Downtime
Across the room, in a high-backed leather chair, Victoria saw the old man from the reading room. His face was curiously young for someone so long dead.
In 1966, The Doctor defeated the Great Intelligence, but he knew it wasn’t a final victory. And his companion Victoria, whose mind had once hosted the evil entity, might still fall prey to its power.
Now it seems that his fears are justified. In a Tibetan monastery, the monks display unearthly powers – UNIT are investigating. A new university has opened in London with a secret agenda that may threaten the whole country. Victoria, abandoned in an age very different from her own, and haunted by visions of a father she refuses to believe is dead, is slipping into despair and madness. But are the visions which plague her really hallucinations? Or has the Great Intelligence once again made Earth its target for invasion?
coming soon
- Downtime by Marc Platt was a novelisation of the independent film Downtime, released as the eighteenth book of the Virgin Missing Adventures line.
- The third and fourth incarnations of the Doctoreach visited Victoria, offering to take her travelling with them
- This story is the only Virgin Missing Adventures release in which The Doctor does not appear prominently, itself stemming from a production that was meant to focus almost exclusively on
The Doctor’s associates.
- The book features a foreword by Keith Barnfather, and also contains an eight-page photo section featuring stills from the film, which are reproduced in black and white.
- Now on DVD and episode entry here
- The Brigadier tells Sarah Jane Smith to quote the codes NN and QQ when she contacts UNIT H.Q., which are in real life the production codes for the television stories The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear respectively.
- This story continues the events of the television story The Web of Fear and concludes the “Yeti trilogy” which began with the television story The Abominable Snowmen.
- Fans of the new Doctor Who series know the Great Intelligence as voiced by actor Sir Ian McKellan in the
11th Doctor episodes“The Snowmen, “The Bells of St. John, ” and “The Name of the Doctor.” The Great Intelligence also played a part in classic episodes, however, including”The Abominable Snowmen” and “The Web of Fear.”
- Perhaps the most interesting character to make a first appearance in Downtime is the
Brigadier’s daughter, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, a character who has become popularon the new series. In Downtime, actress Beverely Cressman played her, although new Who fans are more familiar with Jemma Redgrave’s version of the character, which made it canon.
- The book features a foreword by Keith Barnfather, and also contains an eight-page photo section featuring stills from the film, which are reproduced in black and white.