Personal Highlights
COPPERHEART: GL5121 – Arrival. (Note: I play the Visitor in the Copperheart season one finale) The time to end has come for the residents of GL51. It’s the chilling conclusion to Copperheart’s first season, and oh boy, there are so many horrifying surprises and revelations right from the first scene. The silence in the bunker is an awful contrast to the rest of the story, but in this silence there’s one beautiful moment in particular, which brought me to tears! The second half of the episode finally ties together the two plots of the show – the episodes set in GL51, and Jack’s investigation into the events of the bunker from his home of EL27 – and I was very pleased to see that a theory of mine from a couple of years ago was correct! As well as a very surprising epilogue which adds to our knowledge of how this universe works, the episode also features the trailer for the upcoming anthology series Shattered Echoes – due to debut in the spring.
Moonbase Theta, Out: Visions of Sugarplums: The MTO Holiday Special! Moonbase Theta, Out went all…out with its holiday special. The episode contains five crossover stories with We Fix Space Junk, Starfall, Sidequesting, Oz 9 and The Pasithea Powder. It was undoubtedly an ambitious project, with so many writers and voice actors and different fictional ‘pocketcast’ universes involved; but each crossover lands perfectly, and the whole episode is so much fun to listen to. It had previously been established in Moonbase Theta, Out that fictional podcasts exist in its universe, so this crossover special felt appropriate – especially so with The Pasithea Powder’s (delightfully chaotic!) segment in this sense. A special shout out to the Starfall segment for dealing with the fact that it shares some of its cast with MTO in some creative and hilarious ways!
The Oracle of Dusk: The Third Child – Season 1. Delphi introduces us to this season’s third client – a third sibling who’s dealing with their father’s death. As we’ve seen so far, all three siblings are dealing with their loss in different ways, and the focus this episode is on the third child’s relationship with their partner, and love in general. This gives Delphi the opportunity to open up about her relationship with her girlfriend, and while relating with this third sibling, she shows a lot of vunerability in how she talks about romantic love. It’s a theme that has come up in previous seasons of the show – that love and relationships aren’t always easy, and the issues that idealising romance can cause.
InCo: S3 Episode 23 – Journal. This episode is a rollercoaster. On the one hand, it’s a difficult episode as it deals more in depth with the gaslighting Hatov has been facing since returning to his family; and on the other hand, I was so pleased to see such a deep conversation between Nova and Hatov, which really demonstrated how much Nova has opened up to Hatov, when she had always been so standoffish and protective of her emotions. Nova has the answer we as an audience already came up with episodes ago, and it’s going to be so satisfying if her plan comes to fruition.
Y2K: S2 Episode 12: Olivia – Age 21 – Birmingham – December 2021. (Note: I played Emma in Y2K) After two years, Y2K wraps up its story by returning to Olivia, and the present day. While so much of the show has looked into the past, there’s a focus on Liv’s future in this episode, as both she and Tammi work on their post-uni plans – which also contrasts nicely with Tammi’s season two episode, as we saw her struggling to decide which uni to go to. It was also wonderful to catch up with Jess and Ina in the present, even though the conversations in this episode aren’t always happy. The new year fireworks are a perfect end to the series; and so are the clips closing the episode from the story’s main characters, showing how far the story’s come since the prologue was first released over two years ago.
StarTripper!! : 023 – Living In Space. It’s been interesting seeing how StarTripper!! has developed since the beginning of its story, and this episode is a big break from its original formula. Forced to take the ‘long way round’ to get to their next exciting destination, there are some new insights into life on the ship, as the focus in this episode is on the journey itself. There’s a beautiful scene as we get to know a new side of Serena, and we finally catch a glimpse of Feston’s favourite film – though there are consequences to Feston’s enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly, living in such a confined space has its challenges, but the biggest one comes with their descent onto Hazifont. The episode ends on a positive note, including an interesting discussion on faith in this universe, and a more philosophical outlook on the journey’s events thanks to Haegan.
Debuts
The Secret of St Kilda, Lockie has reasons for escaping the mainland and coming to the isolated island of St Kilda, reasons that are only vague to us at this stage, but enough for him to apparently fake his death to run away from it all. The episode opens with a glance into a seemingly everyday scene from a small community, but as it progresses, it becomes clear that there’s something much more sinister to life on St Kilda that binds the residents together.
Returns
2298. The first thing that struck me when I saw the first episode of the second season of 2298 arrive in my podcatcher was its length, which indicated to me that this was a definite break from the original structure and story of the first season. That’s definitely the case so far; as we’ve also seen from the prologue episodes, the protagonist in this season is no longer Profile 24, but Profile 13 – but Profile 24’s experiences have had a profound effect on Profile 13. There are dark new worldbuilding details, and it’s easy to make some Brave New World comparisons, as Profile 13 talks about how they were able to retain one memory.
A Sky Full of Pods 