Downtime by: Marc Platt: The Web of Intelligence

Getting Marc Platt to write another Virgin Novel in the middle of the run was a great idea and after the success of Terrance Dicks’s Shakedown it became obvious for Platt to adapt Downtime from video to novel.  Like Shakedown, the novelization of Downtime tells a very different story to its video counterpart, all while having the events of the video occur in the novel in what is vivid detail.  I will eventually get on to reviewing the original production, but the plot of it and the novel follow three previous characters from Doctor Who.  First is Victoria Waterfield who is out of her time in the 1990s goes searching for her father at the Det-sen monastery from The Abominable Snowmen where the Great Intelligence, inhabiting the corpse of Professor Travers, takes her over.  They establish New World University where they are using the newly established Internet to bring the intelligence back into the world.  Victoria as a character in the novel is extremely sympathetic.  Platt’s prose make us feel her loneliness and desire to see someone she knows again.  Platt adds in a scene immediately after The Web of Fear where we actually get a lot of the formation of this loneliness as it is very close to her departure.  There is also detailing on how she came to the monastery where you really feel the sense of dread as the cover gives away that the Intelligence is back.  Her story arc does end very nicely as she breaks away and accepts her position while going in to hiding.  The Doctor doesn’t forget about her as his Fourth and Third incarnations do pay her a visit.  It becomes very nice that she gets her own little happy ending while of course she will meet the Sixth Doctor in Power Play.

 

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