from the Tardis ever points out this fallacy, so it's hard to tell if it's a case of the producers & writers not noticing how foolish, colonial & hypocritical this goal under these circumstances is, or if it's meant to read as absurdly as it does. But with the monastery & its monks having such a huge presence in this story & being such a large portion of its screen time, that contrast in perspectives is brought to the forefront, whether or not anyone meant to satirize British exploration as a whole.

Nonetheless, Travers is the portrait of western exploration - even the more respectable & noble kind, in the name of knowledge & science rather than power & conquest - and yet his quest exists at such a ridiculous extreme, it takes a toll on the credibility of both him & everything he stands for. By being deadly serious about such a redundant goal, Travers marks himself out - and by extension, these three other apparently British strangers - as belonging to a bizarre world that adheres to senseless values and priorities, which drive him (and perhaps them as well, for all the monks know) to wild extremes, and it's difficult to see Travers as anything more than a bit of a lunatic, an eccentric Englishman and a nuisance of a foreigner here – at least for as long as he’s preoccupied with accusing the Doctor of murdering his partner and dragging the monks into his personal agenda. From this perspective the monks have every right to be suspicious of him and the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria, even if the only thing they know about them is that they come from a world whose rules make no sense, who would send a man out to die in the mountains on the other side of the globe before it would recognize what to them is a simple fact of nature.

Khrisong in particular comes out as a very strong character, especially in comparison to Travers. Although we first meet him in a more antagonistic context – his introduction might even potentially leave us thinking of him as the dangerous warrior following Travers’ command rather than thinking for himself – the story is quick to correct that belief & makes it clear that he has his reasons for what he does, not just in that instant but all the time. He turns out to be an extremely principled individual who puts a lot of thought into both the risks he takes & the ones he allows others to take, and here he’s literally trying to protect a monastery full of peaceful monks when some of the strangest foreign white men the world could produce show up on his doorstep talking madness that doesn't concern him or his men at all, and they're followed by a horde of murderous robots framing the local wildlife for their crimes. For arguably being the villain for the first 1/3 of the story, he's objectively a very sympathetic figure.

Of course, it’s not at all uncommon to find characters similar in that regard - especially in these longer base under siege stories with limited casts, where part of the mystery is preventing the Doctor from knowing who the true villains are. But although Khrisong is developed as a character who's both proud and strong willed, he's also more than capable of admitting his mistakes and sticking to his principles at the same time - and even though the Second Doctor himself is particularly good at unnerving and undermining authority figures, Khrisong is willing to work with him to an impressive & perhaps unprecedented degree. Where a more stock character might bear a grudge for being made to look rash or unhelpful, Khrisong is consistently both a strong leader and a good man - he risks his life to save everyone, he deliberates and takes the best course of action he can find in every scene. More than a lot of other characters in this era of the show, he gives us the impression of someone who's in control and authority without being a bully, who's open to listening to the Doctor's frankly ridiculous ideas but who will also put himself at risk before allowing others to do the same if he doubts the merits of what he’s heard. He's a complex and even surprisingly engaging character who we might first have dismissed as a basic security guard type - and his death in the last act a genuine tragedy, and deservedly treated as such.

((Even the question of pacifism vs self defense which the same writers will revisit more famously in The Dominators first pops up here, most obviously in dialogue between Khrisong and Songsten in Episode 3, but also more generally in his ongoing goal of protecting the monastery’s existence. Songsten argues that the monks are peaceful and cannot change their ways, while Khrisong points out that he only wishes to use his strength to defend and preserve the ways of the monks, even at the cost of his own life, because peace and gentleness are not applicable methods against the yeti. It's interesting that this dialogue is delivered over the body of the inert, robot yeti recently after they've been discovered not to be flesh & blood – the context seems to eliminate any possibility of this reading as the dehumanizing argument of a man predisposed to violence anyway and simply trying to justify it, but rather solidifies it as the good sense of someone who would not resort to it if he had any other options))

Travers is typically the only supporting character who gets much attention when we talk about this serial, because of his return a few stories later & the significance that lands him in the wider world of Doctor Who, but in this story itself, everything absurd and dangerous about him is balanced out and grounded by everything serious and sane about Khrisong. But whereas Travers mainly looks delegitimized in comparison with the monastery, the monks don’t need to rely on contrast to make them look better – their own approach to problem-solving & protecting the monastery is time and again reinforced by the serial in other ways.

When Sapan & Rinchen in episode 3 both set up a spirit trap & chain down the inert yeti to prevent it coming back to life & attacking them, and they discuss how odd the strangers are and come up with their own explanation for the metal underneath its skin, it could easily have felt like the kind of scene that, in a scifi show, we should chuckle at and dismiss because we know they're wrong (even if we don't blame them for not knowing they're characters in a scifi show). But the way it’s framed, it's actually quite convincing instead. We know the yeti isn't a devil, but their explanation checks out, the Doctor is inherently inexplicable as a character, Travers is both currently under suspicion & consumed by – if not incomprehensible - at least unjustifiable motives from the monks' perspective, and at the end of the day, is the Great Intelligence really any different than a devilish spirit possessing the yeti? To say nothing of the fact that Padmasambhava is said to've initially contacted the Great Intelligence on the astral plane, or that chanting their prayers is treated as a legitimate way to occupy the mind and defend it against psychic attacks - all in all, despite this being a serial that is set in the past & in a monastery so remote that parts of its everyday life would be canonically regarded as landmark scientific discoveries in Britain, the perspective of these monks feels incredibly grounded, and forms a sound and stable background against which the fantastic elements of this serial can occur in their full horror, rather than something the British futuristic audience (who also know what genre they're watching) can 'know better' than.

And from a storytelling perspective, this doesn't just make the setting of the monastery come alive in a more convincing portrait than many other locations, it also makes the already very disturbing details of this particularly eldritch story cut even deeper. The repeated possessions, the monks being forced out of the monastery into the night, Khrisong murdered by his own Abbot, who is himself in a trance, Padmasambhava begging to be set free after hundreds of years as the Great Intelligence's slave (his death which was not shot as scripted, for fear of being too gruesome for the children's tv rating, the repeated stage directions calling for blood on people's faces or weapons) - it's honestly really heartbreaking, and a very good story.

But crucially, there's also kindness and gentleness here too - not just in the monks as men of peace or even the fact that the head of their warrior branch defies stereotypes to agree with them rather than being a violent individual - but also in the humanity with which all the characters respond to what they have to deal with: the Doctor appealing to Padmasambhava repeatedly as an old friend, the reassurances of safety and return he gives to the monks as they leave, the way the plans for Rinchen's body are discussed rather than brushed aside like many side-characters’ deaths in other serials, the way Songsten is looked after when he comes out of his trance, despite the monks knowing he had killed Khrisong. People in this story are allowed to be driven to extremes by everything from fear to stress to greed to hope and curiosity - but nobody ever abandons humanity entirely. They can accuse each other of all sorts of things, fairly or not, but in the end there’s understanding and forgiveness among the human characters (+the Doctor) and people are generally looked after and cared for rather than blamed and abandoned.

It's that sympathy and humanity that contrasts so beautifully with the truly otherworldly threat this serial introduces. Our characters are small, many of them are referred to as being mere puppets of a villain who literally moves his robotic henchmen around on a chessboard version of their world. But they're weak because they're human (in the broad sense at least) and it's that humanity that allows all of them to fight the Intelligence in one form or another, and the fact that that's what the Intelligence has to fight against which makes it such a disturbing enemy.

#the abominable snowmen #second doctor era #uh let's see #this is mainly about den-sen as a location #edward travers as an odd but very british character #khrisong as a surprisingly complex & strong character #(as far as authority figures who start off at odds w/ the dr go)#and i suppose a bit about the great intelligence as a concept for an enemy #sorry this got extremely rambly #im mainly posting it for myself so i can stumble upon it the next time im rotating snowmen #i feel like there's so much to talk about this serial but it's not one of the most discussed ones?#and my brain's a little spent rn to make this sound better but i still wanted to get it out

7 notes · View notes