“You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road.”
In 1986 a selection of Doctor Who comics were given away with Golden Wonder crisps. On the back of each comic was a quiz page, proudly entitled The Doctor’s Database. Arguably each edition contained at least one trick question. E.g. Richard Hurndall was included in a list of actors who had played the Doctor. He was. He is. But he also didn’t tend to be counted by the kind of people who would bother to answer something called The Doctor’s Database. It was that kind of quiz.
One of the questions concerned the most recent story in which the Yeti had appeared. I’d bet you a guinea to a gooseberry most fans smugly thought The Web of Fear and moved on. Yet, on turning the page upside down, they were confronted with the words The Five Doctors. And the truth of it is undeniable. While also being beside the point. Now, The Five Doctors is a wonder. A marvel. But a single Yeti’s brief appearance is not one of the most memorable moments in it.1
Fans have speculated since transmission as to what that solo Yeti was doing in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. “It must have been left over from the games!” says the Troughton Doctor, but that asks more questions than it answers. Doctor Who’s Yeti are robots, controlled by a formless entity called the Great Intelligence, and it’s hard to see what the Great Intelligence could gain from chasing the Doctor and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) into a cave, or indeed participating in the gladiatorial Game of Rassilon in Gallifrey’s Dark Time in the first place. Unless the Intelligence was a kind of special guest, who enjoyed putting its Yeti into death matches with Raston Warrior Robots and the like. Which sounds quite cool, actually.
Other fans have speculated that this is a real live flesh and blood Yeti - one is seen briefly at the end of The Abominable Snowmen using a variation on the robot Yeti monster costume - but they are characterised as shy, gentle creatures and this one is a murderous brute. Or is it? While the Yeti threatens Doctor Who and the Brigadier, its attentions actually cause them to find their way out of the caves and into the Tomb Of Rassilon via a door they might otherwise not have found. Given that we find out at the end of the story that Rassilon wants the Doctors to reach the Tomb, maybe he is controlling the robot monster and giving them a counterintuitive handy hint.