Yeti (Doctor Who)
| Yeti | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who alien | |
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A Yeti in The Web of Fear
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| Type | Robots |
| Affiliated with | The Great Intelligence |
| Home planet | Earth |
| First appearance | The Abominable Snowmen |
The Yeti are fictional robots in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. They were originally created by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen, where they encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria.
The Yeti resemble the cryptozoological creatures also called the Yeti, with an appearance Radio Times has described as "cuddly but ferocious", disguising a small spherical device that provides its motive power. The Yeti serve the Great Intelligence, a disembodied entity from another dimension, which first appeared trying to form a physical body so as to conquer the Earth. Initially the Yeti are a ruse to scare off curiosity seekers, later serving as an army for the Great Intelligence.
Disagreements arose between Lincoln and Haisman with the BBC in 1968 over a serial introducing another new monster, The Dominators, leading to the writers' departure from the series and the retirement of the Yeti as antagonists. The Yeti have since appeared infrequently in flashbacks or cameo appearances, in addition to 1990s Virgin Missing Adventures novels and the 1995 Reeltime spin-off production Downtime. The Great Intelligence has since returned in Series 7 of the revived series, portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen and Richard E Grant, without the aid of its Yeti servants.
The Yeti, along with contemporary villains such as the Cybermen and Ice Warriors, were an effort by the production team to create replacement monsters for the Daleks, who creator and part-copyright owner Terry Nation desired to have appear in an American spin-off series.The Evil of the Daleks, the last serial of the fourth season, had been intended as a final confrontation between the Doctor and the Daleks. Producer Innes Lloyd had already overseen the creation of the Cybermen by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler and saw the monsters as an alternative to Daleks. Lloyd later recollected that the need to replace the Daleks also influenced the decision to pick up the Yeti as recurring monsters.
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