The Abominable Snowmen

The Abominable Snowmen part 2 was the first episode on the Troughton Years tape. Those tapes were really hard to watch so it is no surprise that I watched the Snowmen and then gave up for a while. I had a week’s work experience at a firm of solicitors one school holiday. The only thing I remember about it – except being scared of everyone because they were all high powered and I was just someone who was going to do a law degree but really should’ve been doing a history degree because I wasn’t cut out for the law – was hoping they would give me something for all the help I’d been. I know I was only there as a work experience bod but surely they’d slip me a tenner as a thank you for whatever it was I’d been doing. Not that I’d done anything helpful but I’d been there and I’d not been in the way and I don’t think I stole or broke anything. If they had been generous from the petty cash I had my heart set on the Troughton Years tape. But as they didn’t, I didn’t and I would have to wait until the Christmas of 1993 to finally buy it.

It was one of those hasty and incredibly busy shopping trips between Christmas and New Year. All I remember getting were the Troughton Years (second hand from what was once a really good second hand book and video shop near the Arndale Centre) and a book written by Sean Hughes. It might have been a novel I wouldn’t understand, it might’ve been poetry I wouldn’t understand. I like Sean Hughes’ TV show but he went a bit serious and once the jokes borrowed from Garry Shandling ran out, I stopped understanding Comrade Hughes.

Later – much much later – I listened to the CDs in the car and one thing grabbed me above all else. There was a voice – the voice of Thonmi – and I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that I knew it. I’d get to work and strain my little brain trying to work out where I’d heard it before. I wasn’t going to cheat and look it up – this had to be done the hard way. I finally narrowed it down to a Paul Temple serial. Then eventually to Paul Temple and the Van Dyke Affair. Specifically the man who claimed to be Sergeant Digby, alias Baker, alias Harry De Wolfe. Well done me. I then dug a little deeper and discovered that the actor was the long time partner of Victor Pemberton.

I also remember the home movie footage of the Abominable Snowmen being one of the main selling points of the extended video of “The Doctors”. I paid a small fortune to get the limited edition collectors’ version with this extra material. The documentary is weird, the home movies aren’t much cop and the best one can say for the video is that it is a lot better than the book it was ostensibly based on. Oh, and they interview Pip and Jane which is always bonkers fun. And the Snowmen are quite funny when you see them running.

And I can never remember what this story is actually called. It's like the Crusade / Crusades. Is it Snowmen or Snowman? Probably the plural but I'm never entirely sure.

Grrrr

The Ice Warriors

Back when I was technically referred to as a “job seeker” I regularly went to assessment days staged by the big insurance and banking companies in Manchester. You’ve probably been to one yourself – they give you a couple of tests which determine whether you’re a good sort or not. Or whether you can spell and do sums and stuff like that. I remember going to the AA and doing something similar. “Don’t worry” the lady said, “only one person has ever finished the test”. She wasn’t wrong – it was something deliberately absurd like a hundred questions in 45 minutes. Well, I finished the test and passed with flying colours. I failed the interview though. But it was a convenient place to work so I applied again a year or so later and was presented with the same test. “Don’t worry” the lady said, “only two people have ever finished the test.” I finished it a second time and was asked to go to a role playing afternoon to be followed by sitting with an actual member of staff to see what they do when they get real phone calls. I was sat next to a pretty girl who was wearing a headset and being efficient. I thought she looked familiar. I looked at her screen and saw her login name. It was only the first girl I ever had a proper crush on at school. Luckily there were people in need so she didn’t recognise me. None of that has anything to do with the Ice Warriors except that I was in town on an assessment day and had called in at some shop or other before hand and bought the Ice Warriors set. The first test paper was a breeze as these things always are. One can quibble about the type of intelligence they actually measure seeing as how I was great at them but was still completely unemployable. It was raining, I had a new video to watch, I didn’t really fancy working for CIS or RBS or whichever TLA they were, I had a new video to watch, it was getting dark, the train would be packed and I had a new video to watch. So I slipped away between exam papers and fucked off home. They rang a couple of days later almost begging me to come back and go through the formality of sitting the second test but I made up some excuse and didn’t go. After all that, I didn’t finish the Ice Warriors video until I watched it for a 24 Things feature I wanted to write. It remains for me a CD story not a video story. It’s also perhaps the most mistaken Doctor Who story ever made as far as predicting the ecological future of the world. I doubt Barry Letts would’ve made that mistake.

The world will get colder

The Enemy of the World

The Enemy of the World was represented on the Troughton Years tape as the Abominable Snowmen was. The lone surviving episode – not helped by a lack of salient plot information from Uncle Jon – doesn’t make a lot of sense but Victoria looks hot in that miniskirt. It’s probably the only time she was ever allowed to look that damned sexy. Or at least the only time she ever looked sexy without the tape being burned shortly afterwards. When I finally went through with listening to the CD I was struck by one thing - one thing which really made me want to do a 24 Things piece (you'll have spotted the 23 flaws with that scheme). I think Salamander is exposed as a fraud and a charlatan in his underground base. Those living in his survival bunker surround him and wave sticks at him in a generally disagreeable way. Where did they get sticks from? That's what I wanted to know. They're in a hermetically sealed chamber, miles under what they think is a radioactive world. And yet they have sticks.

Oooh - me in a miniskirt