Sarah Jane and the Temple of Eyes

"Pain, then a sudden awakening to blindness, with no knowledge of what had happened in between."

Writer: Jacqueline Rayner
Format: Short Story
Released: 8th March 2018
Printed in: The Day She Saved the Doctor

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane

Synopsis

While exploring a market in the ancient Roman port Ostia, just outside Rome, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane learn of a recent spate of inexplicable blindness amongst the wives of powerful merchants. What links these women and who is behind the attack on their sight?

Verdict

Sarah Jane and the Temple of Eyes was a decent start to The Day She Saved the Doctor! It was my first foray into a book that is a collection of short stories but with this being yet another library resource I could read for free, I finally took the plunge and I'm excited to see how the rest of the stories pan out. For now though, this was all about the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane and I was delighted to see that Jacqueline Rayner, a favoured writer of mine, was the one penning the adventure. It wasn't quite her best work but it is probably quite difficult to produce an excellent story with only around forty pages to play with. You obviously can't go into as much detail as a full length novel but I thought this was an entertaining read. It was placed somewhere soon after The Brain of Morbius which seemed a good placing following Sarah's blindness there and the theme of this story. As this book was released for International Women's Day, the theme was absolutely female power and I liked how that was portrayed in this story. It wasn't quite overdone and I really liked how Sarah Jane's thoughts about Caesar's attitude towards his wife and his chauvinism really irritated her. The relationship between the Doctor and Sarah was decent and I thought the story fitted into its era pretty well. One aspect of the adventure I really enjoyed was delving into Sarah Jane's biggest fears. She was extremely scared of snakes and, after her recent experience, blindness and I liked how she described how it was the everyday fears that scared her more than the likes of Daleks and Sontarans. I thought that was really interesting and just a fantastic point. The foreshadowing of The Hand of Fear and its aftermath was quite emotional though as we learned that Sarah Jane most feared being without the Doctor. That was sad considering we knew her future. The temple of Bona Dea was a lovely little partial setting and it being sacred to women was great. I liked the concept of four women going blind and losing their memories very much but I wasn't expecting their memories to have been taken as visual stories! Especially, as Marcia would have people believe, for the gods. Her history with the machine was a bit of a surprise and I thought the resolution of the Doctor simply fixing the machine to stop it from taking people's sight was a little easy but still effective. Sarah Jane willing to give up her sight to save the Doctor was wonderful and a brilliant sacrifice. Overall, a decent little story!

Rating: 7/10