It’s December so here’s my random gift for you. A two-fer podcast review, both of which are podcasts I highly recommend. Seriously, go listen to them!
Let’s start with The Message.
The official premise: The Message is a new podcast following the weekly reports and interviews from Nicky Tomalin, who is covering the decoding of a message from outer space received 70 years ago. Over the course of 8 episodes we get an inside ear on how a top team of cryptologists attempt to decipher, decode, and understand the alien message.
This premise is… exactly to my tastes. A murderous science mystery telling a complete story in 8 episodes? An alien audio cipher that might be killing people who hear it? Sign me up!
The Message is written by Mac Rogers, though it’s hard to find out that information on their website, which is very shy of pertinent information. (And as of this writing, the website seems to be down completely. Boo.) I give you the Wikipedia entry instead.
I recognized the name—Mac Rogers was the writer behind Steal the Stars, which I attempted to listen to way back in March. Steal the Stars was a miss for me, despite its interesting premise, because I didn’t like the plot, which involved the characters doing criminally dangerous things. It left a bad taste in my mouth. I like heroes solving problems, not ruining lives and making things so much worse.
So, while I loved the premise of The Message, I was a little leery, worried that this would be another miss. But no! It was exactly what I liked: an ensemble cast solving a strange and complex problem. I zoomed through the eight episodes, sometimes lingering in my car until an entire episode finished up.
By Yong Chuan via Unsplash
Since character Nicky Tomalin is recording everything for her podcast, The Message is more unstructured interview than audio drama, which made it easier for me to follow. Also, these characters tended to make compassionate decisions, as opposed to criminal ones. Their choices still came back to haunt them, but at least their intentions were good: everything they did was either in service of decoding this alien message or in saving their colleagues.
I can’t tell you much about the plot beyond that, because at such a short length, any small spoiler is proportionately huge.
What I can say is that the twists and turns hang together well; that there’s never any moment where I say, “wait, I don’t buy this…” There are some moments that stretch plausibility, but never to the point of breaking. The characters feel organic; exactly the sorts of people you’d expect to find in a think-tank.
I can’t tell you much about the cast in specific detail, because the website doesn’t share who plays each character, but I can tell you that the voice actors were good; their voices were easy to listen to and established their personalities well.
The execution feels professional (as it should be since it’s sponsored by GE, which is a big-money corporation).
It’s solid entertainment. There are a few clichés, but not annoying ones; as an example, you see the first twist coming a mile away, but it has to be there to raise the stakes. The story itself is a little old-fashioned, but I like old-fashioned SF that’s usually about mankind making discoveries! Clever writing. A good cast. It’s just a smidge under two hours total. With that kind of time expenditure, it’s an easy win for a fun SF story.
Basically, The Message is good fun; go listen to it!
And then there’s The White Vault.
I got suckered into this one. After enjoying the complete story of The Message, I went looking for other completed podcast tales. Somehow, I thought The White Vault was a complete story in ten episodes. Nope! Surprise! The story is just beginning to pick up speed in the tenth episode and it ends on a cliffhanger! A really good cliffhanger. I was hooked.
Like The Message, The White Vault centers on a group of specialists in isolated circumstances. The Message staff is a think-tank in quarantine. The White Vault characters have an even more dangerous situation: they’re in a remote research post in Svalbard during a blizzard. There is no help available, and there seems to be doubt about whether help would even be interested in coming. The closest source of rescue is Ny-Ålesund which, jeez, is a research town of maximum 120 people.
The official premise: Explore the far reaches of the world’s horrors in the audio drama podcast The White Vault. Follow the collected records of a repair team sent to Outpost Fristed in the vast white wastes of Svalbard and unravel what lies waiting in the ice below.
What do I love about The White Vault?
Let’s see.
1) I love the languages. Each of these characters speaks a different language, though they all communicate with each other in English. The format here is that their story is told through found letters and recordings, data files, and notes from the Fristed crew. (I have to admit this doesn’t bode well for their futures if their stories are being told from what was left behind.) Each segment begins with the characters speaking in their own language and slowly shifts to English. So, you’ll hear the voice actress speaking in Spanish for a few sentences, then the same actress starting over in English, while the rest of the Spanish slowly fades away. It’s remarkably effective at making you realize this is an international crew, and it’s great to hear so many languages… especially ones I’m unfamiliar with. Spanish and German, sure, I can get bits of it. But Russian? Norwegian? Finnish? Love it.
2) I adore many of the books written by Lincoln Preston and Douglas Child. I love their science-horror combinations of Relic and Ice Limit; their books are often problem solving while dealing with monsters. And that’s exactly the same kind of tale I get while listening to The White Vault. Something’s gone wrong with the automated radio at Outpost Fristed, and so our intrepid team is sent to fix it. Of course, then they find so much more… Underground villages, mysterious voices, disturbing stone boxes, an ominous monster, and of course, the life-threatening weather.
Photo by James Padolsey via Unsplash
3) Setting. This is really part of the above, but I think the writers and producers do an excellent job of keeping you aware of the cold and the isolation and the wonders and terrors of the world around them. There’s so little room for error in this environment. When one of the team runs out of the station without being properly dressed, it’s a life-threatening moment. It’s great. It’s always hard, in horror stories, to come up with a reason for the characters to stay in their dangerous surroundings. Here, it’s a simple equation: the monster might kill you, but attempting to walk 30 kilometers in a gale-force blizzard with temperatures cold enough to blister your skin in minutes will definitely kill you.
4) Creep factor. The White Vault bills itself as a horror podcast and it is. But it’s a stealthy one. It’s a slow-burn sort of horror: there’s a mysterious underground settlement and an accident and some worry for their teammate, then something scratching at the walls of the bunkers, and then there’s the Anatomical Theater — a truly gruesome find by the team… but the shift into outright horror doesn’t come until the tenth episode. And then… cliffhanger! Thank goodness the second season has begun!
5) There is such an interesting hint of a bigger world/bigger conspiracy swirling about, which we get a small taste of in the side episode “The Acquisition.” And if you’re a patron of the podcast, you have access to more stories still.
The holidays are coming up, and if you’re like me, they’re equal parts fun and stressful. Why not hide out and listen to one of these? The White Vault has rapidly become one of my favorite podcasts that I’ve listened to in this year very full of podcasts. And The Message is just good fun. I bet you’ll like them.
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