178 The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Five

EPISODE: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Five
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 178
STORY NUMBER: 038
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 28 October 1967
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Gerald Blake
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 7.2 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume Four(1967)
TELESNAPS: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Five

"Doctor! There is great danger. You must take me away. Take me away. Take me away!"

Padmasambhva beckons Victoria in but she is startled when sees the Yeti gameboard. He hypnotises her, then moves four Yeti models into the area of the map showing the courtyard of the monastery. Travers regains conciousness but is still rambling about what he has seen. They hear the roar of the Yetis marauding through the monastery, as the Doctor takes a reading on his device. Rinchen is searching for Victoria when he comes across two Yeti who knock the Buddha statue down crushing him. The damage done Padmasambhva moves the Yeti back to the mountain. He takes control of Victoria and sends her out with the Ghanta to speak to the monks who he instructs to leave the monastery and for their visitors to be freed. When the Doctor is reunited with Victoria she repeatedly tells him that there is danger and they must flee. Deducing she has been hypnotically programmed he goes to see Padmasambhava, who he met on his previous visit 300- years previously when he was entrusted with the Ghanta. Padmasambhava tells him how he encountered the Great Intelligence on the astral plane before seemingly dying. However when the Doctor leaves he opens his eyes and comes back to life. The Doctor regresses Victoria hypnotically and removed the commands she's been given. Leaving her with Jamie, the Doctor and Travers journey up the mountain to take another reading. As they travel and hide from Yeti, Travers begins to feel a sense of deja vu. The Doctor realises from his reading that Padmasambhava is responsible for their flight as Travers finally remembers about the cave and the glowing substance emerging from it.

I'm sorry if you're getting bored with me saying this every episode but I'm loving this story. It's got better for me each time I've listened to it. One of the reasons for this is the sound on the story: from the lovely echoey noise in the Monastery, the wind on the mountainside and the two different tones used by Padmasambhava it all just works nicely. Backing that up we have no music giving the story an eerie quality that no other has.The monks you'd expect to be quite similar but the main ones are easily distinguishable just from their vocal characteristics.

It helps that there's an existing episode early on that shows most of what's in the story giving you a decent visual reference. About the only things you don't see in 2 are Padmasambhva and his sanctum: my vision of what they looked like was completely different to the reality of the telesnaps for this episode.

The main creative forces behind this story are new to the show. Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln had started writing together relatively recently and this is their first joint television credit. Lincoln has had an interesting career post Who, co writing a controversial book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that was the basis of the best selling novel The DaVinci code. One book I have (and let's name names: It's About Time volume 2) credited Haisman with creating the Onedin Line but the interweb says that was Cyril Abraham but Haisman served as a script editor on the show.

Gerard Blake has a massive television directing CV which includes the now missing Out of the Unknown episode Liar, four episodes of Survivors, Genesis, Gone to the Angels, Spoil of War and Revenge and two episodes of Blake's 7 The Harvest of Kairos and Death-Watch. He would eventually return to Doctor Who over ten years later to take charge of the Invasion of Time in 1978. His gap between directorial assignments for the show is the largest in the original run of Doctor Who.

177 The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Four

EPISODE: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Four
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 177
STORY NUMBER: 038
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 21 October 1967
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Gerald Blake
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 7.1 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume Four(1967)
TELESNAPS: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Four

"Already the Great Intelligence begins to take on material form. But it demands more. It must expand!"

The Yeti fights it's way out of the monastery, with Victoria & Thomni opening the gates freeing it to avoid further injury and bloodshed. The Doctor, travelling with Jamie to the Tardis, doesn't like the eerie silence. Travers sees Songsten take the recovered control sphere from some Yeti into their cave. The Doctor and Jamie find a Yeti guarding the Tardis. As Padmasambhava communicates with the Great Intelligence, Songsten places the sphere with the others in the cave completing a circle. The glass pyramid he has brought from Padmasambhava goes in the centre and starts to glow. He leaves with his Yeti escort allowing Travers to enter the cave. Meanwhile the Doctor is considering the Yeti guard at the Tardis

Jamie: Have you thought up some clever plan, Doctor?
The Doctor: Yes, Jamie, I believe I have.
Jamie: What are you going to do?
The Doctor: Bung a rock at it.

When it fails to react The Doctor walks up to it, unscrews it's chest panel and removes the control sphere which he gets Jamie to hold as he hunts for the tracking equipment in the Tardis. In the cave Travers sees he pyramid cracks open spewing a glowing foam into the cave.

The Doctor emerges from the Tardis with the tracking device as the sphere Jamie is holding activates. They block the Yeti's chest cavity with a rock deactivating the sphere and take it with them. In the Monastery, Thomni and Victoria are jailed for letting the Yeti go since the monks suspect them of conspiring with the Yeti. Songsten's 3 Yeti escort leaves him and returns up the mountain. Ralpachan opens the gate to Songsten who again hypnotises him to conceal his entry to the Monastery. Padmasambhava congratulates him, telling him the Great Intelligence has begun to take corporeal form. The three Yeti that were with Songsten surround Jamie & The Doctor who escape but are forced to leave the sphere behind which the Yeti retrieve. Victoria feigns illness and breaks out of her cell. The Doctor & Jamie, closely followed by a hysterical Travers, return to the monastery and are arrested on Songsten's orders. The Monks hunt for Victoria as they prepare to abandon the monastery on Padmasambhava's orders. Songsten relieves the guard on the gate, opening it as Padmasambhava moves four Yeti models to the monastery. Victoria finds her way to Padmasambhava's sanctuary where the master bids her enter:

PADMASAMBHAVA: Come in, my child. Come in. You have no alternative.

Just fabulous again. The thing that makes this episode stand out from the others is the interaction between The Doctor & Jamie on the mountain. They're just fabulous together without anyone to interrupt them!

A small amount of footage of the Yeti in this episode remains that was used in other programs. This can be found on the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set along with some colour cine film taken at the location shoot by the story's director Gerald Blake which also features the Yeti!

A Doctor Who staple for the next few years makes it's début in this episode: Please welcome the foam machine! Any excuse and the special effects team will be pumping foam all over the set or location!

Many of the character names in this story are taken from Buddhist history & mythology. Padmasambhava was a 8th century AD guru, also known as Guru Rinpoche and gives his names to two characters here. There may be others as well, but my knowledge of Buddhism is a little limited! When Terrance Dicks novelised the story his friend, and practising Zen Buddhist, Barry Letts advised him to change some of the names.

Playing Padmasambhava, seen for the first time at the climax of this episode, is Wolfe Morris. He's got an appearance in Out of the Unknown to his name playing Smithers in the now missing second season episode Frankenstein Mark 2. His brother is the actor Aubrey Morris.

Reg Whitehead, Tony Harwood, John Hogan and Richard Kerley are the four actors playing Yeti in The Abominable Snowmen, all of whom appeared in the previous story, Tomb of the Cybermen, as Cybermen.

Reg Whitehead has already been a Cybermen in The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase & Tomb of the Cybermen where he gets a name check when Klieg refers to the fictional "Whitehead Logic"in episode 1! In addition to the Yeti in this story he also plays the doomed explorer John in the opening moments of the first episode of this story.

It's Tony Harwood's second Doctor Who appearance here, after the Cybermen in the previous story, and he'll be back as the Martian Rintan in the next, The Ice Warriors, before playing other Martians in The Seeds of Death & The War Games as well as Flynn in The Ambassadors of Death.

John Hogan later appears in Blake's 7as a Scavenger in Deliverance while Richard Kerley has a recurring role as Sergeant Hinds in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

Interestingly none of them return as Yeti in their second appearance, The Web of Fear, but another former Cyberman from the Moonbase, John Levene, is inside a Yeti there!

However amongst the extras in this story we've got Pat Gorman. He's already been in Doctor Who as an Alien Delegate in Mission to the Unknown and a soldier in The War Machines and I failed to mention him in either appearance! He's an uncredited walk on here, and we think we've found him as one of the monks in this episode: he's on the left of the first photo and in the middle of the second:

His future credits include a Cyberman in The Invasion, a Military Policeman in The War Games, the Silurian Scientist in Doctor Who and the Silurians, a Primord in Inferno, the Auton Leader in Terror of the Autons, a Primitive, the Voice, Long, and a Colonist in Colony in Space, a Sea Devil in The Sea Devils, a UNIT soldier in The Three Doctors, a UNIT Corporal in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, a UNIT soldier at the start of the bizarre episode long chase in part 2 of The Planet of the Spiders, a Thal Soldier in Genesis of the Daleks, a Soldier in The Masque of Mandragora, a Medic in The Invisible Enemy, a Pilot in The Armageddon Factor, and as uncredited as Grogan in Enlightenment. He may well have been in more episodes: spotting Pat Gorman is a popular game amongst fans and DVD commentary participants!

Outside of Doctor Who he's been in virtually everything. So I decided to sit down with his imdb entry and pick out the things I'd seen that he'd been in. And it's a long, LONG list:

His earliest non Who appearance that I've definitely seen is The Prisoner: Hammer Into Anvil where he's a Hospital Orderly. Sadly his Doomwatch appearance as a man in Hear No Evil is missing, but I know I've seen him in Fawlty Towers: The Builders as a Hotel Guest even if I haven't spotted him. He's in the I, Claudius episode Reign of Terror as the Captain of the Guard and a pair of The Sweeney episodes, Thou Shalt Not Kill & Latin Lady as a Flying Squad Officer. I have spotted him in Porridge: The Desperate Hours as a Prison Officer who walks into the gents as Fletcher is sampling the home brew! He goes over to ITV's sci fi series The Tomorrow People as a US Marine in War of the Empires: All in the Mind & Standing Alone before staring his Blake's 7 career as a Scavenger in Deliverance, a Federation Trooper / Rebel in Voice from the Past, the Trantinian planet hopper Captain in Gambit, a Death Squad Trooper in Powerplay, two more Federation Troopers in The Harvest of Kairos & Rumours of Death, a Hommik Warrior in Power, a Helot in Traitor and back to being Federation Troopers in Games and Blake which means he's present in the climatic final scene! He's in Eric Sykes' second, 1979, version of The Plank as a Dustman. Regular Doctor who director Douglas Camfield uses him in The Nightmare Man as the Killer in episodes 3 & 4 as well as Camfield's final production Beau Geste as a Legionnaire in episodes 4 to 7. Another Doctor Who director, and Blake's 7 producer, David Maloney uses him again in The Day of the Triffids as a Blind Man in the fifth episode. He was in Doctor Who writer Robert Banks-Stewart's detective show Bergerac as a Policeman in The Hood and the Harlequin and made FIVE appearances in The Professionals: a Golfer in Killer with a Long Arm, a CI5 Agent in Close Quarters & Servant of Two Masters, a Security Man in Weekend in the Country and the Police Superintendent at inquest in Discovered in a Graveyard. He's a policeman again in The Young Ones: Interesting and modern Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies uses him as a heavy in the opening episode of his Children's sci-fi drama Dark Season.

And that's barely scratching the surface of what he's done!

176 The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 176
STORY NUMBER: 038
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 14 October 1967
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Gerald Blake
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 7.1 million viewers
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes Volume Four(1967)
TELESNAPS: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Three

"The Great Intelligence will focus upon this planet. Soon it will begin to grow and at last take on physical form. At last its wanderings in space will be at an end!"

The Doctor works out that the Yeti's control unit was dislodged in the fight but Khrisong won't let him go outside to find it, nor will he let Travers leave to search for the Yeti. Victoria, seeing the shape of the chest cavity, wonders if the sphere they found in the caves was a control sphere too, sparking a search for the missing sphere. Ralpachan hasn't seen it but he did let Travers out of the Monastery after he said Khrisong had given him permission. Sapan has constructed a "spirit trap" round the immobilised Yeti, which Abbot Songsten congratulates him on while Khrisong and Rinchen argue as to whether the Yeti should have been brought inside. Khrisong is furious when the Doctor arrives and tells him Travers has left. The Abbot falls into a trance and is summoned by Padmasambhava, and this sparks Victoria's curiosity when she finds out that none of the monks have ever seen the elderly master who dwells in the monastery. In the sanctum Padmasambhava moves a Yeti model on a map to join two more. Outside Travers sees two Yeti joined by a third. Padmasambhava believes the Doctor may endanger their plan: he moves two Yeti models to the Monastery, mirrored by two Yeti who come down off the mountain. Khrisong is searching for the Control Sphere outside the gates and find it buried in the mud but the two Yeti arrive, attacking him and retrieving the sphere. The Doctor humorously comments

They came to get their ball back!

while in his sanctum Padmasambhava observes that

It would seem that the Yeti have caused some little upset at the gate

before dispatching the Abbot to go to meet the Yeti. He gives him a glass pyramid

Take it to the caves. Then the Great Intelligence will focus upon this planet. Soon it will begin to grow and at last take on physical form. At last its wanderings in space will be at an end. My work will then be done

Khrisong says the sphere emitted a sound and the Doctor realises they can track the signal. Khrisong gives the Doctor & Jamie leave to fetch the equipment from the Tardis. They leave without telling Victoria who searches for them. She makes her way to the inner sanctum as the missing sphere edges towards the captured Yeti. Songsten hypnotising Ralpachan and so passes through the gate unobserved. Padmasambhava sends uses his hypnotic tone to send Victoria away. She returns to the room with the Yeti in just as the sphere reaches it activates the robotic beast.

Episode 2 looked good, but 3 sounds even better. I'd love to see this one!

The Doctor is making slow progress: he knows that the Yeti are robots and the sphere is controlling it:

RINCHEN: These creatures are indeed fearsome.
JAMIE: Aye, you were lucky you weren't killed.
KHRISONG: But why did they just turn and leave? They had us at their mercy. Why?
DOCTOR: They didn't come to fight. They came for the sphere.
JAMIE: Are you sure?
DOCTOR: Pretty sure. They didn't want me to examine it.
KHRISONG: You talk of these creatures as if they were human, with a human's brain.
DOCTOR: That sphere is like a brain. They had to get it back.
JAMIE: Yes, and that Yeti we caught in the net. Well, that could have been after the sphere we found in the cave.
DOCTOR: I'd still like to know what happened to that one. This sound that you heard?
KHRISONG: It came from the sphere, I swear it.
JAMIE: Some sort of signal, do you think?
DOCTOR: Yes, it could be. Anyway, its a help.
SAPAN: How can this help?
DOCTOR: Well, with the right sort of equipment, these signals can be tracked.
JAMIE: You mean you can find out where the Yeti are getting there instructions from?
DOCTOR: Yes, Jamie.
RINCHEN: Where can we find such equipment?
DOCTOR: We've got to back to the Tardis.
JAMIE: Right.
KHRISONG: This equipment. You have it?
DOCTOR: Yes. But it's outside there on the mountain.
KHRISONG: Then, you must go for it.
JAMIE: You mean you'll let us go?
KHRISONG: I have no choice. I have failed. My warriors are powerless. I must trust you.
DOCTOR: Come on. Let's get me coat.

We however are a few steps ahead of the Doctor and have a much clearer idea what's going on: The Yeti are controlled by the as yet unseen Padmasambhava who is using the Abbot as his main servant. Padmasambhava serves The Great Intelligence which wants to come to Earth and gain corporal form. But the Doctor, Travers and the Monks know none of this and suspicion passes from the Doctor to Travers to elsewhere as the Doctor tries to gain the monk's trust. Sapan's description of the robot Yeti as "a devil with his armour on the inside" is a fantastic one, and the concept of the game board map with miniature figurines controlling the Yeti is a striking image and one that will be recycled later in the show's history.

And right through the episode we have the missing control sphere, carelessly abandoned in episode 2, inching it's way towards the deactivated Yeti carcass which the Monks have surrounded by the Monk's ghost trap.

Superb stuff!

Norman Jones, who plays warrior monk Khrisong, is perhaps the most familiar face to Who fans in the credited cast returning as Major Baker in Doctor Who and the Silurians and Hieronymous in The Masque of Mandragora. Both here and in Masque his eyes are very noticeable: they're wide and staring with him hardly ever blinking. Very unsettling. Prior to Doctor Who he'd appeared in Out of This World, the ITV predecessor to the BBC's Out of the Unknown as Monroe in Botany Bay, an original story by the future Doctor Who writer and Dalek creator Terry Nation. You can also find him on the big screen James Bond film You Only Live Twice as an Astronaut on the 1st American Spacecraft. He played Det. Insp. Perraut in the The Sweeney episode Bad Apple, Andy Drake in The Professionals: Need to Know and has a recurring role in the first two Inspector Morse as Chief Inspector, then Chief Superintendent, Bell, an officer who beats Morse to a promotion appearing in The Dead of Jericho, which also features Patrick Troughton, and Service of All the Dead, which has several Doctor Who guest stars in it!

The Monk Thonmi is played by David Spenser. Spenser had appeared with Doctor who Patrick Troughton before when he played Mark opposite Troughton's Paul in Paul of Tarsus. You can see him in Carry On... Up the Khyber as Bungdit Din's servant. More on Carry Ons next story when Bungdit Din himself shows up! From the 1960s till his death in Sri Lanka in 2013 he was the partner of Doctor Who writer, actor and occasional script editor Victor Pemberton.

Raymond Llewellyn plays the monk Sapan. He has another association with monks and monestarys playing Madog in the Cadfael TV Series episodes One Corpse Too Many, The Sanctuary Sparrow, The Leper of St. Giles & Monk's Hood. He's frequently seen with Rinchen played by David Grey. I'm not 100% sure but I believe Sapan is on the left and Rinchen in the middle of the bellow picture when they're shown talking to Victoria.

Abbot Songsten is played by Charles Morgan who returns as the Gold Usher in director Gerald Blake's other Doctor Who story The Invasion of Time. He was in the British science fiction disaster movie The Day the Earth Caught Fire, released two years to the day before Doctor who started, where he plays an uncredited Foreign Editor. He too was in Out of This World appearing as the Chief in the first episode Dumb Martian, which launched the series as part of Armchair Theatre.

Amongst the cast we have to deal with a famous name that's *NOT* in the story: moustachioed monk Ralpachan is played by David Baron. "David Baron" was the stage name of playwright Harold Pinter. These are not one and the same: Pinter abandoned the use of the Baron name to perform under in 1959.

175 The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 175
STORY NUMBER: 038
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 07 October 1967
WRITER: Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
DIRECTOR: Gerald Blake
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
RATINGS: 6 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - Lost In Time
TELESNAPS: The Abominable Snowmen: Episode Two

"Victoria, I think this is one of those instances where discretion is the better part of valour: Jamie has an idea!"

And we're onto disc 3 of Doctor Who - Lost In Time!

Jamie knocks down the prop holding the roof up burying the Yeti. They take a sphere from the pyramid to show the Doctor but as they leave the buried Yeti starts to move. The Doctor is visited by the Monk Thomni who has been sent to take him to Khrisong. The Doctor tells him to look in the straw of the cell as Khrisong arrives to take him away. Thomni finds the Ghanta hidden there. Victoria and Jamie are chased down the mountainside by the Yeti. Khrisong verbally clashes with Rinchen & Saphan about what he plans for the Doctor. The Doctor is tied to the gate as bait for the Yeti. Thomni takes the Ghanta to Abbot Songsten, but hears another voice: Their master Padmasbhava. Padmasbhava now knows the Doctor has returned since the Ghanta has been bought back. Jamie & Victoria meet Travers on the Mountain. They get him to take them to the Monastery in return for showing him where the Yeti's cave is. Padmasbhava questions Thomni and instructs him to have The Doctor released and treated well. The unseen Padmasbhava's hypnotic tone convinces Thomni that his orders come from the Abbot and not Padmasbhava. When Thomni leaves Padmasbhava speaks in a more sinister tone to the Abbot about the Great Plan. Jamie, Victoria and Travers arrive, and Travers tells the monks that he was mistaken. Thomni arrives with the orders from the Abbot and Khrisong frees the Doctor. The sinister Padmasbhava tells the Abbot nothing must stop their preparations as there is little time left. Jamie & Victoria show the silver sphere to the Doctor who asks them about the Yeti. Travers tells them that the Yeti are shy and elusive creatures. Three Yeti are sighted from the monastery. Jamie has a plan to capture it so the Doctor & Victoria retreat into the Monastery. Jamie spreads a net on the floor at the gate: they batter the Yeti and haul the net up, suddenly noticing it has stopped moving. Buried in the mud is a bleeping & wiggling silver sphere which has fallen from the Yeti. A monk finds Jamie's sphere in the monastery and places it by the Buddha statue. The Doctor discovers the Yeti is a robot and there's something missing from inside it's chest. Outside the Monastery the buried sphere admits a bleeping call, returned by Jamie's sphere, left lying by the Buddha's statue, which starts moving....

Episode 2 of The Abominable Snowmen may be my favourite surviving episode of sixties Doctor Who: Great location work, superb dimly lit studio sets (and we'll see much later how important decent lighting is when it all goes wrong in the 80s), good monsters, a sinister presence and even little stuff like the spheres communicating with each other and the moving one at the feet of the Buddha. The plot ticks along nicely in this episode resolving certain aspects of the first episode and introducing new elements, notably the master Padmasbhava. This episode works superbly and makes me wonder how much better episode 1 would be with the pictures.

There appears to be an evolving running joke about Jamie's ability, or lack thereof, to predict things properly! Recall this exchange from the last episode of the previous story where he had the Cybercontroller tied up in the rejuvenating machine:

DOCTOR: I think not. I think there must be some sort of internal timing mechanism. Jamie, I hope you made those ropes secure.
JAMIE: Oh, the King of the beasties himself couldnae get out of that one.
DOCTOR: Good!

Which is the Cybercontroller's cue to burst through the rope and the machine!

DOCTOR: Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometime.

So then we have Jamie and Victoria in the cave at the start of the episode:

JAMIE: Are you all right?
VICTORIA: That horrible thing. What was it?
JAMIE: I don't know. Did you see what it did to my sword, though? Broke it like a piece of wood. No human's as strong as that.
VICTORIA: What is this place? And what are those?
JAMIE: Some sort of metal. They're all glowing.
VICTORIA: Oh, let's get away from here, Jamie.
JAMIE: Aye, if we can. I don't think that tunnel's completely blocked. Come on.
JAMIE: Oh, don't worry about that, it's quite dead.

Sure enough just at that point the Yeti trapped under the rubble starts to stir!

JAMIE: What's the matter?
VICTORIA: Look!

Effectively these two scenes are setting up this exchange later in this episode.

JAMIE: Hey, Doctor, if you really want to capture one of these beasties, I think I have an idea which might just work.
DOCTOR: Oh. Victoria?
JAMIE: Eh?
DOCTOR: Victoria, I think this is one of those instances where discretion is the better part of valour. Jamie has an idea. Come along.
JAMIE: No, Doctor
DOCTOR: Come along!

Incredibly Jamie's plan does work, though it's not 100% clear why until the Doctor comes to examine the inert Yeti:

DOCTOR: You were right about one thing, Victoria. This creature certainly doesn't seem to be flesh and blood.
TRAVERS: What?
DOCTOR: It's not your abominable snowman either, Travers. Look. It's metal.
TRAVERS: That's incredible.
THOMNI: What is it?
KHRISONG: A devil's warrior.
DOCTOR: No, I don't think so. It's more like a robot.
TRAVERS: A robot? My dear chap, don't let your imagination run away with you.
DOCTOR: Now, why has it stopped? Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
VICTORIA: Nothing there.
DOCTOR: No, but there has been.

And we've seen what does fit in there: one of the spheres like the one Jamie took from the cave earlier in the episode!

Unfortunately the surviving copy of episode two has a sound fault during this scene, present on all off air recordings of the story. When the Doctor says

"You were right about one thing Victoria — this creature certainly doesn't seem to be flesh and blood".

The audio is missing for the first half of the sentence until the middle of the word Victoria. The fault was disguised for the VHS release but is patched using other surviving Troughton dialogue for the CD and VHS releases.

This scene then leads to the dislodged control sphere, stuck in the mud outside the monastery, communicating with it's abandoned duplicate left lying by the Buddha statue which then starts to move!

Abominable Snowman 2 is the only episode of this story to exist. It was returned to the BBC in 1982 from a collector named Roger Stevens via Ian Levine. Stevens had bought a number of films from a former BBC employee who had "acquired" them. Levine asserted the both Snowman 2 and another episode, Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 were missing from the archives. Levine returned the copy of Snowmen 2, but held on to Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 for a little while longer, as a potential bargaining chip is any other sources of missing episodes emerged. That was returned to the BBC in mid 1983. See pages 195-9 of Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes by Richard Molesworth for more details.

Abominable Snowman 2 was released on video as part of Doctor Who - the Troughton Years in 1991 along with Enemy of the World 3 and Space Pirates 2. It's by some distance the best episode on the tape. A second surviving Yeti episode, The Web Of Fear 1, would have to wait many more years for it's VHS release in 2003 as part of the final Doctor Who VHS release. Both episodes can be found in the Doctor Who - Lost In Time DVD set.