‘It seemed an awfully long time since dinner. Victoria was sure it would soon be time for tea and Mr Do-do-dodgson still had not taken any photographs. She clutched her doll tightly and tried very hard not to move, but she was very, very bored. The sun was in her eyes and the little stone bench seemed to be getting harder the longer she sat there. And just when Mr Do-do-dodgson said, ‘All r-ready then,’ and disappeared under the black cloth behind the camera, the sun would go behind a cloud, or the breeze would catch her petticoats and they would have to stop again.
Victoria puffed out her breath and kicked her legs in frustration. A fat woodpigeon, waddling across the grass, took off in lazy alarm. ‘Victoria, you must stay still for Mr Dodgson,’ insisted her father, who had been hovering beside their visitor all this time.
‘I’m trying,’ she protested.‘Yes, very,’ he agreed.
While they waited for the sun to come back, he talked and talked to Mr Do-do-dodgson about the scientific principles of silvered plates and photo-zincography, and Mr Dodgson smiled patiently and smoothed out his long ruffled hair.
‘So the lens entraps the image in time like a frozen looking- glass,’
That is exactly what ‘Downtime’ is – an image frozen in time from the past. Not the 1860’s of that extract from the Virgin novelisation, but rather 1995 – the height of the wilderness years. And well, back then it didn’t look as if the show was ever going to come back. The TV movie appeared to come out of nowhere a year later and like spring it was gone almost as soon as it arrived. In 1995 though ‘Downtime’ felt as close as we were ever going to get to new ‘Doctor Who’ in a visual medium. It also now comes with a degree of sadness viewing it in 2018 – we have lost all three of the leads – Nicholas Courtney, Debbie Watling, Elisabeth Sladen and the director Christopher Barry.
Stepping further back in time to the late 1960’s amongst the script chaos of season 6, we unfortunately lost the third yeti story from Haisman & Lincoln. ‘The Laird of McCrimmon’ was to be Jamie’s last story – returning to his home to find the Yeti and Intelligence at work. At the end of the story he was to leave to become the new Laird, having fallen in love with local girl Fiona. Two factors led to the abandonment of this story fairly early on – the fallout between the authors and the BBC/production team over the rights for the Quarks, which the BBC had given to TV comic to use without their consent and Patrick Troughton deciding to leave at the end of season 6, which made Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury decide to leave with him, Jamie staying on and his replacement, Nik was never to be. Nearly 20 years later, the story of the Intelligence and the Doctors friends from ‘Web of Fear’ was picked up again and it makes an interesting subject to review in that context now that it has been re-released on DVD.
So why review ‘Downtime’ ? Well there are a number of reasons why it is important. Firstly, it tells the story of when happens next to Victoria Waterfield, Professor Travers and the Great Intelligence – we also pick up with what Sarah Jane Smith was doing in the 90’s (or is it the 2000’s?) and also the Brigadier, nearing the end of his time at Brendon School and on his way to becoming the person we meet in ‘Battlefield’ . Aside from Deborah Watling, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney and Jack Watling, we also have John Leeson and Geoffrey Beevers in unfamiliar roles and a cameo from James Bree. Behind the scenes, Christopher Barry is directing and Marc Platt is writing– so there are a lot of TV series alumni in the production. It also introduces someone new – Kate Lethbridge Stewart, daughter of the Brigadier and his first wife Fiona and also her young son Gordy (Gordon Lethbridge Stewart named after Kate’s estranged father). So it adds to the mythology of the series – something again picked up on in ‘Power of Three’ another 18 or so years later.
There are two versions of ‘Downtime’ – the Reeltime Pictures ‘fan’ production (although given the number of TV professionals involved it feels a shame to call it that) and the Virgin Missing Adventure novelisation of the story. As with many of the later TV stories, the novelisation gives us additional plot strands and colour to the TV version – we get some extra detail and the characters of Brigadier Crighton and Captain Bambera. There is even a meeting in the aftermath of ‘The London Event’ with Air Vice-Marshal Gilmore, on the eve of the formation of UNIT. The book opens and ends with scenes of Victoria in Oxford, in the opening scene being photographed by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carrol) which deftly brings us right back to how Deborah Watling got the part – as Alice in Dennis Potter’s Wednesday play of the same name. We also get some insights into her life after leaving the Harris’s – her loneliness, her search for her mother’s grave in Highgate cemetery and the story of her journey to Tibet and trek to the remains of Det-Sen monastery, the latter something beyond the budget of Reeltime I suspect!
My favourite extra scene in the book though is set at London Zoo, the Chinese government have given them a pair of Yeti (the Yeti Traversii sub-species to be precise) as part of an international breeding programme. Their cub is presented to the Prime Minister (dear Margaret) and it proceeds to bite her! Oh happy days, Marc Platt rather revels in that – as does Sarah Jane Smith who is covering the press event!
‘The nervous young keeper appeared carrying a small bundle of fur in his hands. The cameras (minus flashes) began to click and whirr. The Prime Minister plainly saw this as the photo opportunity sans pareil. If one of her predecessors could do it with pandas, then she was certainly not going to flinch at a Yeti. She cooed regally over the wriggling bundle, determined to reinforce her maternal image.
She appeared less than enthusiastic, however, when the Zoological Society’s director suggested she might actually hold the creature. Her cortège of Suits and PR men and the Chinese Embassy staff all looked on expectantly as the cub’s nervous handler showed her the right way to hold his precious charge.
‘Like handing Snow White over to the Wicked Queen,’ murmured Sarah and got a sidelong look from Charles. He was surrogate father to the baby and was suffering as much as its keeper. The Prime Minister angled her Tibetan charge awkwardly at arms’ length and gave a rictus smile for the cameras. Sarah, unable to keep a professionally straight face, slipped away from the crowd to look at the Yeti enclosure.
..
As they walked back towards the group, they heard a shout and a general disturbance among the crowd. There was another barrage of clicking cameras
.
‘What did we miss?’ Charles asked.‘The cub,’ smirked the nearest reporter. ‘It just bit her.’ ‘Now do you feel better?’ Charles muttered, giving Sarah’s arm a squeeze. They peered over the heads, trying to get a better view.
One of the Suits was winding a handkerchief around the Prime Minister’s hand. The nervous young keeper was hurrying his squirming charge away. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ piped up one of the Foreign Minister’s aides. ‘Just a little nip.’
’‘No chance of rabies, I suppose?’ whispered Sarah. ‘Not a hope,’ said Charles. Sarah raised an eyebrow. ‘Actually, I was worrying about the cub.’
So what of the story? Well the plot concerns an attempt by the Intelligence to escape from its bounds (it is bound to the Earth by the locus – one of the Yeti models that Lethbridge-Stewart possesses) – it wants freedom, but also to occupy the world via the then new World Wide Web of the internet. It’s power base is the New World University – setup by Victoria Waterfield, using the by now plentiful investments left to het by her late father in the past. The mysterious Chancellor (Travers who apparently died years ago) is the benefactor.
It is a comment on the way that education was going – privatisation, learning by computer, but also on new age cults. The students (Chilly’s) all dress he same almost like a MacDonald’s franchise and listen to music and a familiar beeping sound via their headphones (the Sony Walkman was also relatively new at this point). It is a front for the Intelligence – Victoria has been manipulated – rather sadly at the start she hears the voice of her father calling her to Det-Sen, warned off by Abbot Thomni, she enters the Inner Sanctum once more and meets the possessed Travers there. We aren’t clear if Victoria is possessed or just used, possibly something between the two. The Brigadier is drawn in as the New World University are searching for the locus – which Kate actually has on her houseboat. Sarah Jane Smith has been asked by them to profile people, including the Brigadier involved in the 1968 ‘London Event’.
So it is a Great Intelligence/ UNIT story – a sequel to ‘Web of Fear’ and to some extent ‘Abominable Snowmen’, ‘Fury from the Deep’ and ‘Evil of the Daleks’. It was obviously made for fans, but it is a superior example of that. Marc Platt is one of my favourite ‘Doctor Who’ writers – which might seem an odd thing to say on the basis of ‘Ghost Light’ – but his work for Big Finish, the likes of ‘Spare Parts’, ‘Loups-Garoux’, ‘Paper Cuts’, ‘Auld Mortality’, ‘Butcher of Brisbane’ and ‘The Silver Turk’ are some of my favourites. The production values mostly hold up well (at least within the context of how it was made) – the visual effects, direction and the cast are all reasonably good. It isn’t a polished, modern looking production – but it doesn’t look that much significantly worse than the final years of original run of the show, the location work is at least as good as the likes of ‘Battlefield’ and ‘Curse of Fenric’ – which often looked like an 80’s corporate video.
It is a better story in some ways for the Brigadier than either Victoria or Sarah. We get some of his family background – his divorce from hist first wife Fiona and that he hasn’t seen his daughter for 6 years, when she calls him for help with the Chilly’s that are stalking her. We also get the rather lovely moment when the Brigadier is told that he has a grandson – Nicholas Courtney plays that absolutely beautifully and we are reminded what a consummate actor he really was …
‘Kate,’ he said as gently as he could muster. ‘What?’ She didn’t want to look at him. He paused and then said, ‘Just tell me one thing. Why do you have a box of toys down there?’ She sighed. Then she reached for a drawer by the bed. There was a pile of loose photographs inside. She lifted one out and passed it to her father. ‘He’ll be five next week,’ she said flatly.
He laid down his gun and took in the picture slowly. He wasn’t sure what he had hoped for or expected. It showed a small boy with sandy hair who grinned cheekily out at him. He looked a little terror. The Brigadier worked to find the words, but all he could say was, ‘I have a grandson? My grandson. I never dreamt… Good Lord.’
There was so much he wanted to say. He thought his heart would brim over with excitement and pride.
‘Gordon,’ said Kate. ‘After you. Gordon James. He’s safe, away from here.’ Tears were getting the worse of her. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I couldn’t tell you.’ He was squeezing her hand. ‘I have a grandson.’ Something in his eye and something catching in his throat, yet he was glowing with the joy of it. Poor Kate. She had kept this from him for so long. Was she so angry or was he so terrifying?
‘Kate, can I keep this?’ She nodded tightly. He squeezed her hand again. ‘Thank you, Kate. It’s getting late. We’ll talk later. I’ll be back.’ He stood, still clutching the photograph of Gordon James Lethbridge-Stewart, and left the boat, closing the door as best he could.
In the novelisation we get some more detail of his life since ‘Mawdryn’ – his time at Brendon school is coming to an end. We also see how modern-day UNIT thinks of his time – ‘The blunder years’. UNIT in this and later in the Sarah Jane Adventures is between the Brigadier retiring and prior to Kate taking over and seems a far more smug, self-satisfied organisation, laughing about the good old days of the past when the Brigadier and Doctor faced everything from the Nestenes, the Daleks, Daemons to Omega together with no resources and only hot sweet army tea to keep them going. In some respects this reflects the view of Britain in the 1990’s about the show (and everything else from the past) – something to laugh about smugly from your childhood to show much more sophisticated you are now. Something for dull c-list celebrities to chuckle about on half-arsed programmes with names like ‘I love 1973’.
Kate isn’t quite the Kate we see in ‘Power of Three’, although apparently Jemma Redgrave had her hair dyed to match Beverley Cressman here. We don’t find out very much about her life (for example we aren’t told that she is a scientist) she has a son, is estranged from the father and her family and lives on a houseboat is about it. We also find that she doesn’t like guns and doesn’t want Gordy to play at being a soldier. Kate re-appears in ‘Daemos Rising’ and the Virgin MA ‘Scales of Injustice’, before ‘Power of Three’. At this point she also doesn’t know what her Father did all those years, what dragged him away all through her childhood. It is a rather nice reminder of what the Brigadier sacrificed in the name of saving the planet.
The other joy of this story is having just a little bit more of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah is very much in journalist mode here – actually rather similar to her re-introduction in ‘School Reunion’. She completes the main trio, but the story is much less about her than the Brigadier or Victoria. However, it is just so lovely to see her once more and to see her re-united with the Brigadier and bonding with his daughter – in some ways it pre-figures their unfortunately brief reunion in ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’.
The other characters are Daniel Hinton a ‘chilly’ and ex-pupil of the Brigadier’s, who appears to die, but isn’t quite dead and whose hacking skills prove to be rather useful. We also have John Leeson’s as the DJ and Geoffrey Beevers as the ex-military tramp Harrods. These two are very much cameos, Beevers in particular is great (he always is), with very little screen time he manages to invoke our sympathy for a homeless ex-military man. The villain is Christopher Rice, the New World University PR man – played so archly by Peter Silverleef¤ that it could even be a Colin Baker performance, wearing a Noel Edmonds jumper. It is a bit too much of a ripe performance, maybe slightly more suited to a villain in the SJA’s, but there is a certain amount of fun to be had from it. Likewise Captain Cavendish, the unlikeable face of new UNIT, possessed by the Intelligence, but to be honest, I imagine that he would be equally as unlikeable without that. Lastly, although Jack Watling re-appears in this – he plays an old, decrepit, possessed Travers – someone who apparently died years before and so we really don’t get to see that much of him.
The direction from Christopher Barry is reasonably good, especially given the budget and speed of the shoot. The dream sequences on the beach, where the Brigadier meets his former pupil Daniel Hinton, Victoria and a Yeti are particularly stylish. The action sequences also work quite well (you have to approach all of this with some good will, but in that respect it isn’t that much different than watching archive television) – the UNIT troops smothered by web. The book expands on this adding helicopters and action sequences that the production couldn’t hope to match.
Overall, the story feels much more of the ‘Intelligence’ than the GI trilogy of series 7. The occupation of the computer network fits well with ‘Web of Fear’ and ‘Abominable Snowmen’ – actually it also fits with the upload of people via the wifi in ‘Bells of St John’. Having it explicitly tied into both previous stories binds it and anchors it more effectively within the source material than the later trilogy does. The Yeti here are converted for the Chilly’s – a piece of body horror which isn’t really exploited as much as it could be. The use of the web, both literal and in terms of the internet gives it a pleasing thematic unity with the previous stories. As does the continuation of Victoria’s story and something that the book especially does very well – exploring her possession by the Intelligence in the first story, her relationship with her parents and her link with Travers. It even inserts a scene in the novelisation set in the aftermath of ‘Web of Fear’ and dealing with the consequences of the two stories in a similar way to the scene between the 5th Doctor and Tegan after her possession by the Mara and also echoing some of the quieter scenes between the Doctor and Victoria in ‘Tomb often Cybermen’ and ‘Fury from the Deep’:
‘The Doctor had entirely forgotten about the tea by the time Victoria found him. He was sitting on the floor in a darkened corner of the TARDIS with the entire contents of his pockets strewn around him. She picked her way through the debris and presented him with his cup. ‘Have you lost something?’ she asked. He surveyed his work and took a sip of tea. ‘Actually, Victoria, I think I’ve just found any number of things I thought I’d lost.’ He sighed. ‘Only they weren’t what I was looking for.’ ‘And?’. ‘Ah. I expect you want to know what’s missing. I certainly do. The trouble is I can’t remember. Where’s Jamie got to?’ ‘He ate enough porridge for three people and fell asleep in an armchair. This thing you lost? When did you last have it?’ ‘I’m not sure that I did. It might have been somebody else. All I know is that something’s not right. Something’s not complete.’
‘You’re still upset about the Great Intelligence,’ she said. ‘And there was no need to apologize.’ He smiled gently at her. ‘Dear Victoria, you’re always so thoughtful. But I thought it might be you that was upset.’ She looked up in surprise, but he continued anyway. ‘You see, I haven’t forgotten that when we first met the Intelligence in Tibet, it took over your mind and used you as its pawn. I know what it’s like to have the control of your own thoughts stolen by something so callous and cruel.’
‘At least it didn’t happen again,’ she said. Not to me anyway.’ ‘I think you’ve been very brave when really you’ve been having a very frightening time.’ She was quiet for several moments, and he wondered if she was going to burst into tears. ‘Sometimes,’ she said at last, ‘we arrive somewhere and I worry about what we’ll find out there.’ He nodded, even though it was just that sort of mystery that made him so eager to experience it. ‘I promise to try to get us to somewhere a little less harrowing.’
‘And whatever it was you were looking for?’ ‘I expect it’ll turn up where or whenever I least expect it.’ So saying, he proceeded to return the impossibly vast range of obscure objects to his absurdly small coat pockets. He suggested that Victoria take a much needed rest, and headed for the TARDIS console-room, where Jamie was snoring fit to wake a score of Sleeping Beauties.
Comforted that nothing unusual was occurring, he activated the scanner and gazed out at the vast prospect of space and time. He had become parent by proxy to Victoria Waterfield, but he wondered how grateful her late father would be if he witnessed the changes in his daughter. Certainly Edward Waterfield, Victorian scientist, unjustly martyred by his cruel Dalek oppressors, would not approve of the 1960s miniskirt for which his child had abandoned her voluminous crinolines. Yet she remained gentle and kind, and a little prim, as Jamie knew to his cost. Yanked brutally from her own time and home, she was learning rapidly how to fend for herself. Good housekeeping, he supposed.
Jamie’s snoring changed note. Brought out of his reverie, the Doctor stared at the scanner screen. Stars were there. And more stars beyond them. And clouds of gas in imperceptibly slowly billowing iridescence. And more stars. And clouds of imagination and possibility. And space curved slowly through the stars, turning oh-so gradually round, above, below, so that beyond the infinite abundance of stars, he thought he eventually saw, far, far away, the back of his own head. ‘
In the end, in the absence of the Doctor it is appropriately a team effort that saves the day. Daniel, Kate and Sarah, aided by the Brigadier who distracts the Intelligence, while it’s hold on the University mainframe is broken and Travers and Victoria are released. The Brigadier and Kate, get to have a rather marvellous reconciliation and an old man gets to meet his Grandson for the first time:
‘Dad, this is Gordy,’ said Kate with the broadest smile she had ever given him. ‘Gordy, this is Grandad. Say hello.’
The Brigadier, unsure of the right way to address so important a person, crouched slowly down and said, ‘Hello, Gordy. You’re not shy, are you?’ Young Gordon James Lethbridge-Stewart angled his head timidly and whispered, ‘I’ve got another friend too.’ He was still clinging onto his mum. ‘Have you?’ smiled the Brigadier. ‘What’s his name?’ Gordy slipped his hand from his mother’s. He looked along the canal bank and pointed. ‘Danny. But only I can see him.’ In the dazzle of sunlight there might have been a figure – a young man in a heavy coat, shoulders slightly hunched. He might have given a wave. It might just have been the sunlight. ‘Oho. You’d better tell me all about him,’ the Brigadier confided. He stood up slightly creakily and let his grandson lead him away along the towpath.’
Victoria’s story at least in the video version is another sad ending, wandering off alone again. In the book she has a reconciliation of sorts. Various Doctor’s visiting her and checking that she is OK and arranging a reconciliation with UNIT, she also manages to find her mother’s grave at Highgate cemetery. All the same, she ends the story still alone and out of time.
‘Time has such a t-t-terrible appetite,’ Mr Do-do-dodgson agreed. ‘There’s no pleasing him. Why, he eats minutes, hours, days, even whole weeks at a time. And just when you think he’s finished, do you know what he comes back for?’ He fixed Victoria with a twinkling eye.‘More?’ her father suggested.‘No,’ she giggled. ‘He comes back for seconds!’
1995 – where did the time go?
“Downtime’, whilst far from perfect, along with the New Adventures and Big Finish is a testament to the impact the show had on so many young lives. It meant so much they they couldn’t abandon it, even as they grew older and made their way in the world. Here we have fans making and funding new ‘Doctor Who’ without the BBC, elsewhere the New Adventures were carrying on, a selection of sleeper agents (RTD, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss) were starting to make their way in the industry waiting for their moment, Big Finish was soon to be born and over in California a fan was navigating the politics of the studio system and the BBC and plotting the show’s return, even if it was only for one night. ‘Downtime’ is ambitious – far more than it should be – it could just be 3 people talking in a room – instead we have a pitched battle between UNIT and Yeti, explosions and all, it is quite a clever story and is better than it has any right to be. Tom once described the human race as ‘Indomitable’, but that’s Doctor Who fans – pat yourselves on the back – we are still here and hopefully a new generation of fans is being armed ready to take over if the BBC should falter again.
A Journal of Impossible Things 