Gideon Media, out now

An alien ship arrives and screams can be heard emanating from within…

Mac Rogers’ latest SF audio series, following on from the hugely popular Steal the Stars, is completely disconnected from that show (at least as far as we can tell at present). The opening half hour episode, designed to entice the audience, introduces us to a number of pretty unpleasant people, all of whose lives are in some way impacted, or are going to be impacted by the arrival of the alien ship.

Rogers juggles the two elements – human drama and SF – throughout the episode, with the listener often picking up the developments with the ship via in-universe radio or TV broadcasts. It’s an interesting way of telling the story, and not, of course, new: it’s a variant of the way Nigel Kneale told the Quatermass opener, and I doubt Kneale would have claimed originality on the idea. It does rather depend though on you wanting to spend time with the people who are, to all intents and purposes, the narrator, and they really aren’t that good company. (There’s also, slightly surprisingly, what feels like a deliberate use of profanity to make the series ‘adult’, which it really doesn’t need.)

The SF ideas are intriguing, with some twists you won’t necessarily expect (and which I won’t spoil here), and the episode ends on a sufficiently intriguing note that I’ll be back for more next week…

Verdict: The SF element is slightly too wrapped up in the interpersonal drama at present, but there’s more than enough to intrigue. 7/10

Paul Simpson