Starborn

Interesting little Vicki story very much a look into her character very cool

The first audio adventures with Vicki. First things first: Maureen O’Brien acts very well. She can convey a lot of emotions in the way she presents her voice. This was already somewhat clear in the way she talked on screen, but it gets reinforced here.

The sound design in general is very strong in this story. From the ticking clock in the medium’s room, to the little piano flourishes throughout. It really adds to the whole.

On to the actual story. Vicki gets interrupted from leaving in the Tardis. A medium wants to speak to her. The medium channels a Vicki from a future where she died, when visiting a planet filled with stars.

This premise alone is very good, but I will mention that the story gets a bit out there once it starts to mention the star-planet adventure. The setting in the beginning is very small and very personal. Vicki is alone with the medium in a small room, and the shift to the star planet is pretty rough. We suddenly and unexpectedly have to deal with a much larger scope. That is fine though, maybe I just really liked the small setting. It allowed for a real closeness to the character and was at the same time a bit mystical and horrifying. It was like sitting in a magical circle with just the 2 characters. Oh well.

The actual presentation of the star planet was pretty good at first. It’s a planet that lives and dies by its giant star network, which shine like suns in the sky. If a star dies, however, a local with starblood will have to sacrifice itself to take the place of the lost star. A understandable concept as a whole. Pretty sci-fi, but in a good way. I love it when we establish a society that aren’t just enemies.

This is all told to us from future-Vicki, who died on the planet. She tells the story of how she sacrificed herself because people were trying to steal the star-energy during the local sacrifice. She plugged the hole in the star-network, so to speak. This is where the story lost me. It suddenly goes pretty quick and raises a lot of questions.

How can Vicki sacrifice herself to the stars, if she isn’t starborn? The doctors ring alsos suddenly gets tossed in as an energy absorber, but how does that actually work? And what does this ring now actually mean for the person who is getting absorbed by the stars?

And the story is not willing to give those questions and answers room to breathe. It’s very weird. We have just established the rules for this world, and now we are breaking them in all kinds of ways with this sacrifice. Stuff just happens.

Now, it turns out the ‘Future Vicki’ was not actually Vicki, and she figures this out. Future Vicki describes herself in the third person every now and again, and that’s a pretty clever way to go about it. But that still doesn’t answer any of my questions.

Instead, we get a really long monologue about Future Vicki’s origin and plans, which is fine, but we still miss insight in her death and the circumstances around that. That clashes with the next part, where we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. How are we supposed to feel sorry for a character if we don’t know what she’s going through? It falls a bit flat.

And after that we conclude in the small setting and we move on. We go back in the Tardis and the events are forgotten.

Starborn has a lot of moving pieces and layers in its story, but fails to keep those pieces connected. It feels like throwing rocks through a spiders web. It is very cohesive and builds its world well, but tries to throw some really random stuff in that tear it apart.

It has plenty of good parts. Vicki’s characterization is on point. Being more headstrong and stubborn than Susan ever was (even if we’re not completely past comparison yet). It also has, as mentioned, clever twists with third person storytelling. But its introduction of random elements tears apart any overall narrative it had going on. With a bit more internal consistency and maybe a little bit more time, it could have been something truly special. For now, it sadly just misses out on being passable.