THE FULL LID
22nd April 2022
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Hello! And welcome friends to The Full Lid, your weekly Friday at 5 dose of pop culture enthusiasm, career notes, reviews and anything else that I've enjoyed this week. Think of it as email, but good!
This week's interstitials feature the frequently Star Trek adjacent concept work of the amazing MuYoung Kim. But before we get into that, let's boldly go, to contents!
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Contents
Doctor Who: Redacted
Neighbourly Season 2
Signal Boost
Where You Can Find Us This Week
Department of Received Esoteric Print Goods
Signing Off / Playing Out
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Doctor Who: Redacted
Editor's note: Spoilers, sweetie, for episode one. Content warnings for references to gender discrimination and one fat joke.
The last thing the hosts of The Blue Box Chronicles expected was a story. Cleo Proctor (Charlie Craggs), Abby McPhail (Lois Chimimba) and Shawna Thompson (Holly Quin-Ankrah) are best friends, united in their love of true crime podcasts, the mystery of the Blue Box that has appeared throughout history, and a trusting bond forged in communal trauma. Cleo is furious at her mum for abandoning her when she began to transition and for driving her dad away. Abby is a full-time carer for her own mum as well as a boyfriend whose ubiquity concealing his abusiveness is wearing thin. Shawna is desperately in love with Abby and trying to work out how to say it. The podcast is a shared love, a communal puzzle, an excuse to hang out.
Until the Doctor calls.
If you are any variety of Doctor Who fan, Redacted is for you. It's Who in its more essential form -- brilliant, flawed, terrified and kind people united by love to defend a world that doesn't notice them. Lead writer Juno Dawson, producer and Friend of the Lid Ella Watts, and the absolutely top notch cast deliver a hell of a first episode. Craggs is especially good as the joyous and furious Cleo ('I'm basically a hot goldfish.') but all three leads impress, with Dawson's pilot giving us plenty to invest in. It sets the story in a familiar location, the sort of side narrative Doctor Who excelled at in the early '00s brought front and centre.
It is not, as some others have reported, a very different Doctor Who story, delivered in the same tone of voice as 'a very special episode of Blossom.' It's a Doctor Who story, where the brilliant, flawed, terrified, kind people teaming up to save the world are ones whose time in the spotlight is no longer denied.
Dawson cleverly grounds Redacted in recent Whovian lore, the events at Adipose Industries proving central to the plot with references to the Powell Estate and LINDA giving you a clear read on where and when events take place. Cleo's concern about if she'll be safe speaking to a journalist from The Observer builds on that foundation and tells you this is a story happening very much in 2022. The Doctor has just exited, stage left, pursued by what we all hope is a bear. But this time, the Doctor's absence may be the only thing keeping everyone safe...
It's a tight, punchy 20 minutes pilot, delivering on premise, characters and landing on an absolutely brilliant cliff-hanger. Supported by a score from another Friend of the Lid David Devereux, Redacted is off to a perfect start, and sure to be a memorable contemporary addition to the show's ever-expanding universe.
Doctor Who Redacted is released weekly on BBC Sounds and will contain 10 episodes in what we can only hope is the first of multiple seasons.
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'I'm a huge Star Trek fan, and I've long been fascinated in the idea of what Smugglers and such would be like in the Federation. So, here's me playing around with a TOS era take on something akin to a Millennium Falcon or Serenity.'
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Neighbourly Season 2
Editor's note: Spoilers. This episode, 'House No. 21: The Wilbur Room' has content warnings for disappearance, extortion, and crying sfx.
Let's talk about doors, and what happens when they're left open. Such a simple act, one that lies at the core of this episode. And lies at the core of podcast engagement. You open your podcatcher, and Little Street is laid out in front of you once again. its brilliant narrator leaning against the wall, arms folded, ready to tell you a nightmare.
I've MISSED this show.
'The Wilbur Door', written and narrated by Matthew OK Smith, is a story about the price of admission. For Niamh and Connor, the amiable young professional couple doing a lot of important Nothing on their computers, the price is someone else's money and a well-placed hex. Or at least that's how it starts.
Their victim's cryptocurrency, the source of his attraction to his predators, is called Gilt-Coin. Or is that Guilt-Coin? Either ring the doors of Number 21 like bells. Aside, of course, from The Wilbur Room, the price Connor and Niamh don't know they're paying until they do, the con artists in turn being conned, behind a door that never was. The idea of a child sketched into their lives, outlined in used cereal boxes and angry, stomping feet. A monster we never see, the possibility of menace with none of the catharsis. Denied form and presence, Wilbur becomes the reflection of every teenager stereotype -- monstrous, unpredictable, unknowable.
My favourite Neighbourly episodes are when nightmares dine together, multiple stories brushing against each other, drawing sustenance as the characters do as the perspective is passed like side dishes. Domesticity as prison or liberation? The acceptance of your supernatural predatory son as a cuckoo in the nest or a want you were never brave enough to articulate? The writing and narration as these four(?) people(?) orbit each other's sins is lyrical and grounded, terrifying and precise, abstract and heart-warming. The ending is chilling, or is it sweet?
That depends on what side of the door you're on, here on Little Street.
Neighbourly is unique, impeccable, and deeply affecting. Season two is releasing weekly now at your podcast destination of choice. Don't mind the birds.
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The Art of MuYoung Kim: Mr. Picard, Xeno Archaeologist
'The return of Capt. Picard to Star Trek is yet another thing I'm totally jazzed about. Set 20 years after Nemesis, I bet Picard spent some of that time in pursuit of his great love of History, perhaps even retiring to Archeology rather than the vineyard. Also, this was a fun chance to explore non-Starfleet Federation attire, something you never see much of in Trek.'
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New reader? Looking for a back issue?
Buy me a coffee?
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'Dusting off his old Starfleet Expedition Coat, Picard visits the ancient Warp Vessel Wreckage at M'kraan. Still having fun with taking Picard off to various locales :)'
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Signal Boost
Featured Boost
- Friend of the Lid (and nominee for just ALL the awards) Premee Mohamed's The Void Ascendant releases next week! Join Nick and Jonny for the conclusion of the Beneath the Rising trilogy, where survival has consequences...
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Books and Prose Fiction
Gaming
- Zakrulz says 'I’m Zak and I’m a community content and future ttrpg writer. Lethene’s Curse is an adventure I wrote for the Scarred Lands 5e setting. It could use some extra eyes on it since its published under a small program.
Comics and Crowdfunding
Casting Calls
Podcasting
That's this week's Signal Boost! If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch or check Twitter for my weekly call.
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Where You Can Find Us This Week
Awards
- Absolutely humbled and honored to see not one, not two, but THREE of EA's shows honored as Ignyte Award finalists!
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Accents for Fun and Profit
Twitch
- No Sunday stream this week, folks because Seasonal Holiday of Choice. Which we mostly spent packing up things to mail.
- It's all fine in Scarlet Hollow. The end of Episode 3 was actually kind of... wait. What's that noise? Why are there puppets? OH GOD! OH GOD NOOOOOOOO!
Podcast Land
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Department of Received
Esoteric Print Goods
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An absolutely lovely thank you gift from the amazing folks at Uncommon Commons! Thanks, buddies!
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The amazing Janelle Monae, with an equally amazing flotilla of authors (including Friend of the Lid Danny Lore), presents an anthology set in the world of their fantastic album Dirty Computer. Huge thanks to Portal Bookshop and I cannot wait to dig into this.
Editor's note: DIBS! I CALL DIBS!
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It's been a while (I know, I'm really bad about it), so here are some Star Trek Doodles involving TOS era designs. Seemed appropriate considering that Discovery is just right around the corner.'
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Signing Off / Playing Out
Thanks for reading, folks! I hope the week was good and something made you laugh as hard as I did at this combination of classic memery and the time of year.
TFL returns next week. Check my Carrd for all the places you can find me, including the Twitters, where everyone is getting ready to do the 'I'm Spartacus!' bit, just with this. Follow us on Twitch to be notified when we go live.
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And thank you!
Playing us out this week is Lizzo. Because Lizzo.
And this?
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is a Full Lid.
Video description: Music video for About Damn Time by Lizzo
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