Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen
Page 13
In other respects, the novel presents a very faithful retelling of the TV story – if snowier (the serial was filmed in the distinctly un-snowy hills of North Wales). Perhaps the most significant difference between the two versions is in the names of the various monks of the Det-sen monastery. Haisman and Lincoln had based these on those of authentic and noteworthy figures from Tibetan Buddhist history: Songtsän Gampo founded the Tibetan empire in the seventh century; Thonmi Sambhota was the inventor of Tibetan script at the behest of Songtsän Gampo; Padmasambhava was an eighth-century sage guru who took Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet; in the ninth century, Tri Ralpacen was the forty-first King of Tibet, another important figure in the progress of Buddhism; Buton Rinchen Drub was a fourteenth-century Tibetan abbott. When Terrance Dicks was commissioned to novelise ‘The Abominable Snowman’, Doctor Who’s producer was Barry Letts. Letts was uncomfortable with this use of genuine names and concerned that it might cause inadvertent offence. He advised Dicks to make small changes to them. Consequently, TV’s Abbot Songsten becomes Abbot Songtsen, Thonmi becomes Thomni, Padmasambhava becomes Padmasambvha, Ralpachan becomes Rapalchan… Only Rinchen and Khrisong remain unchanged.
Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowman also has a few examples of one of the many things Terrance Dicks has influenced or devised for the Doctor Who universe. On television, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and, especially, William Hartnell portray the Doctor as a rather human alien – he is subject to many of the limitations and frailties that most Earthlings face. A consistent feature of Dicks’s novelisations, though, is a continuing series of hints that the Doctor’s unprepossessing appearance masks something more powerful. ‘Although the Doctor was small in stature, he seemed to have limitless resources of energy and strength,’ the book tells us. ‘Despite his modest size, the Doctor could exert amazing strength when he needed to.’ It could only be a matter of time before the Doctor would be unveiled as one of the few two-armed beings in the universe to have mastered the martial art of Venusian Aikido…
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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.
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
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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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