Downtime (novelisation)

Downtime, by Marc Platt, was a novelisation of the independent film Downtime, released as the eighteenth book of the Virgin Missing Adventures line. It was the second of two novelisations published under the line; the other, The Ghosts of N-Space, was a novelisation of a BBC Radio Drama. This release was also the second spin-off based story to be released by Virgin Books. The other was the novel Shakedown, which was in part a novelisation/tie-in to Reeltime Pictures's Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans.

Publisher's summary

 * 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?

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Victoria Waterfield
 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * K9
 * Kate Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Gordon James Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Daniel Hinton
 * Ex-Flight Sergeant "Harrods" Haroldson
 * Professor Edward Travers
 * Captain Douglas Cavendish
 * Brigadier Charles Crichton
 * Christopher Rice
 * Anthony
 * Roxana Cywynski
 * Abbot Thonmi
 * Twickers
 * Lawyer
 * Third Doctor

Worldbuilding

 * The third and fourth incarnations of the Doctor each visited Victoria, offering to take her travelling with them.
 * Victoria's mother Edith Waterfield died on 23 November 1863.

Continuity
to be added

Deviations from the televised story

 * Victoria's visit to Tibet is expanded upon.
 * An original scene features Sarah confronting a Yeti in the zoo.
 * A scene features a baby Yeti biting Margaret Thatcher.