It was only when looking for a way to watch this fan production, released on video in 1995, that I suddenly came to realise there are quite a few fan productions which could also have been included in this gap between the old and new series. However to include all of them would take forever so Downtime is here to represent them all.
I didn't really enjoy it I'm afraid. Obviously it's not as bad as Dimensions In Time but then what the hell could be?? Also it didn't help that the copy of it that I watched was of pretty poor quality. It seems to have been recorded over a football match and every now again the audio from the match was creeping into it which made things a little confusing at first when I wasn't aware that this was happening.
There are no Doctors in this story but we do get the return if three companions, Victoria Waterfield, Sarah Jane Smith and Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewert.
I was a little disappointed that Sarah Jane is vastly underused in this story and to be honest there is no real need for her to be in it as she does very little towards the plot. This was a shame but she will have her chance to shine later on in my quest.
Victoria is acting very odd throughout this story. The plot revolves around the idea that The Great Intelligence is back with his yeti and is trying to take over the world again. It seems that Victoria is working for the great intelligence but at the end when all hell breaks loose she says something along the lines of "it was the intelligence all this time" like she didn't know! That's pretty dim! That being said its cool to see her character again now living in modern day Earth when she was originally born in Victorian times.
The true star if this story though has to be the Brigadier. It's here that we meet his daughter Kate. Now I'm not sure if this is in the true continuity if the show but when we meet his daughter in a much later eleventh Doctor story then she is also called Kate so I guess you could argue that this story is canon.
Also (and I'm so sad for noticing this) the Brigadier uses a code to describe the yeti threat. That code being NNQQ now NN just happens to be the production code for the second Doctor story The Abominable Snowmen and QQ is the production code for The Web Of Fear, both stories containing the yeti! Now that's what you call a subtle inside joke!
I'm glad I watched this as I felt its a good indication of the lengths that fans went to keep the show alive in these wilderness years. That being said I can't imagine ever watching this again!
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