Story: Twenty some odd years after Victoria leaves the TARDIS, she begins having dreams about Det-sen Monestary in Tibet. She is haunted by strange voices asking for her help. So, she goes to Tibet in search of this voice. There, a bizarre accidend lands her in trouble, releasing the Great Intelligence into the world again.
Victoria returns home and finds out, thanks to some crack legal team, that her father has left her a multi-million pound inheritance, which, at the instruction of this disembodied voice, she uses to set up a computer based University. It is here that the Intelligence is gaining power, waiting to take over the world by using…wait for it……the Internet! How many aliens have had the same idea in the last 40 books or so? Too bloody many!
So, the students at this Computer School are all under mind control, and the machine used to enslave these helpess students? A bloody Walkman. Great. These slaves, all under the control of the so called Intelligence, along with Victoria, are searching for the LOCUS. This is someone, or something that has trapped the Intelligence on Earth ever since the “London Event” (The Web Of Fear).
Enter the Brigadier. He is still teaching at Brendan School (Mawdryn Undead), but it is his last year before retirement. So, now he becomes the focus of the Intelligence’s attention. So, is the Brig the LOCUS? His estranged daughter has also caught the Intelligence’s eye. Perhaps she is this LOCUS?! So, not to make it any more contrived…enter Sarah Jane Smith.
Review: Sometimes a trilogy is necessary to get the point across. “Lord Of The Rings”, The “Tripods” Trilogy, and “Hitchikers’ Guide”, just to name a few. But sometimes, streching it out to three books almost soils the validity of the previous two. Case in point: “Downtime”.
Sarah is hired by Victoria to hunt down all information on this “London Event” to try and narrow down what this LOCUS could be. Do these events come to a head?! Who is this LOCUS bloke? And the third, and most important question: Where the hell is the Doctor?! The whole of London is in gridlock. All computer technology is frozen. Web is blowing all over the British Isles. Det-Sen Monestary blows up. And the Doctor, any Doctor, is nowhere to be seen! This aspect alone makes this story a gigantic load of crap! You can’t tell me that out of 13 Doctors, whose favorite planet is Earth, not one of them is present?! Yeah, right!
Now, I know this is a novelisation of a made-for-video movie, but Terrance Dicks added the Doctor to Shakedown, making it a much more enjoyable book. So by adding the Doctor to this pap, it might’ve made it, at the very least, semi-enjoyable. I’m not really sure it would’ve made the story any better, just a little bit more “Who.” People may want to read about individual adventures of WHO characters, but to drag them out to book length, in this case, is pure overkill.
I am not going to give this book my standard “…out of ten” rating. Suffice it to say, it was bad.
Year: 1996
Author: Marc Platt
Publisher: Virgin
