"Down The Rabbit Hole"
Synopsis: Dovan and Yubari have beamed down to Valandria in a last, desperate attempt to find and destroy the source of the Wasting. Lohrok and Rol have found themselves cast twenty years into the future, trapped aboard a starship they know is doomed. Betra-Na and Sorid-Gee continue to wage war on one another. And the crew of the Excelsior is dying . . . quickly.
The longest day of the Excelsior's history is finally coming to an end.
Starship : Excelsior episode 104- Down the Rabbit Hole
Review by Rose
*major plot spoilers are interspersed throughout this review. I tried to keep them at a minimum, but they WOULD push their way in.*
I’m going to start this review with a few introductory remarks, which will, I hope, put the thing in perspective for you, dear Reader. I have never been to the Starship: Excelsior site before, nor have I heard any of their shows. I am a complete tabula rasa when it comes to audio Trek.
I am honed to a killing point when it comes to voice production, acting and speech; therefore my review will focus on the things I know best. This is not a review from a Star Trek-saturated fan with an encyclopedic background of Trek lore; this is a review from a professional actor and voice teacher (Editor's Note).
On first visit to the site, I was flooded with gratitude that it was so very easy to find the episode. One click, and a bright welcoming page appeared to me. Two clicks, and there was the episode. It really should always be this easy. I thank you, Star Trek: Excelsior, for that courtesy.
Now. The episode begins, somewhat disorienting to the uninitiated, with a newscast-sounding recap of all that had come before. I thought at first I was hearing the episode, and was terribly apprehensive. The main narrator has got the near-monotone CNN News vocal patter down pat: it is not, however, a great idea to start an audio series this way. There is a reason CNN casters strip their personality from their broadcasts: they want us to focus on the stories, (and they want us to think they are completely not emotionally involved and unbiased - a resounding “tchah“ to that.) In something that is supposed to be entertainment, any life you can inject into the thing (especially when there are no visuals at all) is welcome. No: more than welcome, it’s absolutely thirsted for. The news-castiness is interspersed with clips from what I assume are previous episodes: that is quite an interesting way to go about bringing us up to speed, but it was confusing. However, the vocal variety which the clips add to it, and the music were very entertaining.
This is the last episode, I gather, of a story that has been running for some time. Two of the crew are stranded far into the future and have made a chilling discovery on a planet; there is a ship full of people who are falling one by one, struck by a strange disease, and that is about all of the plot I’m going to give out, as I was not able to follow it entirely.
Once I heard the intro (which, by the way, was a really lovely touch: the woman’s voice saying “Space : the final frontier…” had a wonderful retro sound, and got me really in the mood to hear what you had to say) I realized what that earlier “newscast” and “teaser scene” were: I then began to think they were a bit clever. Misleading, and I tuned out about two thirds of the “newscast” due to that unfortunate vocal patter, but still: clever.
Before I begin on the “teaser” opening scene, I want to note a few things that I may forget to mention otherwise: this is an amateur production, and as such, I give it enormous praise for managing to instill vocal variety into most of the scenes and characters, finding levels and arcs for the most part within each scene as well as within the overall thing, AND for an innovative and interesting story.
I wish I could have followed the entire story, as bits of it really gripped me. Alas, it lost me completely around the second time it hit the sickbay. I will tell you why later. Let’s begin with the beginning:
The main gentleman in the teaser scene (who is, I gather, a Lieutenant Cmdr. Named Alkar something- I could not understand his “program note” so I will call him Larry.) Larry, has a really charismatic voice. He uses it to good effect, although the retro-vocal style he has decided to adopt here gets in his way a few times: most notably in dramatic moments. He is so caught up in his own vocal style that his reactions are stiff. Mind you, in a production of this nature I highly doubt everyone is recording together all at once, so that must make things difficult. There were a few interactions between him and his subordinate (I will call her Yubari as it’s about the only bit of her name I understood.) which did not match, and were, in fact, quite jarring.
Yubari herself is very strange: she sounds like a child, edging into teenager-hood as the scene progresses, and yet she is apparently a Lieutenant. She yells at her superior officer, and whines like a pouty teenager. I found two of the females in this show jarring in that way : the doctor and Yubari both sound like kids, yet they both have positions on their respective crews that are positions of authority and superior knowledge. It doesn’t read that way, guys. I’m going to get extremely technical here, but if you heed this criticism, it is entirely constructive and can help both actresses in the long run.
Starting with Yubari: I narrowed down why the actress is sounding extremely childlike: She does not really know how to breathe. If she learns how to use her ribs and diaphragm, the actress will actually find that she has a deeper voice than she thinks she does. She does not breathe, but pushes her voice out from her chest, leading to a non-usage of vowels and a clipped, breathy, squeaky and weak sound. In order to play a character with any authority at all, one must first learn to breathe.
I must say I am grateful that the majority of the actors in this show know that they should speak slowly. You can keep your tension up in a dramatic scene while speaking slowly and clearly: watch any old RSC Shakespeare production and you’ll learn how. In an audio production, it is essential that you slow down and take your audience with you by visualizing, as an actor, exactly what you are talking about . Only a few times during the episode did an actor start babbling out of control: but it is detrimental to the show when it happens, as it’s annoying to an audience member to be left behind.
The opening scene was entirely gripping, and the music is quite good, adding to the emotional movement of the scene without being too loud or drawing attention to itself. The interaction between the two characters was humorous, though I found myself getting very annoyed with Yubari’s rudeness and whininess. It is very odd when a character I assumed was a subordinate YELLS at her superior officer , “what the HELL were you thinking,” and he doesn’t react at all. She even whines about her tricorder, which makes her seem like a sullen teenager. The story is, at this point, much more engaging than the acting is.
I actually like the Yubari character more when she is dealing (very efficiently I might add) with techno babble or reacting to something: she seems much more charismatic, confident and real at these times. Very engaging when she talks about old legends, for example; but then these moments of groundedness on the actress’ part are interspersed with very odd little exchanges, which I cannot fully blame on her: some of it is, unfortunately, the writing. For instance,
“Get down behind that rubble, “ she snaps at her superior officer.
“why,” he asks, slowly.
“Because it’s bristling with weapons, what did you think?” She whines.
What does this mean? If someone had handed me this line, I would have given them A Look. I mean “what did you think” does not fit grammatically with the rest of it, for one thing. Just ugh- klunky writing.
When they walk into a room, and he says it might not be safe (or something to that effect,) she responds whinily “why should I care, it’s lighter, isn’t it? “ … very strange. Very annoying.
Moving on: one of the things I love about radio shows is the scope for use of dramatic irony. You can have the audience know something that your characters don’t find out until the end, thus (Hitchcock-style) increasing the tension to an almost unbearable point, or you can flip it around and have the audience know just as little as the character knows, so we are creeping along with them, hearing their footsteps, breathing with them in tense anticipation of some Thing jumping out from the next corner. This was used well (if very briefly) as the Lieutenant Commander Larry entered a cave and Yubari did not follow. We (the audience) stayed outside with her, and heard him react. Lovely…this effect should be used far, far more often. At last, at last, we hear Larry ACTING, something I had been waiting to hear. I wanted to hear his reactions to things, not just that cultivated tone, as effective as it is.
Around thirteen minutes into this show, the narrator barges jarringly in, to tell us about caves or something, with really bad speech. (Why did they give the people with bad speech the most to say?) He chews his words too much and talks far too fast, which just comes across as extremely nerdy. Note to the actor: if you slow down, and breathe from the diaphragm, getting your words out on the breath and not through your nose, you will at least sound cooler and less like a “trekkie”. Practice saying your lines while holding your nose, and get your words out your mouth, using your nose as little as possible. That little exercise should help. There is some description here which is beautiful but rushed- something about a cathedral and ornamentation. When the language you are dealing with is exceptionally ornate or descriptive in any way, PLEASE SLOW DOWN so we can picture it. I am begging you: take your audience with you!
Yubari and her superior officer do an admirable job at this point, in taking the audience with them, in contrast to these jarring newscast-y asides. The story at this point gets really fascinating. I am settling in for an interesting ride, feeling rather excited. Then the intro happens (which is cute, though it‘s hard to understand the character names as the music competes a bit with the vocals at that point.)
And the doctor comes in with a medical log. The doctor Melissa has almost a harder habit to correct than Yubari: she is undermined by bad speech. There are possibly many doctors out there who use glottal stops, but it is the nature of the human animal that we will not actually believe someone is really an authority unless they SOUND like a learned professional. In order to sound intelligent, as an actor, good speech is of the paramount importance. For instance, one must use the letter “t”, rather than stopping it in the throat which results in a very college-campus, Brooklyn type sound. Example: when she says “Stardate,” it sounds like “Starda*e”, with a glottal stop instead of a “t.” When audio is your only means of communication with your audience, these things are going to stick out a mile. Unfortunately the doctor character has a long “log” at the very beginning of the episode, so her speech problems took the tone of the show down to very amateurish, whereas before (with the teaser scene) it had seemed much more polished.
The doctor goes on : “ poin* eigh*..” bad glottal stops. She must learn to use her tongue against the hard palate to create the “t” sound. ( May I suggest “Speak With Distinction” by Edith Skinner as being an absolutely invaluable tool , a must have for every actor. Do not be the one to undermine your production with bad speech!) “violently” sounded like “virulently”…I will stop there. You get the picture. It’s a weak way to start off what seemed like it might be a more polished, professional production. If you know your actor has bad speech, why give her such a long speech to start off with? These are the things I ask myself.
But the writing is still engaging me at this point, so I soldier on. The writing is quite clear, with a good premise and story, but every time the actress playing Melissa says something like “in my professional opinion” I have to cringe. She sounds about 17, and uneducated. If she slowed down, this would be far more interesting: she has a nice dilemma here. “Am I doing the right thing?” she asks herself: I did not get at ALL the amount of angst that should be going on inside her. What a dilemma she has! What a wonderful thing for an actress to be given! Yet she does nothing with it. Even slowing down would have helped it be believable. By the time they are plying injections, I am tuning her out completely, alas.
When we next meet our original pair of actors, they are much more engaging, except for a strange interchange: they are in a life-threatening situation, and he says “Lieutenant, RUN.”
She stops and says in a sarcastic whine “oh, very clever PLAN, SIR.”
To play the pouty little teenager at a moment like that really undermines the character, and also lets all the dramatic tension out of the scene. Gone in a flash is my interest in the moment: gone is all suspension of disbelief. All of it gone, because of one whiny little aside. Audio production is very tricky.
The next scene is where the show kind of derails for me, and starts to appear like a series of entertaining and somewhat well-produced vignettes. I just am unable to see how this story ties together. Because I enjoy the actors’ performances very much, I keep following. The Alex character is really one of the most engaging, witty, charming and well done in this show. But what the heck is going on?
During the sickbay scene I’m afraid I start checking how long the show is going to be, and cringing a bit. When you have absolutely no visuals, you really have to be careful with exposition- I wouldn’t, for instance, give the bulk of your exposition to someone with a nasal voice who seems to have made the bad acting choice that he is simply bored to death of it all. Actors! PLEASE. If YOU are bored, WE are bored. Make active, non-negative choices at ALL TIMES. I cannot stress this enough. I don’t care if your character says “I’m bored,” (I believe the Alex character does remark at one point that it’s boring) he’s got to actually have an active reason for saying so, he’s got to have something he wants from the other character, he’s got to have something keeping him IN the scene. Otherwise we may as well all go back to bed and forget about it. Seriously. That actor happens to have vocal potential, but he had absolutely no character arc at all: he was the same at the end of the scene as he was at the start. Come on now. This scene affected you somehow. Even if you are a small character, please do your homework.
I really wanted to like this show. I really wanted to follow it. It started out being fascinating! But there are simply too many plots at this point: borg, exploding spheres, giant stomachs, disease, ancient ships which are actually in the future but somehow the people who find them know the history of them; it’s the Well of Lost Plots, and they all got shoved in at the end when two interesting Amazonian-types show up! I do wish one plot had been main and the others B and C plots. Then perhaps I could have followed along.
I started, at this point, to feel a great sense of relief when the story took us back to the whiny Lieutenant and her Commander- their story feels like it could be the through line, the main plot, to me: maybe that’s because it’s the most interesting and clearly presented.
When the Deus Ex Machina comes in with her sword, she wakes us up…but it might be too late. She is very amusing, however- and her voice is lovely, and obviously trained. It’s nice when someone comes in and you can relax, knowing that they are competent. However the story really lost me at this point. Down the Rabbit Hole indeed-- I felt like Alice caught up in a swirl of bewildering images as the voices went on, and all of a sudden there was yet another plot going on, and two women with very similar voices were threatening each other ,sounding at some points like a single Ancient Goddess having an argument with herself.
In closing, I would give this another go; though my review is harsh, I am not completely un-sold on this show. I desperately wish the story had held me, as it the main one (or the one I *think* was the main one) had great potential. If the actors stepped up their articulation and slowed down their speech, a lot could be salvaged. This radio show has great charm, and is definitely original. If you like Star Trek (or even if you like science fiction at all, ) I think you’ll enjoy this.
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