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3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Book That Could Have Been Better,
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This review is from: Downtime (Doctor Who) (Paperback)
Downtime is perhaps best described as being an expanded novelization of the 1995 Doctor Who spin-off video that featured characters from the series including Victoria Waterfield, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, Professor Edward Travers and the Yeti but not the Doctor due to rights issues. The novelization is of course an expansion of the original script for the video (as the original video was only about an hour in length). The result is that despite fine characterizations and concepts, the novel version is rather slow moving and seemingly full of padding.
The novel does have fine characterizations of the series previously existing characters. There really isn't a single central character and instead moves between Victoria Waterfield, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Sarah Jane Smith. Victoria perhaps gets the majority of narrative dedicated to her, especially with the forty page first chapter and her subsequent running of the New World University. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is on the verge of retiring from his post-UNIT work as a teacher and is with some reluctance dragged into the stories events from a former student now at the University and his daughter Kate. Sarah Jane, still a journalist, finds herself being asked to investigate old UNIT colleagues by the University and senses something is up. All the characters remain true to their TV incarnations (perhaps not surprising as they were played in the video version by the original actors) and it's nice to see what life holds beyond the TARDIS. The result is familiar characters given new angles. There's also a wide cast of supporting characters as well. These include Professor Edward Travers, a character from the two Great Intelligence/Yeti stories of the 1960's, and a few appearances from K9 as well. The original characters of the story include Lethbridge-Stewart's former student Daniel Hinton who now a student at New World University, the Brigadier's estranged daughter Kate who, along with her young son, seems besieged by the University's students, UNIT Captain Cavendish who is not quite what he seems and the homeless Harrods who hangs around near the University. Many of the characters work very well though Harrods comes across as little more then cardboard. Together they make a good group of supporting characters. As mentioned above, this is really a expanded novelization of the video story. As a result there is much added to bring the story up to the appropriate page count. A prime example being the forty page first chapter that, while expanding the video's opening sequence to give some needed back story, is certainly far too long and doesn't really seem focused for the most part. In fact much of the first half of the novel is very slow moving and a result the book takes a while to get moving. It also doesn't help that the basic story itself has sizable plot holes (such as how does Lethbridge-Stewart dream of an older Victoria while not knowing who she is for example). The story also lacks the claustrophobic atmosphere of the first two Great Intelligence/Yeti stories as well and trades for an expansive story that is at times an uneasy cross between Doctor Who's usual alien invasion plot and the surreal as things like the astral plane come heavily into play. These hold back what could have possibly been a better story. The expansion does have its moments though. These include nice character moments such as a moment in chapter twenty-seven when Lethbridge-Stewart realizes he has left his gun and instead is carrying a photo of his grandson in his pocket. What it really does is expand the Who elements within the story. K9 gets to appear along side Sarah Jane which leads to a nice in-joke when she visits the University and hears its radio station's DJ (played in the video by K9's voice John Leeson). There's also appearances from UNIT as well including the Brigadier's replacement Crichton (seen in The Five Doctors) and its future commander Bambera (from the final UNIT TV story of the original series Battlefield) whose still a captain here. There's also the prolouge which looks at the aftermath of the Web Of Fear on both Victoria and Lethbridge-Stewart (and in the case of the latter leads to both the forming of UNIT and the issues with family seen later in the novel). Last but not least the Doctor himself gets to appear. Not as a major character mind you but in two cameos that bookend the novel (the second in the beginning, the third at the end) and the last one is really rather touching. For moments here and there, the expansion works wonders and almost makes for the padding it mostly is. Downtime is a strange beast in book form them. While it does have fine characterizations of characters from the show, good supporting characters and some bits of added details, the fact that the story has to be significantly expanded out to take an hour long video to novel length hurts it as it becomes both padded and slow moving at times. Downtime then is a good book but one that perhaps could have been better.
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