Cover Art from Episode 24
I love audio drama: the landscapes are more vivid, the characters deeper, the special effects more amazing, the stories more meaningful…
And the best of them tell a damn good story, too!
I consume a lot of media, most of which is podcasts, music or radio — audio, in one form or another. I find a lot of great stuff out there, and I listen to as much as I can. Unfortunately, that sometimes means that things have to wait a while before I get back to them.
In particular, audio dramas and audio novels can wait years before I get back to them, which is a real shame. I don’t usually participate in the original run fan push, don’t usually know about stuff until a few years later, when I (re-)discover it and consume it greedily.
On the plus side, this allows me to mainline it, consume it all gluttonously and in short succession. I do this with television series, books, and audio drama.
The latest of these bacchanals was the incredible Dixie Stenberg and The Brassy Battalion, by Pendant Audio.
Actually, to give its long and proper title: Umket Presents: Dixie Stenberg and The Brassy Battalion Adventure Theatre, a Pendant Production.
First, a content overview: the show follows the adventures of a global cast of expert pilots, an international collaboration of a flight unit created to combat a particularly dastardly offshoot of the Nazi regime in World War II by the name of SCAR.
One can see the producers and writers harkening back to an earlier age of audio drama, one full of propaganda, questionable product sales, noble virtues and one-take productions. The show format quickly settles into a regular routine of in-story and out-of-story elements. Each episode is primarily focused on the in-story missions of Dixie Stenberg and her colleagues (and friends) of The Brassy Battalion, as they fight the insidious SCAR agents on land, in the air and at sea (or at least, beneath the sea). Increasingly, however, the out-of-story elements of the announcer, the product promoter and a delightful cast of product “experts” develop their own continuity with their increasingly bizarre, unsafe and largely unrecommended products from the fictional show sponsor, Umket Industries.
On both parts of each episode, the show excels. While the elements out-of-story are clearly comedic, the elements in-story range from the not-so-serious to the tense and emotion-filled, from action to drama and romance, from character-driven moments to menacing, scenery-chewing, sinister, villainous caricatures.
There are plenty of little touches in this series which make it endearing, from the frequent breaking of the fourth wall between the Announcer and the characters, to the alliterative ending exclamation, to the use of the end credits as a dialogue between the characters (used to great effect to also create suspense as well as humour).
On all measures, I find this series to be utterly superb: great acting, entertaining and engaging writing, fantastic production, everything. It builds a coherent storyline, with surprising amounts of character growth (both in the villainous as well as heroic characters) for a show which focuses so much on action.
And now, very coincidentally with my finishing the series — which itself ended over a year ago — they are working on releasing a comic book! I’m going to try to get it, to contribute something back to them for the many hours of excellent audio entertainment they’ve provided me. Check out their Kickstarter campaign for more information on how you can help out.