Graphic - FunGraphix.com
Theme music - Shane Lamb

Title: Dead Line Anthology / Shorts (series)
Producer: Jack Ward
Production Company: Electric Vicuña
Type: Dram
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Length: Anthology episodes – about 25 minutes; Shorts – 5-15 minutes
Rating: AD-PG* (psychological horror, mortal danger/fear)
Availability: Free – Electric Vicuña

]]> http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-visits-dead-line-anthology/feed/ 1 http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-reviews-every-now-and-then/ http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-reviews-every-now-and-then/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:09:48 +0000 captainradio http://www.radiodramarevival.com/?p=2333 Graphic - FunGraphix.com | Theme music - Shane Lamb Title: Every Now and Then Producer: Voices in the Wind Type: Drama Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Romance Rating: AD-G* Availability: Free – Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre Greetings, Audionauts – Captain Radio here, sponsored by RØDE Microphones, with a review of Every Now and Then from David Farquhar and… [Continue Reading]]]>

We conclude our three-week run of episodes from the magnificent and long-running Twilight Zone radio dramas.

This week we shy away from the holiday-oriented programming and join a hack writer on the hunt for alien abductees in the story “The Walkabout.” But this researcher may soon find himself the subject of his book, not the writer…

Followed by an interview with producer Carl Amari, founder of Radio Spirits and now producer with plenty of stripes. We talk about getting the rights to produce this series, his word-for-word dramatization of the Bible and thoughts on the changing landscape of radio drama.

COMMITTED TO THE RADIO DRAMA REVIVAL ARCHIVES. TO HEAR THE SHOW, VISIT TWILIGHT ZONE RADIO WEBSITE.

Download audio file (rdr-interview-carl-amari.mp3)

Standalone Interview with Carl Amari

This week we have a second-round of seasonal programming from The Twilight Zone.

Today’s tale has a child, a gift for humanity, a small rural village. Wait, is it the Christmas tale? Not quite. Aliens and the Mexican army collide in this adaptation of “The Gift.”

COMMITTED TO THE RADIO DRAMA REVIVAL ARCHIVES. TO HEAR THE SHOW, VISIT TWILIGHT ZONE RADIO WEBSITE.

Holy crap! It’s episode 200! After nearly 4 years of radio drama podcasting we hit another round of triple digits. A pretty cool milestone and a great program to share to celebrate.

We’re featuring another installment of The Mask of Innana, an original mystery series by the Post Meridian Players who you probably have heard about through their live shows in the Boston area.

The Mask of Innana, I’ve learned, was inspired in part but the uncompromisingly creepy Nightfall series which aired on the CBC (Innana series creator Neil Marsh, in fact, created the best online resource for the show out there).

Like a The show follows aging radio star Leonard Allen, whose series After Dark ended abruptly after a betrayal from a trusted friend. Now, years later, a stranger comes offering Allen a most unusual role.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast200.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 200

Bonus!

Did you produce audio from 1995-2005 or know a bunch of people who did? Then contact Scott Hickey, who wants to put together a compendium of the producers in the “early days” of internet audio drama. Scotthickey [at] comcast.net

Please nominate/vote for Radio Drama Revival in the 2010 Blubrry Podcasting Awards!

We’re psyched to bring you more inspired original audio drama this week with the pilot episode of The Mask of Innana, an original series by the Post Meridian Players who you probably have heard about through their live shows in the Boston area.

The Mask of Innana demonstrates amply that they have the chops to do original studio produced works as well. This story exemplifies their love for the old time radio era while doing a variety of new things as well. The show follows aging radio star Leonard Allen, whose series After Dark ended abruptly after a betrayal from a trusted friend. Now, years later, a stranger comes offering Allen a most unusual role.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast199.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 199

Bonus!

Did you produce audio from 1995-2005 or know a bunch of people who did? Then contact Scott Hickey, who wants to put together a compendium of the producers in the “early days” of internet audio drama. Scotthickey [at] comcast.net

Please nominate/vote for Radio Drama Revival in the 2010 Blubrry Podcasting Awards!

FinalRune’s third installment of the Troll of Stony Brook introduces us to the troll – a fearless, man-eating creature for sure, but, um, not without a soft stop.

Sadly, humans just won’t leave him alone and the rough exterior shows up again.

After this next dose of audio delight we move on to Fallen Angels that Bounce, a serialized audio noir tale by ZBS featuring lush soundscapes of Rio de Janeiro and New York City.

Flo has a recurring dream of Rio that never goes anywhere – so Joe and Moe take it upon themselves to cook up a tale of a devilish twin sister, crooked gangsters, and dreams of Rio.

Meet a crazy kooky cast in a program which is unabashedly aware of its art form, showing off the wondrously imaginative and dreamlike possibilities of audio!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast182.mp3)
Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 182 (MP3)

Wow, over 100 episodes ago we featured Wormwood, what was then a promising new audio suspense series set in the odd backwater town of Wormwood that had some weird taste of the occult.

Since that time, the creators of Wormwood have delivered with a stunning first and second season, and now a three-part third season that explores backwards, sideways, and finally forward through the Wormwood universe.

We revisit the epic audio serial Wormwood, by talking with creators David Accampo and Jeremy Rogers about their experience creating and marketing the series these years… and what might happen in their lives now that Wormwood will reach its climax after nearly four years in the making.

But first! An episode from Season 2 of the series, about the curious miscreant known as “Albatross.”

Download audio file (rdr-podcast169.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 169

Phew, so, if you looked at The Wall Street Journal yesterday, you would’ve seen an article about FinalRune Productions and our newest project we’re announcing to the world: the serialization of the novel Open Season by Archer Mayor.

Today we feature this very exciting, on-location recorded audio drama. Yes, the snow you hear is snow!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast162.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 162

This week we feature the conclusion to Quicksilver Radio Theater‘s adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes Tale, The Blue Carbuncle.

Last week we found a precious gem lodged in the gullet of a Christmas goose, which led Sherlock and Watson on a quest to find its owner – the goose that is, not the gem. The goose’s owner was happy with any cooked goose, making the detective duos realize they would need to hit the streets to learn the origin of this mystery foul…

Listen to the conclusion of this fun adventure, plus a bonus, the “Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes.”

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast153.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 153

P.S. – A reminder that Audiofile Magazine and Naxos Audiobooks are still offering three free Sherlock Holmes audiobooks until December 29… So go load up your new iPod with great tales of the detective!

Things have been great lately for audio fans of Agatha Chrystie. Last month I mentioned how Audiofile magazine had a feature on the Queen of Crime, and bubbled in great length about how great the live Agatha Chrystie radio dramas at the International Mystery Writer’s Festival was. Killer!

But now there’s more – Audiofile Magazine, to celebrate Agatha’s birthday, is giving out a free audiobook of the Agatha Chrystie story “The Case of the Missing Will,” through a partnership with Audible and BBC Audiobooks America.

You do need to sign up for a form with Audiofile, but heck, if you aren’t already getting the magazine and their newsletters, what kind of audio fan are you? You’ll also need an Audible account, and the same rules apply.

Audiofile Magazine and Audible are both very audio drama friendly. While their emphasis is obviously on audiobooks, you’ll routinely find reviews for audio plays in Audiofile and there are great audio dramas to download on Audible (the Rocky Coast Radio Theatre, for example, and the 2000x series).

So check it out, while there’s time! The offer is only good until September 20.

Check out their landing page stuffed with great Agatha Chrystie material, or go straight to the download for the free audiobook.

If you’re not on the ZBS newsletter list, well, sign up now, and then, check out some of the latest stuff they’ve put out.

As you recall, we talked to Tom Lopez a few weeks ago about his radio drama/web video hybrid 4 Minute Film Noir.  Several more fun videos have come out, including “The Little Man with the Big Roscoe,” “When Sully Became Sally,” and “Galloway’s.”

Let’s see if I can get one to embed here:

What other fun stuff? There are great pictures of 4 Minute Film Noir behind the scenes, and the fantabulous new show, Ruby 8.  I just picked up the MP3… you’ll find this covered in the “Fred’s Fuze” column soon!

This week we have the huge pleasure of talking to Tom Lopez of the ZBS Foundation on his new effort with the 4-Minute Film Noir, fun videos that take film noir caricatures and blend them with Lopez’s stellar wit, timing, and sense of humor.

We also pick his brain about the experiences at the National Audio Theater Festivals and the joy of recording the natural environment and using it in audio productions.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast127.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 127

Also, BIG NEWS!!!

I’m proud to announce that one of my own audio drama works, Waiting for a Window, has won the Gold Ogle award. Hooray!

Knowing that this is the same stage that Roger Gregg has won on multiple occasions, I can’t say how honored and awesome it feels to have won the award. Awards aren’t everything, sure, but it’s nice to know that someone other than me actually thinks my stories are worth listening to.

The Ogle is one of the most prestigious (okay, one of the only!) radio drama awards available and has been won by the likes of Crazy Dog Audio Theater, The Willamette Radio Workshop, AM/FM Theater (The Grist Mill), and the Colonial Radio Theater.

I’m actually be headed out to Minneapolis, Minnesota to collect the award on July 2, and that same day you’ll be hearing an encore presentation of “Waiting for a Window” on the show. Rumor has it I’ll also be helping Great Northern Audio Theater put on their annual Mark Time Award live radio show. Details to come.

Today I present part one of the Malleus interview with Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, audio dramatist, writer, and producer of the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox audio drama serials. In this installment, Stevens discusses what drew him to audio drama and how Magic Bullet came to be, why he recast the Faction Paradox audio dramas, and what makes sound designer Alistair Lock a genius. Alan has an engaging wit and an interesting approach, and the article is embedded with sound clips from both the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox serials that illustrate why Magic Bullet is a force to be reckoned with in the British audio drama scene. Don’t pass this one by. 

(You can go directly to Magic Bullet’s website by clicking on their logo above. Further sound clips from The True History of Faction Paradox can be found in my overview of the series here. Part 2 of the interview can be found here.)

CD: How did Magic Bullet get started?

AS: It got started because I had an idea for an audio series loosely based on a film called Yojimbo. It was by Akira Kurosawa, and it was about this Samurai who had gone into a town and had set about playing two powerful families off against one another as a way to make a lot of money. It was remade by Sergio Leone into a Western called A Fistful of Dollars, with Clint Eastwood, and again into Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis but this time set in the 1930′s. And I thought, it worked as a Japanese samurai medieval film and it worked as a cowboy film and as a 30′s gangster flick, so I had this idea of an unnamed character, probably played by Paul Darrow, coming into a town or city and playing one side off against another. I had already done some not-for-profit Blake’s 7 audios, a drama-documentary called Travis: The Final Act and two plays, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, with sound designer Alistair Lock, and Logic had starred Paul Darrow as Avon, so you can see the connections coming together; in fact a lot of the people who later appeared in Kaldor City originally worked with me on those audios.

Download audio file (kaldor_clip_1.mp3)

(Avon sets course for a fateful rendezvous with Blake in this excerpt from The Logic of Empire.)

At the same time that I was thinking about this, Chris Boucher released a Doctor Who book called Corpse Marker, which, as well as being a sequel to his 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, was also a Blake’s 7 / Doctor Who crossover, because Carnell from Blake’s 7 appeared in Kaldor City, where the story was set. So I called up Chris Boucher, and I said to him, would you be interested in doing a (audio drama) CD series called Kaldor City? And he said, “What’s your idea?” And I told him about the Yojimbo scenario, and he said “You go away and write a script, and if I like it we’ll proceed from there.”

Also at this time, Jim Smith had held a drunken conversation with Paul Ebbs from BBV about the possibility of doing an audio series with them, and he seemed to think BBV would be willing to do it, so I went away and wrote this script with Jim and came back to Chris, and he liked the script. But when we got back to BBV with the script and the cast we wanted, they weren’t too interested; I think they thought it would be too expensive. Big Finish then showed some interest, but eventually I thought, “why don’t I just do it myself?” So I set up my own company called Magic Bullet. The name Magic Bullet came about because my Blake’s 7 audios used to feature a variation of the Season 4 Blake’s 7 logo, which is a crosshairs, on the spines.

CD: So you weren’t just trying to profit from an American tragedy, then? (laughs)

AS: Well, as Kaldor City’s all about conspiracies, then that also kind of fits. So Kaldor City was a six-part series, and as I was coming towards the end of it, Lawrence Miles sent me an email saying “would you be interested in taking up Faction Paradox, because BBV don’t want to do it anymore?”  They’d produced six CDs beforehand. I’d heard of Faction Paradox, but I hadn’t ever read any of the books or listened to any of the audios. So I borrowed the audios from Daniel O’Mahoney, who I was working with at the time on the last Kaldor City, Storm Mine, and the books from my girlfriend Fiona Moore, and thought, I could work with this. So I got back to Lawrence and said “I’ll do Faction under the Magic Bullet label!”

Download audio file (01_-_Occams_Razor_Track_1.mp3)

(The opening track of Kaldor City 1: Occam’s Razor. Iago’s arrival, terse and sharp like the character himself, leads directly into the theme.)

CD: Before we proceed with Faction I want to talk a little bit more about Kaldor City. Small start-up companies usually begin with less ambitious, less expensive casts, less experienced sound designers, and even when they can afford top-quality people they usually have more kinks to work out learning the art of writing for audio. Occam’s Razor, the first Kaldor City release, was an extremely polished and professional work right off the bat, with a first rate cast, a tight script, a kicking theme tune, and one of Britain’s best sound designers in the person of Alistair Lock. To be blunt, how did you do it?

AS: Part of it was luck. I met Alistair Lock in 1986, and we’d worked together on Travis: The Final Act, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, so obviously when I decided to do Occam’s Razor he was the first person I went to. I had the template of Yojimbo and Chris Boucher’s Corpse Marker book, so I knew the actors I needed to cast, and I already had casting connections from the three Blake’s 7 audios I’d done before. I knew Paul Darrow and got on with him, Trevor Cooper was in The Logic of Empire as well, and Brian Croucher and Peter Miles were in The Mark of Kane. I contacted Russell Hunter through a friend of mine who knew him, and I’d met Russell Hunter myself in 1990 at a convention. Carnell, played by Scott Fredericks in the Blake’s 7 episode Weapon, was difficult to track down, as he now lives in Ireland! I eventually got in touch with him through BBC Residuals, who kindly forwarded on to him a script and accompanying letter- thinking back, it was ridiculous, really, as I’d written a script with Carnell in before I’d even contacted the actor. It would have been a terrible mess if he’d decided not to do it! But he got back to me, “Yeah, sure, I love playing Carnell!” and he rang me up and was a very nice guy indeed. 

When you write a script, you write with specific actors in mind. I wrote Iago specifically for Paul Darrow, however, there were a few other people I had in mind if he couldn’t do it. One of them was Alexis Kanner from The Prisoner, I thought he was a fabulous actor. Though interestingly, in retrospect, I think Alexis Kanner wouldn’t have been a good choice because he was a bit too similar, vocally, to Scott Fredericks. But Paul Darrow agreed to do it full-stop, so I was quite lucky on cast.

I think the reason I had a good idea of how to write a script for radio was down to me being a big fan of Blake’s 7 when it came out, and I used to tape record the stories off the screen. This was before I got a video recorder. And because British television couldn’t afford splashy effects, it relied on plot and character and good dialogue, so effectively it did translate very well to audio. Especially if you’d watched the episode and then immediately listened to it, because then what was going on was cemented into your brain. Whereas, I remember there was one episode that I’d missed on first viewing, but my father taped it for me, called Power. Since I hadn’t seen it, I couldn’t always tell what was going on from the audio tape, so I think it kind of taught me unconsciously that certain kinds of visual information have to be communicated otherwise in audio.

And also, doing Travis: The Final Act was a great help. That effectively was going through Blake’s 7 and picking out the character Travis and how he developed and how he worked, and you would find very, very clever infodumps. There was a great scene in Star One where Servalan effectively tells the plot of what’s been happening up to that point to Durkim to refresh the audience. And it was so cleverly, so brilliantly done by Chris Boucher that you don’t realize it’s a huge infodump. So doing Travis: The Final Act really taught me how to write.

CD: How many scripts had you written before Occam’s Razor?

AS: Travis: The Final Act in a way was a script, because I had to amalgamate all these interviews and segues into a documentary. But the first drama I wrote was The Mark of Kane. So Occam’s Razor was my third proper dramatic script. 

CD: Big Finish productions recruit a lot of their script writers from people who work in other media – novels, for example. Some of them take to writing for audio right away, and some of them don’t.

AS: There’s an art to writing audio, as with writing for all media. I don’t know if I could write a novel. I’ve done guidebooks. I’ve written guidebooks to Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner with Fiona Moore, and we’re working on one for Battlestar Galactica now. 

CD: Did you learn to analyze stories through this fascination and hobby of yours, or were you pursuing this academically in college or graduate school?

AS: Not academically. If I’m interested in something I will move Heaven and Earth. If I really, really want to do something, then I will do it. If I’m not interested, you can’t make me. I didn’t learn to read until I was about nine years old. I was a late developer. The reason I learned to read was I discovered they were doing Doctor Who stories as novels. Doctor Who stories I’d never seen with Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell (the second and first actors to play the Doctor.) So I thought, “I like Doctor Who on T.V. and I want to know what these stories are about, so I will learn to read.” So I think if you’re really interested in something you can really push yourself and do it. 

I have an H.N.C. (Higher National Certificate) in radio production, but that came after. I was doing the Mark of Kane and I thought perhaps I should do a course, so I went on the course and I was doing more than they expected or the course required. So the qualification came after, it didn’t come before.

As for the reviewing, you’ve got to understand what a story’s about, so by reviewing an episode of Blake’s 7 or whatever, by deconstructing someone else’s work, you can actually see how it goes together and then hopefully do your own thing.

CD: I certainly understand what you mean by being motivated by passion. Let’s shift gears and talk about Faction Paradox. Could you give a brief description of Faction Paradox, and describe what the Magic Bullet Faction Paradox audios have to offer?

AS: Faction Paradox came about because Lawrence Miles wrote some Doctor Who novels for Virgin Books and the BBC, featuring them as characters. They’re a kind of time-travelling voodoo cult who cause a lot of trouble by creating paradoxes. At the start, they lived in the Eleven-Day Empire, the eleven days left over when England went on the Gregorian calendar. So it shouldn’t really exist, but it does exist, because they’re in there. It’s a paradox. It’s conceptually absurd, but it’s funny. Lawrence then spun it off into, among other things, an audio series for BBV where Faction gets wiped out by the Sontarans who are working with a character called Lolita. Two of the Faction survive: one of them’s called Justine, the other is Eliza. They go off and have loads of adventures. And in the series that I’m dealing with, they’re involved with the Egyptian god Sutekh, who appeared in the Doctor Who story, Pyramids of Mars.

(The enigmatic Sutekh, lurking in the shadows as only he can.)

CD: Sutekh is another name for the Egyptian god Set, correct?

AS: That’s right. If you do a completely original show, it won’t sell. Because people think, “What’s this? I’m not going to take a chance on this.” And even if it has got actors from Doctor Who it won’t really sell, because people think, “Well I want Sarah Sutton playing Nyssa, not Sarah Sutton playing Cathy, or whatever.” And so with Kaldor City I got Scott Fredericks back to play Carnell, and Russell Hunter to play Uvanov, and I sweated blood to get back Taren Capel himself, David Bailie. He’d actually given up acting and had only started up again just a few months before I contacted him, which was enormous luck. 

So I said, “What sort of hook have we got on this Faction?” And Lawrence said, “I’ve got an idea of bringing in Sutekh.” I said, “I’m glad you said that, because I actually know Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars.” So I contacted Gabriel and asked him, and he said, “Yeah, I’ll come back as Sutekh.”

Download audio file (13_Track_13.mp3)

(Sutekh takes vengeance on the followers of his brother, Osiris, in this excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox vol. 4: Words from Nine Divinities.)

So a lot of it takes place with the Egyptian gods: Upuat, Anubis, Horus, and Sutekh, and it’s jolly fun. It’s political – Lawrence Miles really does think through his plots. He really, really knows his series – he’s a very coherent plotter. 

CD: The Osirians and the Egyptian mythology that Magic Bullet’s series brought in is a bit of a shift in emphasis from the earlier BBV releases. BBV would bring in Doctor Who related concepts and monsters – the Sontarans, the Peking Homunculi, the prison world patterned after Shada – for one chapter each. (Two CDs constituted a single unified chapter of the BBV releases.) Lawrence Miles is obviously more invested in the Egyptian mythology now, with Sutekh in particular becoming a major ongoing character for 6 CDs. Was this consciously decided to give the Magic Bullet audios a new identity?

AS: Lawrence Miles said to me that he’d always wanted to write a science fiction series based on the Egyptian pantheon since he’d been a kid. I think he saw Faction as a way of doing it. So he had an idea of doing a six-part series with Sutekh, and the various Faction characters also representing figures from Egyptian myth.

There were some changes from the BBV series. I didn’t use Nigel Fairs, who had originally produced the Faction audios. I have nothing against Nigel Fairs, it’s just that A: I didn’t know him, B: He was off to do Sapphire and Steel for Big Finish, and C: I had worked with Alistair Lock, and I couldn’t very well then turn to Alistair and say, “I’ll just go use Nigel.” Especially as we did the first two Factions back-to-back with the last Kaldor City, so it would have been quite expensive, not to say confusing, to have Nigel Fairs there with Alistair Lock: “You’re directing this bit, and you’re directing that.” Ridiculous.

The reason I recast the Faction audios was because if I wasn’t using Nigel, I didn’t feel that I could then poach his actors. We all have certain groups of actors we use again and again, and I observe that a number of the people who have appeared in the original Faction have appeared in Sapphire and Steel and other things Nigel’s done before and since. And also I wasn’t really very happy with this accent that the actress playing Justine had adopted. Because when I was asked to produce the show I went back and read the books, and Justine was this upper-class Victorian girl. And so I didn’t quite understand why she was talking with this Lancastrian accent. Lawrence Miles also wasn’t keen on it. He didn’t really have any involvement with the original CDs – he’d just send a script out and didn’t hear back until he got the CD. So there was a general feeling that the accent was wrong. So even if I did get the original actress back, I’d be saying “could you please change your performance?” So I just recast them. And some fans didn’t like it, but tough. (Laughs)

Truthfully, the last thing I wanted to do was annoy the Faction Paradox fans by recasting the entire series. I thought the best thing to do was minimalize the recasting as much as I could, and in fact I asked Lawrence if we could do the new audios with a completely new set of characters. But he said, “No. Justine and Eliza are going to be in it.” So we compromised, and left out a lot of the characters from the original BBV series, like Lord Sandwich and the transsexual French swordsman, swordswoman, whatever, but kept in Justine, Eliza and Lolita.

CD: In your FAQ, answering this question, you said you wanted to play to Magic Bullet’s strengths and style. What do you feel these are?

AS: One film I was very impressed with was Pulp Fiction, which effectively was a pulp gangster movie with some European art film snuck into it. I like that juxtaposition, and again, Blake’s 7 was also a kind of pulp show, but with some intelligent ideas behind it. I like action-adventure, but thoughtfully done and well worked out. I also like good dialogue and strong characters, and I think that’s what Kaldor City has, and it was these elements that also attracted me to Lawrence Miles’ work. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_3.mp3)

(In this audio clip from Occam’s Razor,Kaston Iago informs Stenton Rull that he is “not a patient man”.) 

And I also like a six-part story where you have time introduced into a show. For example, although The Caves of Androzani is one of the best Doctor Who adventures ever made, at the end of the story, Peri has all these terrible weeping sores on her legs. And the next episode they’ve all gone and she might as well not have been dragged through caves by a deformed maniac while suffering from spectrox toxemia. Because the reset button has been pressed. I’m never a big fan of the reset button. So I think after story one, story two has to reflect what has happened in story one, and the characters have to reflect that as well. The BBV series had self-contained two part releases, whereas our series is a six-part story, and characters come and characters go, but the ripples of what has happened run strongly through it all. Does this make sense?

CD: Yes, it does.

AS: You explain it to me then, so I can find out what I’m talking about.

CD: Generally I would say you have an affection (which I share) for the pulp serial, but mature ones in which the characters evolve over time. There’s some extraordinary examples of this in current German audio drama, Gabriel Burns being a notable example. I think in a way it’s generational. You have children who were brought up in the 1970s on these British TV shows or German audio tape dramas or American comic books, and now those children have grown up and still want to follow those stories and characters, or those types of characters, but on a more sophisticated level. 

AS: I think that the reason British TV in the 60s and 70s had strong characterization and strong plotting and clever writing was because they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on elaborate effects, and so that’s the kind of stuff that appeals to me. A 50 minute T.V. script is about 5,000 words long. A 50 minute radio script is about 11 to 12,000 words long. Because you can’t do chase sequences very well on audio, you have to fill up the space with talk. So it fits in perfectly with what I like – I like strong characterisation, good dramatic dialogue and intriguing plots, so audio is perfect for me, because that’s all you can really do on it. There’s a scene in Kaldor City: Checkmate where Blayes goes back and has a shoot-out with Iago. If I’d been doing that as a T.V. production, or a film, I would have done it as a huge Scarface-style shoot-out, with security forces storming the house and Iago fighting them off with automatic weapons and all that stuff, but that wouldn’t transfer to audio. It’s a good idea not to have more than two or three characters in a scene, because it can be very confusing for the audience. You’ve got to be more intimate and clever when you’re writing for audio.

CD: For me the purest example of this from your work is a small piece, Kaldor City: The Prisoner, featuring Iago and Landerchild that you did for MJTV’s The Actor Speaks 4: Paul Darrow. It’s just a philosophical discussion, and it’s carried entirely through the dialogue and the actors’ intensity and it’s absolutely compelling. But basically it’s two people talking in a room.

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_2.mp3)

(The Actor Speaks vol. 4: Paul Darrow, featuring an original short Kaldor City play, The Prisoner, by Alan Stevens. Click the image above to visit the MJTV website.)

AS: Yeah, I said to Mark, “How many actors have I got?” And he said, “Well, two.”

CD: (Laughs)

AS: Of course, there was a lot of stuff in the news at the time about the Abu Ghraib interrogations, so I thought I’d explore that. But also, in the Chris Boucher Doctor Who story,Image of the Fendahl, there’s some quite interesting stuff in there about how we all know the world is round, but in the old days they believed it was flat and they acted as if it was. I remember there was an old lady I saw years and years ago, and she was losing it a bit, and she was convinced that there was a well outside in the garden. And there was no well there, but the people who were looking after her told me there was a well back in 1937. Do you see what I’m getting at?

CD: Yes, interesting. These things have a conceptual life.

AS: That’s right. So I was basically extrapolating from Image of the Fendahl and The Robots of Death when I wrote The Prisoner. And also I had to fill up 20 minutes. (laughs)

CD: Were you able to record the casts ensemble?

AS: In Faction, from episodes three onwards, the actress who plays Justine and the actress who plays Eliza don’t meet. They were recorded several weeks apart. It’s only through Alastair’s skill as an editor that they appear to be in the same room talking to one another. Also, Chris Tranchell never appeared with any of the characters he talks to, he was recorded separately in a different studio. Neither did Peter Halliday. 

CD: Were the Kaldor episodes also recorded like this?

AS: Well, it varies. For instance, Russell Hunter was available on the same days as Scott Fredericks in Occam’s Razor and in Death’s Head, but Paul Darrow was not. But when Russell came back for the next three, Scott Fredericks wasn’t available on the same days he was available, but Paul Darrow was. So in the first two stories, Russell Hunter was in the same studio reacting back for all the scenes he does with Scott Fredericks, but not with Paul Darrow, and for the next three, it was the opposite. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_6.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded together. This scene is from from Kaldor City vol. 3: Hidden Persuaders.)

Download audio file (Kaldor_clip_replacement.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded separately and mixed together later by Alistair Lock. This scene is from Kaldor City vol. 2: Death’s Head.)

The fact is you’re following a script, and there’s only a certain way you can do most lines, plus, you have to have good stage directions, so you don’t have someone whispering “we’ve got to go over there, now” and his companion saying “OK MATE, I’ll FOLLOW YOU!” You’ve got to make sure that the stage directions are clear and you know what you’re doing. But as long as you direct it right, you can tie it all up together. And also, another good thing about audio is that if you have a performance which is poor you can cut it right out. There were a couple performances in the past where someone’s come in and done something and I’ve just thought, “that wasn’t very good at all”, and we just snipped them out and replaced them with another actor. In fact, if you have an actor and he does two or three takes, you can take a line from the first take and put it with another line from the second take, and then can carry on with the rest of the third take. Apparently on another production Alistair was working on, an actress mispronounced a word. And he and William Johnston were able to edit it so that she pronounced it correctly. Alistair himself pronounced a “sh” noise and when it was edited in it just sounded perfect. There’s a lot of great stuff you can do with audio.

CD: It surprises me that you recorded Kaldor in this way, because you had really wonderful chemistry between the actors, and yet they weren’t actually in the same room all the time.

AS: It’s scripts, you see. If an actor knows the character they’re playing, and they’re directed as to what the previous person said or how they said it, then there’s only a particular way you can say a certain line. For example, on one day we got Brian Croucher and Trevor Cooper together, and we recorded all of their lines for three CDs, with me reading in the lines for the missing actors. It’s always a good idea to do CDs back-to-back, you see, it saves a lot of money. Occam’s Razor and Death’s Head were done back-to-back, and Hidden Persuaders, Taren Capel, and Checkmate were all done back-to-back. So on one day we’d record all the scenes involving one set of actors, and on the next, another set of actors. Also, you never do any recordings in scene order, it’s just too time-consuming. It’s not unusual, Big Finish do the same thing as well.

CD: Yes, I know.

AS: Although to be honest, I think they nicked the idea off me (laughs). But it’s very very helpful, because to get all of those actors in the studio on the same day is a logistical nightmare. It really frees stuff up, because you can have someone come in next Tuesday and do it, as opposed to having to be there on the day Philip Madoc is there. Because they’re actors who are working all the time, you’d be very lucky to get them all available on the same day. Alistair Lock is a genius really, a lot of artistry goes into it.

CD: I’ve long been impressed with his work.

AS: I’ve got a good ear for edits. When I listen to other productions, I can often hear if a breath has been edited or cut short. But I can’t hear edits in Alistair Lock’s stuff – it’s seamless, his partner William Johnston does a brilliant job on the dialogue edits. And Alistair’s very very careful about levels, meticulously goes through them and makes sure everything is balanced. He sweats blood literally over it. I’m enormously lucky to have just met him by chance in Cardiff in 1986. 

CD: There’s a richness to the soundscapes he does. They have a kind of aural texture and density that is often lacking in the work of other designers. Two different moments that impressed me were the scene with the sun god Ra, a living Sun inside the Ship of a Billion Years, where he somehow communicates the sun’s immensity and ambient power. In Kaldor City, I was always struck by how carefully he constructed the explosion of the company central building in Taren Capel. People often use a single large “boom!” to represent a building exploding, but that isn’t usually how it happens – different parts give out at different moments, setting off other areas in a series of smaller bangs that crescendo.

Download audio file (23_Kaldor_City_Clip_7.mp3)

Getting back to the Faction, you keep saying Magic Bullet’s Faction Paradox line is a six-part Faction Paradox series. Are more planned after that?

AS: It’s written as a six-part series, there are currently no plans to continue it beyond that.

CD: So the two you’re releasing this year are the finale?

AS: Yeah. Retailers told me when I ended Kaldor, “you’re insane, why don’t you do more?”  And I replied, “well, it’s a six-part series and now it’s finished. There isn’t any more to say.” In fact, people sent scripts in for Kaldor City 7; Fiona and I even wrote Kaldor City 7 ourselves, and then threw it away, because it just proved to us that the show had come to a natural end with Storm Mine.

There’s this good film called Candyman by Clive Barker. It was a hit, and so the studio insisted on doing a sequel. There should never have been a Candyman 2.

CD: (Laughs)

AS: There was even a Candyman 3, and someone on the internet was saying, “Please, God, no more!” I think every story has its course to run, and if you continue beyond its natural end, it will become just a vague, hollow shell of itself. In the last episode of Blake’s 7 there was a huge great shoot-out and they were all killed, and that was it. As much as people protested and asked for the show to come back, it never did, and I think that was absolutely the right decision, because effectively the programme had run its course. And as far as I’m concerned, the Faction storyline concerning the Egyptian gods will have run its course by episode six. 

CD: Ever since the first release, the Eleven-Day Empire by BBV, this has been the story of Eliza and Justine. Justine in particular seems to be the Joan-of-Arc heroine who ties it all together. Is this the end of their story as well, or will it continue in other media?

AS: I can’t tell you that because it would spoil the end.

CD: (Laughs) Fair enough. Is this the end then of Magic Bullet, or do you have other productions in mind?

AS: I have no idea. Magic Bullet was formed to do this six-part Kaldor City series. And Faction Paradox came about simply because BBV no longer produce audios, and Lawrence contacted me. So if within the next nine or ten months someone comes along and says, “Hey, I’ve got this really good idea for a series!” and I look at it and think, “Yeah, okay, I’ll go with that”, then that’s what I’ll be doing next. 

Lots of people approach me for series. But I only do what I want to do. I’m not in it for the money; if a series breaks even, I’m happy. Sometimes you’ve got an itch and you need to scratch it. It may cause me a great deal of effort and stress, but I have to do it. And that was Kaldor City. And the Faction series, I was really taken with it and wanted to go with it. And Lawrence himself really, really wanted to do this. I think the audience appreciates that. I think they can tell when something’s done with a lot of love, really. Lawrence certainly writes these scripts with a great deal of love and I think that comes over.

Next time: In part two of this interview, Stevens talks frankly about the commercial imperatives and creative opportunities of working with licensed properties, comments on the similarities and differences between Paul Darrow’s Avon and Iago, and explains why you should never trust authority figures. 

Download audio file (01_Scene_One.mp3)

Audio track 1 from The Faction Paradox Protocols: The Eleven-Day Empire (the first episode of the first series) appears courtesy of Bill Baggs of BBV media, copyright 2001. Click the CD cover to go directly to the BBV website.

Download audio file (01_Chapter_One.mp3)

Audio Track 1 from The True History of Faction Paradox: Coming to Dust (the first episode of the second series) appears courtesy of Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, copyright 2005. Click the CD cover to go directly to the Magic Bullet website.

How to introduce Faction Paradox?

On the one hand it’s best to discover and unravel its mysteries yourself, on the other without some knowledge of its parent series, Dr. Who, you are at a disadvantage – one that a short field guide could easily remedy. Neither approach is entirely sufficient, so why not have both?

Today’s post is for the Romantics, detectives, and explorers. I’m reprinting Lawrence Miles’s “Faction Paradox – As Much as It’s Known”, an introduction which captures the cryptic poetry and subversive humor of the series. I’m also putting up the first tracks from each of the audio drama lines, BBV’s The Faction Paradox Protocols and Magic Bullet’s The True History of Faction Paradox. No context or backstory today – just let the opening lines engulf and enchant you the way only beginnings can, as in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler.

Next week I’ll post a rough guide for the practically-minded. It will lay out some basic history of the series, highlight important themes, characters, and concepts, and comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the audio dramas. You can think of it as a thread leading you through Miles’s lexical labyrinth. Or if you’re not a fan of Theseus, you can think of it as a crude form of cheating.

(I will, however, try not to spoil major plot elements of the series.)

Later weeks will feature interviews with Nigel Fairs, director / composer / sound designer / actor for BBV’s The Faction Paradox Protocols, and Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, producer of The True History of Faction Paradox.

Finally, a brief primer on Dr. Who audio drama spin-offs can be found in last week’s post.

Now read on for series author Lawrence Miles’s introductory essay:

Faction Paradox, as Much as It’s Known

(Series introduction by Lawrence Miles, originally posted on the now-defunct Faction Paradox website, factionparadox.co.uk. Don’t link there – the domain has been taken by spammers.)

Reprinted with permission.

Primer for the Spiral Politic (Post-War Edition)

1: Faction Paradox

Era: Non-specific

Technology: Post-linear (subtle), time-active

It’s never easy, explaining Faction Paradox in a single line. It’s been described as a criminal syndicate, with agents operating in every civilisation from the first to the last; as an all-purpose guerrilla organisation, intent on overthrowing the order of history-in-general rather than any specific government; as a fetishistic death-cult, whose members remain utterly unaware of its founder’s true intentions; as a secret army, preparing for the day when it can launch a mass crusade against any other bloodline that stands in its way; even as a conspiracy of monsters, whose purpose is to stir up a War in Heaven and then pick over the ruins. And none of these descriptions are entirely untrue, although all of them fall short of the mark.

If the aims of this group/ cult/ organisation are vague, then at least its roots are well-known. The Faction started life as the bastard offspring of one of the Great Houses – the Houses being those aristocratic bloodlines which have, since long before the rise of the “lesser” species, seen it as their duty to oversee the structure of causality – and in human terms even describing the Houses is a challenge. To call the members of these bloodlines “another race” or “another species” seems to miss the point, somehow: the continuum has depended on their presence for so long that thinking of them as “just a different kind of people” is like thinking of gravity and entropy as different kinds of people. More than anything, the Great Houses have to be considered a force of nature, their roots intertwined with the roots of the Spiral Politic itself. And as for Faction Paradox- reviled and rejected by the other Houses, its members regarded as subhuman by beings who already regard humanity as beneath contempt, it’s hardly surprising that the “lesser” species should have such trouble trying to make sense its methods and principles.

Even before the outbreak of the ‘War in Heaven’, Faction Paradox was regarded as the most unpredictable (and opportunistic) of the time-active powers. Aware of the precarious nature of history – but under no obligation to protect it – while the other Great Houses were still attempting to uphold a ‘universal order’, the Faction was following its own, far more ambiguous, protocols. Ruthless, secretive and at times difficult to understand, it’s hardly surprising that the Faction should have eventually found itself under siege from its rival powers…In essence, though, this is how things stand. The Great Houses consider themselves to have jurisdiction over the length of linear time, to be above the “lesser” species in virtually every respect and to act according to age-old protocols which have very little to do with any human sense of morality. At its most basic level, Faction Paradox is the “fallen angel” among Houses, a cuckoo-bloodline whose purpose is to defy, corrupt and subvert the authority of the ruling elite wherever possible. So depending on whom you believe, this corruption is either a bold revolutionary statement or merely a way for the elders of the Faction to fulfil their own ambitions. Certainly, it’s undeniable that among the “lesser” species the Faction has a tendency to recruit the criminal, the dispossessed and even the insane- and has no qualms about this at all.

How much of the Faction’s work is actually meaningful, and how much of it is sheer posturing, remains unclear. The Great Houses believe themselves to be immortal: therefore the Faction surrounds itself with overblown death-imagery, dressing itself up in blood and bone in a manner that’s almost carnival-like, and all just to spite its opponents. The Great Houses believe themselves to be set above all other civilisations: therefore the Faction recruits its new members from the “lesser” species, committing the ultimate sacrilege by granting them equal status with the offspring of the pure bloodlines. The Great Houses believe themselves duty-bound to keep history neat, clean and linear: therefore the Faction aims to throw the whole of the continuum into a state of paradox.

Sometimes it seems as though the Faction’s simply playing a game, or perpetrating an enormous practical joke against the will of the Houses. Sometimes it seems as though the organisation’s just biding its time while its builds up its forces, ready for the day when it can launch its grand assault against the Houses and overthrow the protocols forever. The truth, if there is any, remains vague- and vagueness has always been the Faction’s area of expertise.

We continue this week with the dastardly Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Speckled Band” performed by our friends at the Quicksilver Radio Theater.? Holmes and Watson are on the hunt of the mysterious killer behind deaths at a remote estate in the English countryside… but will they be in time to stop the next death?

Download audio file (rdr-podcast087.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 87

Oh, Holmes, strongman of logic, consumer of sensitive substances and eyes that make a hawk look blind… and an audio theater regular, much, unfortunately, to the abuse of the fine British detective. Forget all the hack-job Holmeses you’ve heard today as our friend at the Quicksilver Radio Theatre delight us again with the diabolical tale on “The Speckled Band.”

Holmes and Watson are awoken in the middle of the night to a frightened young girl who talks of an abusive stepfather and a strange murder… but as clues lead up towards what invariably will be another slaying, can Holmes and Watson act in time to stop it?

Part 1 of 2. Enjoy.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast086.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 86

Ticks, coconuts and helicopters, oh my! In case you haven’t already gotten enough NATF coverage from this past week of entries, we start this week’s show with a quick recap, the sounds of the helicopter, and segueway oh-so-clumsily into a great show produced by Lucus Keppel, one of the great emerging audio producers I met at the Conference.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast025.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 25