Great Intelligence

The Great Intelligence is a recurring character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Although the intelligence has no form itself, it is capable of communicating with people. It appeared in the Second Doctor serials The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, as well as the 2012 Christmas special "The Snowmen".

The Great Intelligence, voiced by Ian McKellen, was the main villain of the Doctor Who serial "The Snowmen". As it was set in the 1800s, a century before both The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, this story provided a look into the origins of the Intelligence's presence on Earth and provided it with a motivation for its' later actions - in The Snowmen it uses constructs based on snowmen built by children, so by the time of The Abominable Snowmen it has switched to the more durable mechanical Yeti. Similarly, in The Snowmen the Doctor uses a map of the 1960s London Underground to prove a point in front of the younger Intelligence, explaining why it was later able to navigate these tunnels in The Web of Fear.

Other appearances
It also features in the spin-off video Downtime, which was novelised as part of Virgin's Missing Adventures range. The Yeti also appear in the Missing Adventure Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton. Rites follows the New Adventure All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane in identifying the Great Intelligence with H. P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, a being from the universe before this one. The Great Intelligence appeared in a back-up comic strip in Doctor Who Weekly #31–#34.