Great Intelligence

Great Intelligence
[[File: Richard E Grant as the Great Intelligence|250px]]
Publication information
Species	Disembodied Intelligence
Home Planet	Unknown
Home Era	Unspecified
First appearance	The Abominable Snowmen

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[[ Richard E Grant as the Great Intelligence|250px]] '
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The Great Intelligence is a character from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Although the Great Intelligence has no physical form it is capable of both communicating, by itself or through possession, with other characters within the series. The Great Intelligence was originally created by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen where he encountered the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. The Great Intelligence tries to form a physical body so as to conquer the Earth, making use of Yeti robots that resemble the cryptozoological creatures. Initially the Great Intelligence used the Yeti robots to scare off curiosity seekers, only later using them as an army. Both the Intelligence and the Yeti returned in its sequel The Web of Fear.

After disagreements arose between Lincoln and Haisman with the BBC in 1968 over a serial introducing a new monster, The Dominators, the writers departed from the series and both the Great Intelligence and Yeti were retired. The Great Intelligence has since appeared in the 1990s Virgin Missing Adventures range of novels and the 1995 Reeltime spin-off production Downtime with the aid of its Yeti servants. The Great Intelligence returned in the 2012 Christmas Special “The Snowmen”, where it is voiced by Sir Ian McKellen, without the aid of its Yeti servants. Richard E Grant assumed the role in subsequent appearances. It acts as the main antagonist of the seventh series of the revived show.

Physical servants

Yeti

Main article: Yeti (Doctor Who)

The Yeti were an effort by the production team to create more recurring antagonists for the Doctor in lieu of the Daleks, who creator and part-copyright owner Terry Nation desired to have appear in an American spin-off series. Writers Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman chose the stories of the yeti to base their new monster upon. The Yeti are controlled by the Great Intelligence through control spheres. These are depicted as capable of seeking out inactive Yeti, emitting a series of whistle-like beeps whilst doing so. The Web of Fear shows the characters experimenting upon one of the spheres and eventually able to control the Yeti it is stored within by using a short-range remote control.

Snowmen

In "The Snowmen", the Great Intelligence's first appearance in the internal chronology of the series, the Great Intelligence—which currently exists in the form of psychic snowflake—animated snowmen across Victorian London to fight for it. In the course of the episode, it also reanimates and takes control of a woman who died by freezing to death in a pond, and later still possesses the dead body of his aide Dr Walter Simeon (Richard E Grant) after his death.

Spoonheads

The Spoonheads are robots used by the Great Intelligence’s operatives in “The Bells of Saint John” to harvest human minds for him to feast upon. They are also referred to as “Servers” by Miss Kizlet (Celia Imrie) and as walking wi-fi base stations by the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith). They have a spoon-shaped head through which they absorb a person's soul, and are able to disguise themselves as figures from the target's subconscious. Steven Moffat said that he wrote “The Bells of Saint John” as an “action rollercoaster”, with the Spoonhead robots devised in contrast to other monsters he had created such as the Weeping Angels and Silence with a focus on scares. He has also said that the Spoonheads are not a critique on contemporary obsessions with technology and that the wi-fi concept was more of an invasion method new to Doctor Who.

Whisper Men

In "The Name of the Doctor", the Great Intelligence is assisted by the Whisper Men, invulnerable manifestations that whisper in rhymes. They appear as Victorian gentlemen, with no facial features other than mouths with sharp teeth. The Great Intelligence is able to physically manifest in place of any of the individual Whisper Men, taking the form of his last human host, Walter Simeon (Richard E Grant).

Appearances

Both the Great Intelligence and the Yeti appeared twice in the fifth season of the series as adversaries of the Doctor’s second incarnation (Patrick Troughton). The 1967 serial The Abominable Snowmen depicts the Great Intelligence as having possessed the body of the High Lama Padmasamabhava (Wolfe Morris), ever since encountering the man on the astral plane some centuries ago. Using Padmasambhava the Great Intelligence moves small Yeti pieces around a chess-like map of the monastery and mountainside, with the Yeti protecting a cave hiding a pyramid of spheres that house the Great Intelligence. The Great Intelligence intends to create a physical body for itself, but these plans are foiled by the Doctor and his companions.

In the sequel The Web of Fear, aired in 1968 and set forty years after The Abominable Snowmen, the Great Intelligence returns and uses an army of Yeti to take over the London Underground. The Great Intelligence primarily possesses the mind of Staff-Sergeant Arnold (Jack Woolgar) to sabotage the military resistance to the Yeti invasion. The invasion is revealed as a trap designed to draw in the Doctor so that the Great Intelligence can drain the Doctor’s mind, but it is again defeated and banished.

The 2012 Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) episode "The Snowmen" provides an origin for the Great Intelligence, whose voice is provided by Sir Ian McKellen. It reveals that the Intelligence originated as an alien lifeforce existing in snow who grew to influence a young boy named Simeon during the 1800s in mental symbiosis. From there, the Great Intelligence had the adult Dr. Simeon (Richard E Grant) create "The Great Intelligence Institute" and orchestrate a scheme to obtain the DNA of a governess who has mutated into an ice creature. He intends to have an army of psychically animated snowmen incapable of melting so as to take over the human race. After the ice governess is destroyed, the Doctor uses a "memory worm" on Dr Simeon to erase his memory, expecting this to destroy the Intelligence. But the Great Intelligence had existed long enough to become an independent entity and uses Simeon's braindead husk to attack the Doctor before withdrawing from his vessel when the Latimer family cries for the dying Clara, triggering his snow to melt.

In the 2013 episode "The Bells of Saint John", set in the present day, the Great Intelligence uses a woman called Miss Kizlet (Celia Imrie) to aid him in creating an organization based at the Shard to collect and harvest the minds of people using the wifi. The Eleventh Doctor manages to upload Miss Kizlet into this "data cloud", forcing the workers to free the minds trapped in the data cloud and return them to their bodies. Having obtained what he needed the Great Intelligence has Miss Kizlet wipe all memories of his existence from her mind and others in order to hinder UNIT's investigation. He communicated with humans on monitors using the likeness of Simeon.

In the Series 7 finale, "The Name of the Doctor", the Great Intelligence manifests through and manipulates creatures called the Whisper Men, changing the one he inhabits into the form of Dr Simeon. The Whispermen kidnap the Paternoster Gang, close associates of the Eleventh Doctor, taking them to Trenzalore, the site of the Doctor's future grave. Having thereby lured the Doctor to his own grave, the Great Intelligence gains access to Doctor's tomb (his future dying TARDIS), by threatening the lives of the Gang. It is revealed the Doctor's travels through time have created a temporal rift inside the dying TARDIS. The Great Intelligence intends to scatter himself along the Doctor's timeline and rewrite it to destroy the Doctor, even though this will destroy him. After he has entered the rift, however, the Doctor's companion Clara Oswald follows him, likewise scattering herself along the timeline, thus saving the Doctor, who in turn enters his own timeline to rescue Clara. The Intelligence is presumed destroyed.

Powers

The Great Intelligence has no physical form and thus relied on possession of living creatures to manipulate its environment. It existed on the astral plane and could enter the people it encountered. It allowed Padmasambhava to live over 300 years while he created the Robot Yeti and it also reanimated dead bodies like Staff Sergeant Arnold. It has considerable mental powers such as mind control and can even mentally attack the Doctor, causing him great pain, and travel through time and space. The Great Intelligence could also manifest itself in simple forms such as a slime that glow brightly, a dense fog that consumed anything that enter it, and a poisonous web/fungus that can trap the Doctor's TARDIS and could not be destroyed by chemicals, explosives, and flamethowers.

Other appearances

As a popular recurring villain the Great Intelligence, and its Yeti servants, have appeared in Doctor Who spin-off media, however the canonical status of non-televised stories is uncertain. Yeti and the Great Intelligence are featured in the 1995 spin-off video Downtime, produced by Reeltime and featuring Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) with a now deceased Professor Travers (Jack Watling) serving as a vessel for the Intelligence. Here the Great Intelligence plans on infecting the Internet so as to use it as a new body, using control spheres to transform humans into Yeti servants. Downtime was novelised by Marc Platt as part of Virgin's Missing Adventures range in 1996.

The 1995 Missing Adventure Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton also features the Great Intelligence and its Yeti, with the summoning of a creature from the universe to come goes wrong and instead sees the Great Intelligence merged with that entity. This creates an altered London based on contradictory physical laws and populated by demons and sorcerers, forcing altered versions of the Sixth Doctor and his companion Mel (transformed into the Valeyard and a technomancer named Melaphyre) to restore London before the reality tears itself apart. The novel also features the character Anne Travers from The Web of Fear. Millennial Rites follows the New Adventure All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, published in 1994, in identifying the Great Intelligence with H. P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, a being from the universe before this one. The Great Intelligence also appeared in a back-up comic strip in Doctor Who Weekly #31–#34.

Reception

Critic Graham Sleight commented in an analysis of Doctor Who monsters that the use of Yeti robots by the Great Intelligence was uninteresting as they provided merely a physical and voiceless threat. Some reviewers have seen this as a strength, with Nick Page felt that the Yeti being controlled by the Great Intelligence gave them greater menace, arguing that 'the Great Intelligence... always turned off their power when it was not required', creates suspense when the characters interacted with a seemingly dormant Yeti.

Ian McKellen's performance of the Great Intelligence's voice for its return in the 2012 Christmas Special was generally well received. Patrick Mulkern, writing for Radio Times, said "hats off to Steven Moffat" for reintroducing the character and described the casting of Ian McKellen as "a coup" and "wizardly". The character was seen by some reviewers as being underdeveloped, with Kyle Anderson of the Nerdist feeling that although McKellen and Richard E Grant, who portrayed its human minion Dr Simeon, were excellent casting choices the Great Intelligence's plan was "the least fleshed out part of the script". Matt Risley's review on IGN similarly praised the acting of McKellen and Grant, but felt the story was "stuffed with ideas" and the Great Intelligence's return was overshadowed by the "fully formed and utterly unpredictable" performance of Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara Oswald.

The character's appearance, portrayed by Richard E Grant, in "The Bells of Saint John", was perceived as establishing the Great Intelligence as a prominent antagonist for Series 7. Simon Brew felt that the Great Intelligence's appearance was "very welcome" and compared the character's use to that of Moriarty in Steven Moffat's series Sherlock. Mark Snow described the Great Intelligence in his review as a "Big Bad" and felt that the character's involvement tied nicely into the Spoonhead plot. Neela Debnath of The Independent, despite feeling that the episode was a "rehash" of elements of "Blink" and Sherlock, commented that it appeared to be establishing the groundwork for a battle between the Doctor and Great Intelligence.

See also

• Yeti (Doctor Who)
• Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture

External links

• The Great Intelligence at the official BBC Doctor Who website
• Great Intelligence on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki

Template:Great Intelligence stories