On a visit to early 20th Century Earth, Vicki receives a warning – if she leaves in the TARDIS, then she will die.
Unable to join her friends, Vicki is given an audience by a psychic called Violet, who contacts voices beyond this mortal plain.
And one of those voices is Vicki herself, who reveals what will happen at the ship’s next landing place – and what terrible fate awaits…
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: STARBORN
Jacqueline Rayner has always been one of my favorite Doctor Who writers, and with “Starborn” she manages to sneak another gem into the Companion Chronicles before the range concludes. It’s not without its faults but on the whole it is quite worthwhile, making for an interesting companion piece to “The Sleeping City,” even if it is a bit on the slight side.
Vicki played a fairly significant role in “The Sleeping City” despite Ian being the feature character, so it’s good to have Maureen O’Brien back in the role for a star turn (heh) of her own. “Starborn” makes use of a framing device that is perhaps the most involved one yet in the range: Vicki is warned by a medium that if she continues her travels in the TARDIS, she will die. Much of the first episode is spent in the “present,” as Vicki questions the science behind psychic channeling and Madam Violet (Jacqueline King) challenges her preconceptions. While this does go in circles to some extent, it’s nice to hear Vicki take center stage – she’s definitely a teenager but she’s also highly intelligent, and it’s not easy to prey on her insecurities. Sadly, we don’t learn as much about Vicki as we perhaps could, but Rayner takes pains to hint at Vicki’s past and her emotions regarding her family. I’d ask for more of this if the range wasn’t coming to an end.
Much like its predecessor, “Starborn” involves some wonderful classic sci-fi ideas. We’re shown an alien society on a planet surrounded by hundreds of stars, existing in a symbiotic relationship with the population: when stars die, their energy is reborn on the planet, and when people die, they become part of the stars. The narration from Vicki on the planet is fascinating: the story has an almost elegiac quality, coming from a society with such a close relationship with death and rebirth. I also enjoyed the innocent friendship between Vicki and one of the “star-born” – it’s fun to watch this TARDIS crew get involved and this story is no different.
My only issue with “Starborn” is that it’s entirely predictable: much of the story is predicated on the eventual twist about who’s narrating, and that twist is quite obvious from very early in the story. Rayner makes an attempt to obfuscate by demonstrating that Violet is actually hearing disembodied voices and not just making things up, but the central conceit that Vicki is speaking from beyond the grave is ridiculous on its face and remains that way throughout. That doesn’t make “Starborn” a bad story, and it does allow Rayner to play around a little with unreliable narration, but the clues she introduces into the dialogue are sledgehammer-obvious even without Vicki carefully pointing them all out.
Still, we spend a lot of time with Maureen O’Brien, and she once again demonstrates her incredible skill as a narrator. She recaptures her younger voice with very little effort, and her performance as the “dead” Vicki is just distinctive enough to let the listener know something has changed. Once the narration starts, Jacqueline King is barely in this, but she’s quite effective in the early going. Lisa Bowerman directs, Matthew Cochrane provides some very minimalist sound design, and Howard Carter provides an effective score. Overall, “Starborn” isn’t the most complex story the Companion Chronicles have ever released, but it’s thought provoking, entertaining work.
Recommended.
7/10