I've always liked listening to the radio at night. Don't know why.
I also don't know why it took me about 6 months or so to figure out that I could slap the occasional, say, radio drama or SF/gaming podcast on my wife's iPod Nano and listen to it in bed. It's very likely that I delayed in thinking of it because I am immesurably dense.
We live in a golden age for this stuff, really, because podcasts are as common as the cold. So I'm looking around for science fiction shows, gaming shows, genre dramas, etc. I've only just begun, really, but already I've found a couple of stand-out.
Unfortunately, they stand out for the wrong reasons.
I love Traveller, so I was thrilled to find out that there's a Traveller radio play. It's in 4 chapters, and I downloaded them all and burned those mofos onto a CD last year and I put it in my truck and I drove to the games shop one day and I listened to the whole show and my brain melted. I'll be as polite as I can be and simply say that it's ill-produced, confusing and uninteresting. The protagonist, Ted D. Flask, is an unbelieveable (I mean "I Don't Believe In Him") character, and long stretches of voice-modulated, pretentiously-voiced narration are hammered in whereaction and dialogue would've been more interesting.
The shame is this: It's Traveller, and Traveller, to me, means "potential". The plot, by and large, isn't so bad, but it's allowed to meander with little sense of pacing. Plus, Ted's a prick. Sadly, I listened to the entire production as a kind of nerd-macho endurance test, and ultimately labelled it the worst SF audio drama I'd ever heard.
Granted, at that point, I ain't heard nothin. Last night, I heard Chapter 3 of "Mission of Gravity".
From my dear 1985 comes this...umn...
...
...okay. Here's the thing. There's a SF radio program called "Destinies - The Voice Of Science Fiction". It's at least 22 years old and frankly it's awesome. I've heard 3 episodes of it so far, featuring book reviews, interviews (I've heard Mark Leonard, George Takei, John Buscema and Larry Niven) and some radio drama. I heard a pretty good Star Trek: TOS adventure, part of a so-so Conan adventure, and the thing I heard last night.
"Mission of Gravity".
The plot:
Who knows?
Ostensibly it's these two spacers who are tracing a shipment of illegal drugs. Okay, cool. Only this is what I heard:
Two guys mumbling, one of the guys mumbling while a dude with his head inside a bucket made grunting alien noises, the two guys mumbling, a bunch of noises which were explained as a bar fight, some exposition about climbing a tower to get to acomputer, more of the two guys mumbling, a gun fight with no rhyme or reason, the guys mumbling again, and then the sweet, merciful release of the segement's end.
I am not even kidding, folks, I literally exhaled with relief when it was over. I need to impress upon you that the mumbled dialogue, by the way, appeared to be unscripted, awkward exchanges consisting of, oh, about 3-8 words apiece. "Yeah. Climb that. Take off your jacket, why don't you? Go to the computer. Yeah. No, wait. Uh-huh? Tell me more info. Uh-huh."
I don't know if it was meant as a joke, back in my dearest 1985, but...holy god, it was SO. VERY. BAD.
The rest of Destinies? Good stuff. "Mission of Gravity"? Crap.
Anyway, I just found this website and I plan to mine it fr all it's got, once, uh, once I get my broadband problem fixed at home.
Both of these horrid little audio dramas really, really make me wish I had audio production facilities. I mean, really wish it.
But I don't.
2 comments:
I'm the webmaster for Howards Show, Destinies and just wanted to thank you for the nice words about....Destinies. I've posted about your post on my What's New page. If Howard mentions your post on the air I'll let you know.
http://www.captphilonline.com
Thank you for your kind words about Destinies-The Voice of Science Fiction. In truth, the program will be celebrating its 24th anniversary on April 27th. The shows you heard at www.captphilonline.com are examples of some older material, as you pointed out, dating back to 1985. CaptPhil has been archiving the program on his site since the end of 2005, and more than 10 months of the most recent broadcasts are available for free at any time, in addition to an increasing number of significant shows from 1985-2005, mostly involving celebrity interviews.
Regarding "Mission of Gravity," this was an experiment we aired in Destinies' early days, as the show was approaching its second anniversary. Mike Sargent, who produced, directed, and co-starred in the series, did the show in his basement with his friend Lloyd in the early 1980s, and offered it to us as a serial. Like you, most of our listeners at the time hated it, and we dropped it after episode 4. Since then, Mike went on to produce a very professional-sounding series that aired on WBAI in Manhattan, called "James Scott: When the Worlds Need Heroes." He also directed the audiobooks of "Isaac Asimov's Robot City" and "Rama II," and has had a long-running genre-based talk/call-in show on WBAI.
The two shows from 1985 that feature "Mission of Gravity" were posted because of the two-part interview with the late Mark Lenard, who was the first actor to ever come to our studio for an interview during I-Con.
Thanks again for blogging about Destinies. It's nice to know that people are still discovering it, even after almost 24 years on the air.
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