The Fourth Wall

Main Range #157

Released: 10 February 2012

Listened: 8/10/20

For Flip’s first trip, she gets a story that appears kind of silly on its face: She’s stuck in a TV show, specifically a cheesy sci-fi adventure. She comes very close to meta-commentary as she starts criticizing the program around her as it’s happening, which leads to serious consequences. Because while it’s a program, it’s also real, thanks to some reality-altering technobabble machine owned by a mogul whose broadcast channel is failing. This leads to the characters escaping into the real world, like a Star Trek holodeck episode. Flip is very much in the mold of Rose and Lucie (although this story was released after both of them), with sarcasm and pop-culture references for everything, but also brave and adventurous, even if her courage outstrips her abilities right now. It’s a John Dorney story, but an early one, so it’s not quite as twisty as you would expect from him. It does have the first appearance of the Porcians, the alien invaders who are terrible at invading, which always makes me laugh. Dorney does manage to balance the comedy with some very dark scenes, not to mention a high body count. On the whole, it’s quite memorable.