3x13 The Abominable Snowman Affair

I'm rewatching every episode of the Man from UNCLE series. The Abominable Snowman Affair is one of those episodes that probably would have been better off left unreleased. The UNCLE agents must have been written into the show only as an after thought, because the story suddenly stops making sense when anyone from UNCLE is on screen. This review contains major spoilers.

The pitch for the episode sounds alright, I think. In the Asian country of Ghupat, the High Lama (played by Philip Ahn) is about to die, but is afraid that the evil prime minister (David Sheiner) will attempt to appoint a fraudulent High Lama once he's gone. A local prophecy foretells that the true Lama will appear to the people astride an elephant, but just before his death the High Lama has sent his elephant off into the jungle to ensure that the prime minister can't manufacture an appearance by a fake successor. UNCLE, by allying with a local prophetess (played by Pilar Seurat), must ensure that only the authentic High Lama is inducted as the country's governor.

What happens between those plot points is that Illya Kuryakin goes into the Himalayas and puts on an abominable snowman costume for no reason. Literally, there's no explanation for what his plan was, or how an abominable snowman would further UNCLE's interests in Ghupat. He's shot and wounded by a former film celebrity known as Calamity Rogers (played by Ann Jeffreys) and it's never mentioned again. I assume somebody wrote it into the script so the title of the episode could focus on the abominable snowman?

The prophetess Amra Palli (played by Pilar Seurat) is emotionless and, apparently, authentic. But when she's ordered by the prime minister to kill the true High Lama, she loses her powers and gains emotions so she can fall in love with Napoleon Solo first, and then Illya Kuryakin as a gag at the end.

The prime minister's plot to replace the real High Lama seems to hinge on getting the fake one (Stewart Hsieh) to say publicly that his name is Jami and not Baku. There are apparently no other credentials necessary for being appointed as High Lama, so once the young Lama says his name is Jami, the prime minister's scheme is a success.

For most of the episode, Illya is a captive/guest of Calamity Rogers. He may as well be in a different episode. Napoleon Solo has claimed to be a journalist, so the prime minister lets him tag along to all the official ceremonies. There's no real conflict until the prime minister overhears Amra Palli telling Solo about how she abandoned a holy child in the jungle. At that point, the UNCLE agents are all captured and put into a cave somewhere so they don't interfere, and then Waverly shows up with an elephant and the real new High Lama, and the episode's over.

Superlative internal logic

The interesting thing about this episode is that the actual plot (the part about succession) is bizarrely believable. The prime minister's actions are always consistent to the culture being portrayed. He obviously believes that Jami is the new Lama by divine right. He wants to kill Jami but won't do it himself because, after all, the child is divine. So he tells Amra Palli, who has no emotion and is in communion with divine powers, to abandon Jami in the jungle. He also recognises that he must not kill the UNCLE agents by violent means, and instead must seal them in a tomb so they can have a peaceful and pensive death.

It's believable that this character wants to seize power, but only in a way that, for his own interpretation of whatever faith he was raised with, is defensible. That's the kind of mental acrobatics men have been performing for centuries. As silly as it seems to an outsider, it feels authentic because it was happening every day in the 1960s just as it happens every day in the 2020s.

The episode's concept is fine, it just doesn't work as an episode of Man from UNCLE, and in fact when you try to introduce UNCLE into the story it falls apart. Maybe if the story had kept Solo and Kuryakin entirely in the background, and showed how UNCLE sometimes manipulates local politics without anyone ever knowing it, the story could have worked. I don't think UNCLE actually ever does that, and I don't think it would make for an interesting show, but the story as written only makes sense with exactly these 3 beats:

1. Prime minister sends the divine child away to die
2. Amra Palli abandons the gods to protect the child chosen by the gods
3. The divine child miraculously reappears on an elephant, fulfilling the prophecy

Dropping UNCLE agents into that scenario doesn't make it a Man from UNCLE story.