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flamebyrdThe Strange Case of Starship Iris is an audio drama by Procyon Podcasts (or a scripted podcast). It's a humorous SF drama set in deep space, with space-going humans and aliens and the requisite dystopian empire.
One thing I will say outside the cut: this is a series with (what TV tropes calls) a first-episode spoiler (ie. that discussion of anything before episode 1 is a spoiler), so if staying unspoiled is important to you, don't, for example, read the TV tropes* page before you begin. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
Spoilers below!
I really enjoyed this! The worldbuilding is interesting, and it's thrown enough mysteries into the mix to keep me wanting to continue.
- The framing narrative is little anxiety-inducing, in that I really want our heroes to be okay and the Evil Empire TM listening to everything they do is really not promising.
- I'm not really feeling the presumed endgame romance of Arkady and Violet, but hopefully that will come. I do dig the human/alien romance, cough.
- I can't tell the Arkady and Sana's voices apart for some reason. Maybe I need to pay closer attention.
- I really love Brian the linguist with the adorable Canadian accent. (Could do with a bit less mockery of his humanities background, though.)
- Krejjh's rant about their name being a real word and the injustice of the computer's inability to understand it turned a gag into a really great point with real world analogues. I love that.
- Violet is an interesting character, being in that position of suddenly having all her beliefs and assumptions challenged in a very full-on way. I almost feel like she's coping too well with it. (I'm also not ruling out the possibility of a Violet Liu switcheroo twist...)
- On that note, being a person with a relatively common set of names, I'm finding Violet's problem very relatable. (Please, other people with my name, learn what your own email address is. Please.)
- The incident with the nanobot swarm from a long-dead alien civilisation was so old-school Star Trek in the best way, but with the very relatable detail of Krejjh only remembering 10 words of the aliens' language from school. Beautiful.
In short: I enjoyed this a lot. Episode 5 starts with a warning for graphic violence, so I think I'll take a break until I can figure out what that's about. (Maybe I'll skim the transcript?)
* Sometimes I do this when I'm having trouble finding information about a piece of fiction and want to know if it's relevant to my interests. It definitely backfires.
Next in my podcast listening plans: TAZ: Dust, I think. (Or whatever not-too-dark narrative podcast you want to recommend in the comments!)
One thing I will say outside the cut: this is a series with (what TV tropes calls) a first-episode spoiler (ie. that discussion of anything before episode 1 is a spoiler), so if staying unspoiled is important to you, don't, for example, read the TV tropes* page before you begin. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
Spoilers below!
I really enjoyed this! The worldbuilding is interesting, and it's thrown enough mysteries into the mix to keep me wanting to continue.
- The framing narrative is little anxiety-inducing, in that I really want our heroes to be okay and the Evil Empire TM listening to everything they do is really not promising.
- I'm not really feeling the presumed endgame romance of Arkady and Violet, but hopefully that will come. I do dig the human/alien romance, cough.
- I can't tell the Arkady and Sana's voices apart for some reason. Maybe I need to pay closer attention.
- I really love Brian the linguist with the adorable Canadian accent. (Could do with a bit less mockery of his humanities background, though.)
- Krejjh's rant about their name being a real word and the injustice of the computer's inability to understand it turned a gag into a really great point with real world analogues. I love that.
- Violet is an interesting character, being in that position of suddenly having all her beliefs and assumptions challenged in a very full-on way. I almost feel like she's coping too well with it. (I'm also not ruling out the possibility of a Violet Liu switcheroo twist...)
- On that note, being a person with a relatively common set of names, I'm finding Violet's problem very relatable. (Please, other people with my name, learn what your own email address is. Please.)
- The incident with the nanobot swarm from a long-dead alien civilisation was so old-school Star Trek in the best way, but with the very relatable detail of Krejjh only remembering 10 words of the aliens' language from school. Beautiful.
In short: I enjoyed this a lot. Episode 5 starts with a warning for graphic violence, so I think I'll take a break until I can figure out what that's about. (Maybe I'll skim the transcript?)
* Sometimes I do this when I'm having trouble finding information about a piece of fiction and want to know if it's relevant to my interests. It definitely backfires.
Next in my podcast listening plans: TAZ: Dust, I think. (Or whatever not-too-dark narrative podcast you want to recommend in the comments!)