The second character is
Brigadier Lethebridge-Stewart who while investigating New Wave Unversity and
being the one to defeat the Yeti, his story is about how he makes up with his
daughter, Kate and gets to meet his grandson.
His blood and thunder days are indeed long past as Chricton is in charge
of UNIT until the end of this story where Bambera takes over. What is nice is that this takes place in
1995, two years before the events of Battlefield
which nicely bridges the gap of emotions between The Five Doctors and Battlefield. Kate Lethebridge-Stewart is introduced here
and you immediately care for her not because she is the Brigadier’s daughter,
but because she is a genuinely good person who doesn’t deserve any ill
will. The third character is actually
Sarah Jane Smith, but she is rather underused in the novel as there really isn’t
much for her to do. She is relegated to
exposition dumping and liaison between the Brigadier and UNIT as there are
people working for New Wave University who have infiltrated the organization. There are some nice scenes where she is at a
zoo doing a story on a Yeti, the creatures seen at the end of The Abominable Snowmen which are actually
endangered. It’s a real shame as Platt
writes for her really well as a character in almost every regard and we even
get a lot of K9 in the novel to enjoy.
Platt also must be
commended for the way he writes the Intelligence. It is written very much like Josiah Smith and
Light from Ghost Light as an all
knowing being. The prose takes the idea
that the Intelligence is a Lovecraftian horror to the next level and it fits
right in with Craig Hinton’s wonderful Milennial
Rites. There is a lot of horrifying
imagery in the novel be it the scenes in the monastery where Victoria spends a
rather rough night, the astral plane which is described as a pure void or the
Yeti who have an upgrade. Platt is good at getting the audience ready for a
scare and it really works here. The Yeti
are also terrifying as along with the webbing they turn people into them by
having upgraded spheres absorbing into them.
It’s a really terrifying concept for the novel to pull off and Platt
makes it work really well and there is a threat that nobody is really safe in
this story.
To summarize, Downtime is a brilliant novel that manages
to tell a great story without having to use the Doctor. While there are scenes with two Doctors they
really are just a prologue and an epilogue for the story to allow us to
continue. Platt has mastered writing the
characters in the novel even if Sarah Jane Smith and K9 are both underused in
the story. It is really worth it as it
adds a lot to the story and is not limited by a low budget to describe with
horrific relish what is going on at New World University. 95/100
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