Tomb Ship

This episode didn't enamor me as much as I thought it would at first, but it takes up until the ending for the listener to fully appreciate this one. This is an adventure, through and through!

This Indiana Jones-styled adventure in space did not disappoint when the final credits rolled, but it did take a bit of work to get there. I couldn't tell some of the characters apart and the audio mixing had a few issues, but those are minor on the whole. The biggest issue this story faced was the fact that it was too visual. Not only with the setting, but the whole idea of tomb-styled booby traps doesn't work the best in audio. On paper it's great, and the scriptwriters did their best with it, but it slowed down the pace a little too much during some places. However, as you get further along into the story, you realize that you are there less for the traps, and more for the twists. Said twists aren't on a "World Enough & Time" level, but they infused an interesting bit of drama that I was keen to hear play out.

The biggest draw for this episode is the ending. It took me until the final 10 minutes to realize that all I had listened to beforehand was buildup. The climax of the story was expertly acted, The sound design was immaculate, and the music was phenomenal. It had an intensity to it that too few monthly stories attempt. Like I said at the beginning, this is an adventure, through and through. As the cast grew and shrank, motives learned, and loved ones lost, you really get a sense of how much had happened in the past 2 hours. Other audios may feel like standstills or like not much happens (looking at you, "Scavenger"), but this story kept moving and everything culminated into a stellar ending!

Side note: For context, there is a character in this episode that was originally introduced in the previous story "Moonflesh." It's not critical to know who she is, but that is where she is from. This is technically her trilogy, though, she doesn't appear until very late into the story.