[4 points]
I'm not really sure why it didn't occur to me sooner.
I think I've mentioned, or at least implied, that I'm kinda interested in audio drama. Books on tape. Golden-age radio drama. A Prarie Home Companion. Big Finish. That sort of thing.
Now, I had made one or two half-hearted searches in the past, but it wasn't until someone added the penultimate paragraph to the tvtropes.org article on Radio Drama that something occurred to me that should have been obvious.
Podcasts. Surely, the podcasting phenomenon must be a free, limitless supply of drama in audio form.
Podcasting, for those of you who aren't very hip, is a new fad made possible thanks to the explosion of cheap reasonable-quality home digital recording and playback. The basic idea is that you record something to a handy digital audio format (that is, MP3), and stick it on the web, often through some kind of syndication format (that is, the same kind of format as this here blog), so that users can download that audio to their portable audio players (one well-known brand of which has the word "pod" in its name, hence the term "podcast") and listen to it. Some people think there's an important and meaningful distinction between "Just sticking a bunch of MP3s on your website" and "Podcasting", but every time they try to explain the difference to me, I fall asleep.
Anyway, podcasts are, for the most part, so far as I can tell, a way to stick all the trappings of listening to the radio -- hit-or-miss DJs and commercials -- back into your music experience even though such things have been obsoleted by modern digital music players. You hear neat stories about 14 year old girls from Pittsburg whose podcasts display ridiculously good taste in music, and that's all very cool and sure to enrage the RIAA.
As you can guess, I quickly found that paragraph I wrote about four up there to be overly optimistic. As I said, most podcasts are "Here is me introducing some songs I like." Most of the rest are "Here is me reading my blog". Some of these are indeed quite good. Not most, of course, since free publishing always demonstrates Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap). But some are. Still, even the 10% that's good really has very little to do with what I'm interested in.
I looked long and hard to find me some proper audio drama podcasts. And now, I've exhausted my supply. So, gentle readers, please point me at whatever you've found, to help me fill this audiovoid.
Now, I should point out that there is some stuff out there. For one thing, I've found several people rebroadcasting vintage radio drama. The folks who are into Old Time Radio are sort of pathologically generous. I mean, you can get a boatload of stuff for free, and if you're willing to pay a pittance, you can get several lifetimes worth of the classic stuff; I shelled out about $30 for approximately 800 episodes of a particular radio drama. You read that right. Eight Hundred. The first season of the new Doctor Who is supposed to come out in the US pretty soon with an asking price of $100 for thirteen episodes. So when I say this stuff is cheap, I mean it's cheap. Like matchsticks (Ever price matchsticks at your local supermarket? If you bought a box of matches, you end up paying, I once calculated it, about 1/20 of one cent per match).
And there is some original stuff. There's just not much. At least, I think there's not much. The internet being what it is, there always ends up being lots of stuff you just haven't found yet. Heck, I haven't even tried usenet yet. So, folks, I'll show you mine, in the hopes that you find something interesting. You, in turn, can hit the comment buttons at the bottom of this article, and show me, well, yours.
Here's what I've found (oh, and don't let my cynicism turn you off anything. I'm just cynical like that):
- Sean Kennedy Chronicles: Tales from the Afternow -- this is what got me into the whole shebang. It's well produced, even if the story itself is a little rough in places. Toward the end, I kind of lost my ability to tell whether this was still a work of fiction, or the author's paranoid conspiracy theory rantings. Uneven, but listen to "Rachael's Mutt" and "Open Your Eyes" before you decide to dismiss it.
- Darker Projects -- These guys make a combination of original and fan fiction productions in what they call "a darker shade", though, frankly, to me, it sounds like a bunch of really cheerful kids who have to keep telling us that they like goth culture because we'd never suspect it otherwise. "Night Terrors" is a Twilight Zone-esque series where all but one of the twist endings were so obvious that you'd almost think it was a parody (It turns out it's man [2 points]). Their Quantum Leap production is a pretty good yarn, with the worst Dean Stockwell impersonation you could imagine. The fellow they have playing The Doctor in their Doctor Who series is quite good though, sounds like a sort of cross between Peter Davison and Simon Jones. The production values are middling; all the actors are fairly good individually, but there's no real sense of them acting "off" one another. I know this is a tough thing to do when there's no studio for them all to be in at the same time, but more professional productions manage it somehow. I blame post production. Oh, and no one in their ensemble can fake an accent and do anything resembling acting at the same time.
- Children of the Gods -- A serial novel about... well, I'm not sure yet. I've only heard the first episode, which consisted of 99% expospeak as the narrator gives us a detailed history of the very very generic sci-fi setting. Production values are weak, but beggers can't be choosers, and for all I know, it gets much better in the next episode.
- SITFUSO -- And we have a winner. SITFUSO is a sketch-comedy show whose masterminds include Charles Daniels, the author of the "Alternative" Doctor Who program guide. Something in the vein of Python or The Goon Show. Amateurish, but lots of fun.
Now, while I am steadfast in my cynicism, I want to point out that while none of these are "professional" grade productions, they're not crap by a long shot. Could I do better? Probably not. But, well, watch this space. I think I gots me an idea.
So, what have I missed so far? I've listened to just about everything I've found, and, well, I've only been at it for a month. Come on gang, step up.
