Downtime

Years after leaving the Doctor, Victoria Waterfield is drawn back to the Det-Sen Monastary in Tibet where she encounters a dark presence from the past. In 1995 she becomes the vice-chancellor of New World Univeristy, set up using the money her father left behind. New World follows the Det-Sen principles of learning and meditation, but to achieve their goals they require a missing locus. Journalist Sarah Jane Smith is hired to investigate on behalf of New World but when her path of investigation points towards retired Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, she realizes that something more sinister is at work, something that could put the whole world at the mercy of the Great Intelligence. And without the Doctor, they are on their own.

Downtime has the interesting distinction of being the series' only "retcon" piece; retcon being short for retroactive continuity. Originally it was made as a video production by ReelTime pictures using characters that were not copyrighted to the BBC, but shortly after it was officially embraced as lore with a novelized and greatly expanded edition in the Virgin Missing Adventures range. The expanded version featured the second Doctor for a few pages, and the third towards the end, and K9 appeared with Sarah (he does not in the video but it is obvious that Sarah is communicating with him) as well as the inclusion of UNIT personnel Brigadier Chricton (who was a colonel in the opening minutes of The Five Doctors) and a colonel Bambera, who would feature in the seventh Doctor adventure Battlefield.

Having been posessed by the Intelligence twice already has made Victoria an easy target for its powers, so its hold over her is so firm that we're not really seeing "our" Victoria for the better part of the adventure. (I often wonder if Janet Fielding could be convinced to be Tegan again to look at her life after the Mara). Victoria and Sarah share a few scenes without actually realizing that they have the Doctor as a common link; that bond is reserved for Sarah's eventual reuniting with the Brigadier, who at this point is still teaching at Brendan school some years after the events depicted in Mawdryn Undead. There's also a new character to add to the mix: Kate Lehtbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier's daughter from his failed first marriage. Kate hasn't spoken to her father in years - so long that he doesn't know he has a grandson, but she becomes a target of harassment by the New World university student body - the Chillies (short for Children) - when they connect her to the Brigadier, and the Brigadier to the last locus that binds the Great Intelligence to Earth. Acting as the de-facto chorgeous of the piece is New World's resident DJ, played by John Leeson (original voice of K9), who broadcasts daily from the school until he realizes that his program is nothing more than propaganda. And in the last little bit of star casting is Jack Watling as Professor Travers once more, kept alive as a puppet of the Intelligence until it can escape its bonds.

And yes, there are Yeti again. Lots and lots of Yeti. Okay well in the video there are just three but in the book there are a lot more. They've been redesigned again, probably due to budgetary reasons, and are smaller than before, and for some reason their fur is auburn now, not grey. And that's not just because they're in colour at last.

As it was the first video in a while, of course Jay and I reconvened to watch it, with a supplemtary viewing of the surviving episodes of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear to provide a refresher on the backstory. Our opinion? Not as scary as the 60's episodes, and slightly melodramatic. The parade of companions was fun, and the subtle references here and there to the Doctor were clever, even with the Brigadier believeing he was encountering a regenerated Doctor at one point. Some of the acting is pretty wooden and the production values although different from the actual BBC episodes in style were still a bit.... limp. Everything was done on location, and as a result the sound in some places is just awful.

To put it into a fan's perspective, by the time this came out we hadn't had any substantial new Doctor Who on television since 1989. True there was a Children In Need special in 1993, but it was far too quick to really mean anything (the review of that is coming, but we're still a ways off) and the FOX movie I have referenced before was still two years away. This was as close as we got to new Doctor Who on screen, and in its context it really is something quite special to see the companions left behind carrying on the Doctor's work for him and keeping Earth safe, and having that bond between them that only adventures in time and space can make. The Doctor touches lives and changes them, and also leaves something of himself behind when he goes; the sense of duty to protect and defend. Downtime may not be brilliant on its own, but as a part of something bigger, it's a brilliant piece of the tapestry that is Earth's future history (or at least at the time it was... years later anything 90s is very much the past). Even without the Doctor in the show it is firmly anchored to other adventures, including an upcoming novel called Millenial Rites.

So that's the break over. While Earth has been saved again, the Doctor and Evelyn have been busy doing the same thing, and running into an old enemy in the process...

NEXT EPISODE : JUBILEE

The Web of Fear

After regaining control of the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that he has been trapped by a web in space and drawn back to present-day Earth. The TARDIS materializes in an Underground station where soliders are attempting to halt the spread of a fungus substance through the tunnels, and a killer mist in the streets overhead. With central London evacuated, the Yeti are found roaming the streets and the tunnels. 30 years after his expedition to Tibet, Professor Travers has accidentally reactivated a control sphere and allowed the Great Intelligence to return to Earth, and its plans are more thorough than before; this time it is ready for the Doctor and plans to suck all the knowledge and experience out of his mind for its own use. As with The War Machines, the Doctor is co-opted into helping the local military repel the invasion attempt, liasing with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart of the army.

Episode 1 is all that remains of this story, which is as always a crying shame, but it is good that there is something to go on as opposed to no material whatsoever. There is a prolonged street battle with the army fighting the redesigned Yeti in episode 5, but it translates very poorly on audio; thankfully there is a short clip of it that cencors cut out of the original broadcast and it made its way to the Lost in Time DVD along with the intact episode itself. Other surviving material includes the Yeti roaming the tunnels of the London Underground and the bodies of dead soldiers covered in the Intelligence's web.

Placing the Yeti in such a familiar site as the Underground would have a profound impact on the viewers of the time, seeing something they recognize on televsion being overrun with monsters just like the London scenes in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Small children watching were suddenly afraid of taking the Tube for fear of running into them down there, resulting in more complaints against the show for being too frightening for small children. Indeed, the Yeti are much more fierce than they were in their debut story and this time have been given a roar to go with their new look. In an unusual move, perhaps out of concern over the level of fear in the show, the BBC aired a short trailer just before episode 1 of Patrick Troughton on the Underground set advising young viewers that the Yetia re making an appearance and they are much more frightening than before, so they might want to hold their parents' hands to keep them from getting scared. Ah if only they had found that trailer as well when they found the one for The Power of the Daleks.

Bringing back Travers after a few episodes but making the gulf many years was an interesting move. This time he has a daughter along with him, who is all grown up and has inherited her father's scientific curiosity. Travers makes an interesting observation that the Doctor and Jamie are all the family that Victoria has in the world, reminding us again of the grim circumstances surrounding her joining of the crew in the first place. After being menaced by Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors, human thugs and now the Yeti again, it's time to wonder how much more of this she is going to be able to take. The other character of note is Lethbridge-Stewart. A no-nonsense military man, he is keen to take charge of a situation and do what he feels he must to turn it around. He'll be back. So will the Yeti, but not for a very long time.

Time to take a break from the televised series and look a couple of novels; one from the Virgin Books range and a relatively new one from the BBC Books range. It's nice weather outisde right now, may as well go find a tree and do some reading.

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

The Abominable Snowmen

A small camp on a high mountain is attacked by a massive furry creature, and one man is left for dead. The other stumbles blindly into the night, running for his life. In the morning, the TARDIS materializes nearby and the Doctor reveals that he, Jamie, and Victoria are in Tibet, and he knows the locals as he is in posession of one of their holy relics entrusted to him years before by the Monks of the Det-Sen Monastary. Returning the small bell to the monks, however, does not prove to be the celebration the Doctor hoped for, and he is accused by an explorer named Travers of attacking his camp and murdering his colleague. The monks of Det-Sen are suspicious of the Doctor as well, for with his arrival and Travers' accusation has come the recent attacks on them by the Yeti - the fabled abominable snowmen of the Himalayas. The truth is that the Yeti are in fact robots, being controlled by the Great Intelligence, a non-coroporeal entity from deep space that found its way to Earth through the meditation of one of the monks. The Doctor faces the perils of fighting a foe that is controlling an old friend, and fending off the attacks of the Yeti against all in the monastary. The Intelligence craves a physical form of its own and needs the Yeti robots to serve as its hands until such time as it can make its plans come to fruition, but it does not take into account the presence of the Doctor, and is defeated, leaving burned-out Yeti littering the Tibetan slopes.

More hints to the mysterious past of the Doctor here, in the form of his involvement with Det-Sen during its hour of need. The master monk, Padmasambahva, recognizes the Doctor when he sees him but makes no comment about his physical form having changed, so the Doctor appears to have been here before in this incarnation, perhaps an untold story with Ben and Polly at his side. Jamie is drafted into service with the monks to help defend the monastary, and Victoria screams a lot, which is something she is going to become famous for. The Doctor plays things cool even when he is locked up on the strength of Travers' accusations, sitting in a cell playing his recorder, but when the time comes to fight the Intelligence, he is there and ready. The Yeti are not as frightening as one would expect; they make no sound in this adventure, just lumber about in silence. Only episode 2 of the 6-part story exists, along with some colour location footage detailing the shooting of the serial in 1967, but there is enough to show the sheer size of the monsters, and how they could be terrifying to a small child as they rampage down a mountain in pursuit of Jamie and Victoria. Still, what kind of monsters are these that can be put out of action by removing a silver sphere control unti from their bodies? Okay, this is Doctor Who where the Daleks are foiled by a flight of stairs, but come on.... the sphere is easily knocked free when a Yeti is ambused and attacked by Jamie and the monks, and in episode 4 the Doctor casually opens a Yeti and pulls its sphere out. Some argue that the Great Intelligence did not consider the presence of someone smart enough to figure out that the Yeti were robots, but that doesn't make for intelligence as great as promised. Small point, though.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ICE WARRIORS