Monday, February 20, 2006

2 Interesting Podcast adventures - part 2


As you may recall from one of my previous entries, I found 2 new story-based podcasts:

Children of the Gods(CotG)
&
The Silent Universe

I've now had a chance to listen to all 3 episodes available to CotG, and the 1 episode of Silent Universe. So, as promised, here are my initial thoughts to the both of them.

Children of the Gods:

This series (according to the website) is heavily inspired by the book "Footfall" and the movie that was inspired by that book ,which we all know as "Independance Day". From what I can tell, this series takes the idea that not all of the aliens from Independance Day are destroyed, and what would happen if they come back.

Yes, this one pits Humans vs. Aliens, which means we get lots of space battles, which is good in my books! This series uses a ton of sound effects and sound scapes (think ambience noise) to add to the story. For the most part it is really well done, except for one sound effect they use that I find doesn't sound right. That is the sound of footsteps on the deck plating in the ship. For some reason the pacing sounds totally wrong to me - it just seems too slow to me to be somebody walking. But, other than that it is good.

The acting is pretty good, and rarely sounds like somebody just reading lines. So far there are no annoying characters (unlike the other podcast)....

In the end, I must say I rather enjoyed these 3 episodes and I will be tuning in further.
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The Silent Universe:

Only 1 episode so far. The release schedule is supposed to be 1 episode a month. This may seem like a long time, however I believe there is a reason for that. The makers of this podcast want us listeners to give them feedback after each episode. They want to take our suggestions and perhaps use our ideas in future episodes. I think this is a totally cool idea, and I hope it works out.

Reading the forums on the Silent Universe website, there is a ton of talk about one of the characters, a Gilbert (Gill) Frye. He's the geek of the group, infact, it appears this guy has been frozen from our time and unthawed in the future. (Yes, they willingly made that a Futurama throwback). The problem that me, and a lot of other listeners, have with this character is that he is utterly silly on what he says. He does a lot of impressions (like Yoda, Chewie, etc), but that isn't the worst of it! He speaks in leet speak and internet acronyms. In the first ep, he said things like "teh" master, "arr oh tee eff ell"... it's just way too silly for me. However, the creator of the series I think is taking our complaining to heart, and I think this character will be using less of this crap in future episodes. I believe the creator is looking for ideas on how to phase that out a bit, but make it believable in context to the story.

Oh yeah, there are no aliens in this story, it's all just Humans. So this is looking to be a Sci-Fi, character based drama more than anything else. Supposedly this podcast is supposed to mix elements of "24" and "Battlestar Galactica". If it can do that successfully, then I am sure this is going to be one great series!

I will also be tuning into this one some more. And yes, I have posted on their forums giving my thoughts on that Gill Frye the Geek Guy - ug!
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Shit, I think I suck at reviewing stuff. I think I just did a bunch of unfocused rambling above... lol.
I hope it made sense though, and is useful...
:o)

2 Comments:

At 2/21/2006 08:14:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I might check out Children of the Gods,sounds interesting.

 
At 2/21/2006 01:01:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This was a good overview/review of the two shows. I honestly didn't mind the leet speak of the hacker guy, it was kind of funny.

 

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