“Slow Time Between the Stars” has almost no plot. And that’s perfectly fine. If you try to read it expecting a plot—or really even conflict—to arise, then you’ll be disappointed. This is pure idea-based science fiction. It’s continuous interesting ideas. That’s it.
The time is the far future.
The crime is murder.
And the detective is very good at his job.
“Boom” is an episode that is clearly trying to be as morbid and macabre as possible. The story’s insistence on bleak moments, casual character death, and tragedy is so frequent it’s almost overplayed. I can’t believe I’m calling for the horror to be toned down—but here we are.
“The Devil’s Chord” is too short of an episode. I mean this as a compliment—and a criticism of everything added to the episode that limits chances to tell more of this story. This should’ve been a two-parter. It needed to be a two-parter. It could’ve been a top-ten, all-time episode if only it had been a two-parter.
Do you ever wonder what aliens use to communicate with each other?
Well, in this story, the answer is cell phones.
“Social Stigma” is a great episode that not only entertains by itself but redeems the previous episode “Hard Reset.” I like to think of them as a two-parter now. We get a ton of buildup to that strange Isaac Newton stuff, and then a payoff with an extended conversation.
“Space Babies” doesn’t seem like an episode to start a season with. Doctor Who is no stranger to weirdness, not by a long shot—but this episode is not only weird, it’s also goofy.
When our main character started talking to a ghost, he probably didn’t expect to end up trying to save his whole city.
“Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach” is a fascinating, humanist piece of science fiction. Despite having almost no conflicts, barely anything that counts as a propelled plot, it’s intriguing all the way through. Reading it instills so many emotions: sadness, joy, wistful nostalgia, and the exact type of curiosity that incredible concepts have all the power to invoke.
“Hard Reset” is a weird, kind-of-bad episode. It’s obvious that it has great plot importance, and the few snippets of context we do get for “The Protocol” are interesting—but for the majority of the listening experience, it’s more befuddling than enjoyable.
A warning, dear reader. This story contains spiders—and if you have arachnophobia, at all, you may not want to read this one.
“The Long Game” is actually a story about very short periods of time and the exploitation of a species. Its title refers to one idea in the story, among a few different, some related, some not, concepts—and the greatest strength of this one, like “How It Unfolds,” is how interesting those ideas are.
