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| The
Abominable Snowmen |
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 Name: Yog-Sothoth, AKA the Great
Intelligence; was briefly merged with Saraquazel into an unnamed third
entity.
Format:
Television show and Book.
Time of Origin: Originally
a Time Lord - or the equivalent - from the universe prior to this
one; now billions of years old, apparently existing somewhere near
Earth; attacked Earth in the 1930s, the 1960s, and the 1980s (No specific
dates were provided).
Appearances: "The
Abominable Snowmen", "The
Web of Fear", "The
Five Doctors", "Millennial
Rites" and "Downtime".
Doctors: Second
Doctor and Sixth
Doctor.
Companions: Jamie
McCrimmon, Victoria
Waterfield, The
Brigadier and Melanie Bush (Sarah
Jane Smith also encountered the Great Intelligence with Victoria
and The Brigadier without The Doctor)
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|
The Abominable Snowmen |
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History: As one of the Great Old
Ones - beings who existed in the universe prior to this one before
its destruction and the creation of the current universe, escaping
its destruction by temporarily ‘hiding’ in another universe
that ended a few seconds later before returning to this one, other
examples of this ‘species’ including the Animus and Fenric
-, the Great Intelligence possessed significant powers. As the military
strategist of the Great Old Ones, the Great Intelligence was capable
of possessing living creatures and creating elaborate control spheres
that could help it to extend and exert its influence over others,
experimenting with various stratagems that he had developed considered
to see if they would work as he mounted millions of campaigns against
inhabited planets.
During
his time in this universe, the Great Intelligence often used robot
versions of various animals to secretly mount his campaigns until
he was ready to launch his attacks on a large scale. When attacking
the planet Hiskith, he used the Hisk version of Koala Bears, while
on Danos he used domestic animals equivalent to dogs. Eventually arriving
on Earth, the Great Intelligence possessed the Tibetan lama Padmasambhava
while he was travelling on astral plane, subsequently using his control
spheres to create robotic duplicates of the Yeti to begin his invasion,
controlling them by moving pieces on a chess-like board. In 1935,
the Second
Doctor, a friend of the lama's, as well as Edward Travers,
a westerner determined to find the Yeti, intervened in the Intelligence’s
attempt at world conquest, The Doctor having come to visit his old
friend while Travers searched for the original Yeti. Despite the Intelligence’s
attempt to influence Padmasambhava’s monastery to drive The
Doctor away, a subsequent attack on the monastery gave The Doctor
the chance to examine the body of a defeated Yeti and deduce its true
nature.
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| The
Web of Fear |
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Thanks to Travers spying on
the Yeti assembling large numbers of spheres in a cave, The Doctor
learned that the Great Intelligence was attempting to physically manifest
itself on Earth, as well as learning about his old friend’s
connection with it. While The Doctor distracted the Intelligence in
Padmasambhava’s body, Jamie McCrimmon
and one of the monks destroyed the equipment he was using to control
the Yeti from the monastery. Following this victory, The Doctor destroyed
the pyramid of spheres that had been assembled, ending the threat
of invasion, although Padmasambhava's physical body died when the
Intelligence was deprived of its opportunity to manifest ("The
Abominable Snowmen").
Approximately
thirty-five years later, the robot Yeti re-activated, allowing the
Intelligence the chance to manifest once again, thus time focusing
its attack on London (Although the Yeti remained its main agents despite
their impractical nature due to the Intelligence lacking the time
to assemble a new invasion force if it wanted to ‘keep up’
with the conquests of its fellow Old Ones). Manifesting as a massive
web in space, the Intelligence ensnared The Doctor’s TARDIS
in space and forced it to land in the London Underground. Reunited
with Travers - who had unintentionally reactivated the Yeti when he
turned on a control sphere that he had kept as a souvenir -, The Doctor
assisted the British military in their battles with the Yeti - resulting
in his first meeting with his future ally Colonel
Lethbridge-Stewart -, but the Intelligence reanimated and possessed
the corpse of Staff Sergeant Arnold. Using Arnold to track The Doctor's
actions, despite their success in weakening the fungal web that it
was using the spheres to generate, the Intelligence eventually captured
The Doctor, intending to use a conversion headset to take over and
possess his body. The Doctor attempted to reverse the process, allowing
him to absorb the Intelligence and destroy it, but the control spheres
that formed the focus of the Intelligence were smashed by Jamie McCrimmon
- using a Yeti that The Doctor had reprogrammed earlier - due to
his ignorance of The Doctor’s real plan, resulting in the Intelligence
being expelled back into space, weakened but not destroyed ("The
Web of Fear").
During the Game of Rassilon- when The Doctor's
first five incarnations were taken out of time and planted in the
Death Zone, an area of Gallifrey where the ancient Time Lords had
pitted various races against each other for their amusement -, the
Second Doctor and The
Brigadier encountered a single Yeti that had
been left over from the Games while they were exploring the catacombs
underneath the Dark Tower, the tomb of Rassilon in the heart of the
Death Zone. Without the controlling influence of the Great Intelligence,
however, this Yeti was nothing but a rampaging beast, The Doctor
managing to drive it back with a firecracker in his pocket. Although
this 'attack' merely sent the Yeti into a rampage, it triggered a
rock slide that brought down the roof of the cave in the immediate
area, separating The Doctor and The Brigadier from the Yeti and allowing
them to proceed with their search to reach the heart of the Tower
("The
Five Doctors").
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| The
Web of Fear |
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The Intelligence later contacted The Doctor's former
companion Victoria
Waterfield and manipulated her into locating the ‘Locus’,
a central processing crystal that it could use to restore its physical
form, by posing as the ‘spirit’ of her father. However,
Victoria rebelled against the Intelligence’s manipulation of
her when she realised the truth of what she had done, working with
The
Brigadier and fellow former companion Sarah
Jane Smith - who she had coincidentally hired to help her find
the Locus while under the Intelligence’s influence - to disable
her university’s computers after they realised that the Intelligence
had downloaded itself into them ("Downtime").
At the turn of the Millennium, Anne Travers,
left traumatized by the Intelligence’s first attempts to enter
the current universe, became convinced that millionaire Ashley Chapel
would try to use a special program, the Millennium Codex, written
in quantum mnemonics - the language of the Old Ones -, to summon the
Intelligence to Earth, and prepared a counter spell designed to force
it back into its own reality. However, despite the attempted aid of
the Sixth
Doctor, Anne’s efforts had destructive effects when it turned
out that Chapel had actually been attempting to summon Saraqueazel,
a being from the next universe, to serve him. Due to the
competing laws of physics generated by Chapel’s attempt to summon
Saraquazel, Anne’s attempt to banish the Intelligence, and the
natural laws of the present universe, the Intelligence and Saraquazel
were merged into a single entity, reality around London being altered
into a semi-mystical Kingdom obeying the laws of all three universes,
the three resulting ‘kingdoms’ being ruled by the altered
versions of Anne, Chapel, and The Doctor’s current companion
Mel.
Although The Doctor was briefly mutated
into the Valeyard - his dark possible future self ("The
Trial of a Time Lord") by the unstable nature of reality in this realm,
the TARDIS helped him resist The
Valeyard’s influence long enough for him to convince Anne
and Mel’s new selves to remember their pasts. Using Mel’s
experience in deciphering the original mnemonics, they were able to
prepare a ‘spell’ that disrupted reality and restored
the Intelligence and Saraquazel to normal by linking the three key
structures of the Kingdom, although the effort resulted in Anne sacrificing
herself to atone for her mistake in causing this crisis. Restored
to normal, Saraquazel - really a benevolent entity that just wanted
to go home -, undid the worst of the damage done by the ‘spells’
so that only a few people remained dead, leaving the Intelligence
trapped in its prison once again while Saraquazel departed for its
home universe ("Millennial
Rites"). Whether the Intelligence itself shall ever return
is unknown. |
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