#can't wait to see how wildly off-base my crazy crackpot theory is when they reveal the killer in feb

[ampleappleamble]

okay, first and second times i listened alone and distracted by xmas/vacation stuff, i'm now right in the middle of relistening for the third time alongside my husband and after bouncing ideas and theories off of him, i'm starting to form a coherent picture... here's my current theory as to the mystery surrounding the death of Dr. Andrew Fairfield.

WATCH OUT THERE'S HUGE SPOILERS BELOW (BUT THEY MIGHT NOT MAKE ANY SENSE UNLESS YOU'VE LISTENED TO THE SERIES)

cutting straight to the core of my theory: i believe Khione Industries is running an unethical, dangerous, and probably illegal psychological experiment on the base staff of Bowers Wilson. but it's not the one we've been lead to believe it is, the one Drew thought it was, the one he was running. he's not running the real experiment. he's part of the real experiment.

the experiment has to do with testing just how much Khione can cut corners on psychological assessments and background checks for potential crew members with minimal infringement of crew safety (and subsequent lawsuits/payouts to adversely affected individuals).

Khione deliberately packed Bowers Wilson full of individuals with extremely strong personalities, emotional problems, drug/alcohol problems, money problems, poor interpersonal skills, at least one criminal record, and/or a bunch of weird, usually antagonistic underlying relationships between them. they put Drew Fairfield at the epicenter of it all and turned all these people loose on each other to essentially see what would happen, how far it would go, and they used Drew to document it from the inside. he was also deliberately ordered by Khione to agitate the other crew members and sow unrest between them to facilitate their goal.

was Mark Renwick's faking of winter over syndrome done on his own volition to secure himself enough money to alleviate his considerable debts? maybe. or was he coerced into faking it on Khione's orders so he could cause even more stress to the already miserable crew? with the added caveat that Khione would give him the winter over syndrome compensation money anyway as a reward for the risk he's taking for them? and once Drew planned to blow the whistle on Khione's "treatment" of poor sick Mark, Khione needed him silenced before that revelation could subsequently blow the top off their extremely unethical stress test experiment?

it would explain Johan's fervent defense of Khione's "treatment" of Mark– he knew it was all fake. plus Khione could keep him on a tight leash by threatening to fire him; they probably know he abuses prescription drugs (hence why he's been spotted by Luca in the medicine locker without Jasleen, why Jasleen initially mentioned she thought Johan might be drunk when he came to ask her if she'd seen Drew on the night of his death). Khione knows that Johan technically shouldn't be there at all, he's abusing drugs because he's incredibly depressed, traumatized from his shitty life, and lonely, and as OIC he has access to plenty of painkillers or whatever he's into. and anyway, being OIC at Bowers Wilson is all he really has left to look forward to. he'd do anything to keep wintering over (and self-medicating) so he doesn't have to face his empty life. needless to say, Johan is my favorite character.

Jasleen might have been promised extra money if she agreed to help defend and facilitate Khione's "treatment" of Mark (which would also support their goal of sowing discord amongst the crew– "her" decision that it was totally okay to keep Mark doped up all day every day was not exactly a popular one amongst the crew), which would go a long way toward opening her own practice in India like she wants, but she may also be presenting as genuine findings about the murder as she can to the police in an attempt to look like she's playing ball– it's just that some of her "findings" might have been planted/false evidence or tampered with by others beforehand, like Sienna's coat being smeared with Drew's blood in an attempt to implicate her (or to implicate Maria by making it look like she'd tried to frame Sienna). or she may have been helping to cover the crimes by tampering with her "findings" herself.

my supposition is that Scott Williams is the one who actually murdered Drew. he was offered part of Mark's winter over money or maybe a separate reward of his own by Khione to do it. Johan may have been present while he did it, or even ordered him to do it, but i think Scott is the one who actually held the weapon in his hand and killed Drew with it. he intimidated Luca into giving him a flimsy alibi, and Johan's own alibi is a bit flimsy too when you remember that it's "he was on the phone with Khione at the time" assuming Khione were the ones telling him to order Scott to kill Drew. Mark was also present when Drew was killed. Johan had access to his room's key. Mark and maybe Scott?? was/were ordered to dispose of the body, and he/they didn't do a good job of it– they forgot the trackers in the coats. they rubbed Sienna's coat on his body to implicate her/Maria, and they took him out on a sled after partially dressing him to look like he'd gone on a walk by himself, then they dumped his body in the crevice to make it look like he'd accidentally fallen in. Mark testifies that "his body wasn't meant to be found," but i guess they figured just in case it is, make it look like an accident. Johan also vehemently protected Scott and ignored his criminal record (except to "accidentally" let it slip to Matteo and Drew that he had one at all) and violent outbursts because Khione ordered him to; the extra stress he was causing amongst the crew was the entire point. he was probably ordered to defend him extra hard after he/Khione ordered Scott to kill Drew, to cover Khione's crimes.

when Maria told Johan Drew was missing, he knew he had no choice but to "go looking" for the body. he probably wasn't expecting the gps tracker on the coat to actually show where Drew's body was; he was probably super fucking surprised and angry actually that Mark and Scott put the body in Drew's own coat. he was special forces after all, Mark was just a grunt and Scott is a recovering alcoholic with an anger problem. he then deliberately selected Matteo, who was very drunk and also asleep, to assist him in recovering the body. he says "because protocol; Matteo's second in command" but i think it's because he didn't want Matteo to be able to remember much about it, or maybe to be unable to find/recover the body at all. "his body was never meant to be found." Drew once said about Johan that "he doesn't seem like a person who makes mistakes." yeah, he's not used to it, that's why Johan hung around for the post-mortem, trying to interject and speculate so much. he was panicking. he does that at a few points– trying to stick around for certain suspects' interviews (Mark's of course, back when "everyone" was under the impression he was under sedation, but Bridget's as well), almost literally trying to talk over Jasleen and Tessa during their discussion about the blood spatter findings and discovering Mark's ruse with the sedatives.

tl;dr: it's all a big Khione conspiracy, Johan is Khione's boots on the ground, and Drew was killed to cover Khione's crimes. Felipe, the irritating, rude, crazy conspiracy theorist, was right.

next i'll listen to the series a fourth time, alone, and i'll take notes on each character while i listen episode by episode while also building a timeline of events. god damn what a podcast

COLD TAPES: WINTER OVER

holy shit i can't believe barely anyone is talking about this podcast. i've recently listened to it and i'm going fucking insane wanting to talk about it. its publisher Free Turn was dropping new episodes weekly up until just recently when they released their final episode until their ongoing contest to correctly guess the killer is over and they can reveal who it was sometime in late february. i don't want to sound like an advertisement because in no way shape or form are these people paying me to say this, but i really cannot state enough how fucking crazy i am about this good good podcast and i need to talk about it. so since this is my blog my house my rules, i'm just gonna go ahead and rant about it here.

okay here's how let's do this: first i'll write a summary of the overall plot of the series, then i'll start a lil profile on each character (well, most of them) and as i relisten later i'll add details including any meta commentary i might have about them, and then i'll finish off with a timeline, a theory (maybe a few theories), and a j'accuse with as thorough an explanation of my thought process as i can muster. so uh. okay here we go

PLOT SUMMARY

Cold Tapes: Winter Over is a police procedural/murder mystery podcast. set between Antarctica's Bowers Wilson Research Station and Scotland Yard, it is presented as a series of audio recordings of phone calls, spoken diary entries, and other conversations/interactions between the base crew members at Bowers Wilson (and their corporate bosses at parent company Khione Industries) and the police officers 9000+ miles away who are attempting to uncover the truth of the circumstances surrounding the death of one of the researchers at the station: Dr. Drew Fairfield, a human behavioral scientist and citizen of the United Kingdom who had been running a psychological experiment on/with the rest of the base crew. but because he died right in the middle of the unforgiving and totally sunless Antarctic winter, it is impossible for police to physically travel there, so they must essentially solve his murder over the phone, relying almost entirely on clever and thorough interrogation of the suspects and their own powers of reasoning. as a listener who is also privy to all these conversations, you are invited to attempt to solve the case yourself alongside the police investigation team (although this aspect is entirely meta and not at all mentioned in the show itself). our protagonist is DCI Tessa McCallister, a seasoned investigator from rural Scotland with a good amount of police work and some military experience under her belt.

the story is told in three phases: first, we listen to the recordings of the victim's baseline psychological assessment interviews with each member of the Antarctic base team, second, the initial police interviews with each suspect, and third, a round of secondary follow-up police interviews with a selection of suspects. there are transitional episodes before and after each of these major phases, starting with an introduction to the case, a post-mortem examination of the victim performed on base by the base medic, and later on a talk with the victim's family, professional testimony from toxicology, etc. most episodes run between 5 to 30 minutes long.

i'm gonna plop down a readmore here in a minute (EDIT: I PLOPPED IT DOWN 👆UP THERE👆 INSTEAD BECAUSE THIS GOT KINDA LONG) before i start my character profiles, in case you want to listen to it yourself (oh my god please do) with as fresh a perspective on the characters as possible to begin with. it's all available for free (with ads) wherever you get your podcasts, but if you wanna pay £5 and get the series with no ads and a few extra goodies like suspect dossiers and episode transcripts and (if you live in the UK) a chance to enter a contest to correctly guess whodunit and possibly win £10K, you can. i've read about folks outside the UK saying they were unable to purchase the subscription for some reason, but i can't confirm because in no universe do i think i could find it within myself to try to figure out how to go about paying for free entertainment, attached to a contest i'm unable to enter. sorry, Free Turn.

again i promise i am not being paid to promote this podcast, i just really really enjoy it and only maybe like 20 people total are talking about it on some tiny subreddit and my thoughts and feelings regarding it are clawing a hole through my chest in a desperate effort to get out into the world. you can blame my offputtingly fervent enthusiasm mostly on the excellent writing and incredible voice acting. also partially on actor Atli Gunnarsson for lending his voice to a prominent character in this podcast as well as to my very favorite character from my very favorite game ever (Vatnir from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for those of you who are new to me and my bullshit). i watched The Terror while on xmas vacation at my in-laws' house and looked it up on imdb only to find him listed in the cast, which then lead me to look up his imdb page which is how i found out about this podcast in the first place. so rest assured, i'm not a shill, i'm just a fucking weirdo.

anyway Please Listen to Cold Tapes. my final message. goodb ye

THE VICTIM

Andrew Fairfield. 33 years old. Behavioral scientist. British. Had been conducting a psychological research project on behalf of Khione Industries using the crew of Bowers Wilson Research Station as his subjects. The experiment ended prematurely when someone bashed him in the head with a blunt object and killed him. This was his third year wintering over at Bowers Wilson.

THE SUSPECTS

Johan Gunnarsson. 57 years old. Officer In Charge. Icelandic. Former military special forces and freighter ship/oil rig veteran. Somewhat recent widower and empty-nester. This year marks his tenth winter over at Bowers Wilson.

Matteo Lombardi. 27 years old. Deputy commander. Italian. Formerly of the Alpine Rescue Service.

Jasleen Batra. 30 years old. Base medical officer. Indian. Doctor of medicine/general practitioner. Most recently worked on-call for A&Ds in London. Aspires to return to India and open her own practice there.

Maria Flores. 28 years old. Climate researcher studying glacial ice melt. Argentinian. Openly in a romantic relationship with the victim, whom she first met during the preceding summer at Bowers Wilson. Was not originally planning to winter over but changed her mind and chose to stay.

Sienna Cooper. 29 years old. Biochemist studying extremophiles and fungal infection of microalgae. Australian. 6'1" and can fly.

Greg Fortin. 26 years old. Glaciologist focusing on beryllium isotope movement in glacial ice. Canadian. Passionate about climate change. This is his second year wintering over.

Hera Karlsen. 26 years old. Marine biologist specializing in the study of married to krill. Norwegian.

Anders Sorensen. 48 years old. Base plumbing engineer. Danish. Triathlete. This year marks his ninth winter over at Bowers Wilson.

Victor Chabal. 32 years old. Base electrician. French. Recently divorced from a former Bowers Wilson researcher he met on a previous winter over.

Kristoff Schulz. 24 years old. Astronomer studying neutrino generation. German. TikTok enthusiast.

Bridget Meissner. 22 years old. Geologist studying the "Blood Falls" phenomenon in a particular glacier. German.

Jack Anderson. 38 years old. Base mechanic. American. Texan, specifically. Former military, a knee injury from an IED in Iraq ended his military career. This year marks his third winter over at Bowers Wilson.

Luca Coetzee. 26 years old. Base radio technician. South African. Gamer nerd. His mother basically forced him to apply to winter over at Bowers Wilson, going so far as to fill out the paperwork for him.

Felipe Hernandez. 32 years old. Volcanologist studying glacial melt in relation to volcanic heat. Chilean. Massive conspiracy theorist. This is his second year wintering over.

Mark Renwick. 43 years old. Base engineer. British. Primarily maintains the heating systems at Bowers Wilson. Former military, history of PTSD related to his service, treated with medicine and therapy. This year marks his third winter over.

Scott Williams. 36 years old. Base chef. New Zealander. Aspires to own and operate his own food truck in Christchurch. Recovering alcoholic, sober for 6 years.