Murmuration

"Flesh seasoned with fear is so much sweeter."

Writer: Mark Griffiths 

Format: Short Story

Released: September 2022

Printed in: Origin Stories 05

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane

Synopsis 

We all change, when you think about. We're all different people all through our lives...

Amy Pond looks for her Raggedy Man, Jo Grant remembers her childhood, the Master hunts the past... a young girl discovers a love for explosives.

Eleven incredible stories from the world of Doctor – the early lives of friends and foes that have never been told before.

Verdict 

Murmuration was a decent story to continue my way through the Origin Stories collection! It was really good to visit the adolescent years of Sarah Jane Smith and having her almost be a little frightened of Crocus Pinker and her gang at school was so far removed from the bold and confident companion we will get to know in her later years. Of course, at this point in time Sarah Jane is only fourteen-years-old which is very young but I was impressed that there were still a lot of traits in her personality that we will become very familiar with. A key point of that was her ability to ask questions. That was wonderful and it was lovely to reference her Aunt Lavinia giving her a book on journalism. Boy if she could make a report on the events that happened here! Sarah thinking of that in the context of the school magazine was nicely done and it’s good to know that Sarah will go onto much bigger and better things. But here is her starting point and that’s the beauty of the format of this book. It’s very intriguing to get a look at characters before they met the Doctor, except here we actually get Sarah Jane Smith’s first encounter with him! When Sarah was running from the horrifying murmuration and spotted the police box as a potential means of hiding, I would be lying if I said a smile didn’t cross my face. I thought it was fun that upon entry she immediately rested her head against the windows as the mass of starlings attacked, so she didn’t even notice the scale of what she had entered. The reaction of the Doctor was delightful with that booming smile and just blurting out her name and a big hello. I must say, I think it’s a slightly missed opportunity in having Sarah Jane encounter the Fourth Doctor once again. I know the significance of the long woolly scarf was needed, but especially with her forgetting the events it could have been a lot of fun to have her interact with a new incarnation. It was nice to know that the Fourth Doctor got to see her again after how quickly and abrupt her departure was handled, and the reference to The Hand of Fear regarding the usefulness of the scarf was amusing. Sarah really didn’t seem impressed by the scarf which was decent comic value and the Doctor saying he was a doctor of most things is always good. I thought Sarah believed that the starlings were possessed by an alien a little easily, and she didn’t really question the Doctor about being one either. I know she’s young, but with her journalistic tendencies I felt she could have needed a little more convincing. The concept of the Tononite was good and I I really liked the analogy to a computer program or symphony only existing in the software or on a sheet of paper. This being was from another dimension and was literally a bad idea inhabiting the starlings. The skull shape was pretty good and preying on the psychological of humanity, and Sarah actually seeing a man consumed by it was well done. For whatever reason though, I just felt the story was all about the Doctor and Sarah and the Tononite never felt abundantly threatening. Maybe when white noise is the means of defeating it then it doesn’t seem so scary? Sarah having the radio and realising that the static could work in the same way was good though and I liked how she showed she was a companion long before officially becoming one. I thought it was good that the memory loss that had to happen to Sarah Jane to keep the events of The Time Warrior and beyond intact was a natural phenomenon with the timeline being rewritten. That’s so much better than the Doctor making it happen. Overall, a decent read!

Rating: 7/10