Downtime (Doctor Who)

Synopsis

Sometime after Victoria had parted company with the Doctor on 20th century Earth (Fury from the Deep), she is lured back to the Detsen Monastery in Tibet (The Abominable Snowmen) by a dream telling her she'll find her late father there. Instead, she finds the Great Intelligence, which still possessed the mind of Professor Travers (The Web of Fear).

15 years later, Victoria is the vice chancellor of New World University. New World is an institution that claims to offer spiritual guidance to distraught youth. In reality, New World is the headquarters for the Intelligence's new plan to conquer the world by infecting all of the computers. Both the administration and students await the coming of a "new world" that will be heralded by the chancellor, the Intelligence-possessed Travers.

Victoria's motives are well-meaning but misguided, having been manipulated with a promised "light of truth". The students themselves have been brainwashed through their computer courses and are slaves of the Intelligence. Outsiders refer to them as "chillys".

The Intelligence needs a final missing Locus to attain its goal. It believes the Brigadier has it, but the locus (a small wooden carving of a yeti) is actually with his daughter Kate and grandson Gordon on their narrowboat.

New World attempts to gather information on the Brigadier by asking Sarah Jane Smith to investigate him. Sarah lies about knowing the Brigadier and later warns both him and UNIT. The Intelligence then arranges a meeting between the Brigadier and a corrupt UNIT captain named Cavendish.

Throughout the story the Brigadier is aided by a New World student named Daniel Hinton, a former student of his from the Brendon School. The Intelligence's conditioning failed on Hinton, though at times he is still under its influence and at one point becomes a Yeti. He can communicate with the Brigadier through the bardo or astral plane.

Cast

Soundtrack release

Music from this video composed by Ian Levine, Nigel Stock, and Erwin Keiles was released on CD by Silva Screen Records in December 1995. The 'Monastic chant' heard in the opening and closing themes was the same chant that was used in the Doctor Who story Planet of the Spiders.

Track listing

1. Introduction: Detsen Monastery and Title Sequence
2. Astral Plane
3. Confrontation
4. Eerie
5. First Chase
6. Second Chase
7. Truth
8. Chase/Astral Plane
9. Brigadier's Lost Memory
10. Intelligence
11. Message Understood
12. He Fell
13. Hallucination
14. Astral Plane
15. Travers
16. I'm Still Alive
17. Danny Was Right
18. Double Cross
19. Sting
20. Build Up
21. Apparition
22. Stranger
23. Realisation
24. Family/Yeti Themes
25. Approach
26. Single Sting
27. Lift
28. Webs
29. Attack
30. Yeti March
31. Climax
32. Victoria
33. Family Theme
34. End Credits

Novelisation

In 1996 a novelisation of Downtime by Marc Platt was published by Virgin Publishing as part of their Missing Adventures line. It expands greatly on the original story and features many differences in plot. It is the only Missing Adventure not to centre on the Doctor, although the Second Doctor makes a cameo at the start of the novel, and the Third Doctor makes a cameo at the end. It is one of only two non-BBC, Doctor Who-related productions to be novelised. The other was Shakedown which was published as part of the Virgin New Adventures line of books.

The novelisation included an 8-page photo insert of behind-the-scenes images taken from the film production.

Release

The film was a direct to video VHS release in 1995. Then, in 2015 One Media iP Limited acquired the drama and re-released it as a 2-DVD boxset in November 2015.