#it took me so long to listen to this audio drama that's 70 minutes long

[tea-earl-grey]

Weapon of Choice "live"blog

yeah sorry it's really long so i'm putting it under a cut.

also obviously spoilers for this episode but also spoilers for the whole Gallifrey series as i mention a few future plot points.

i swear to god i can recite this entire episode from memory. it’s so engrained in me.

Nepenthe’s description of the bondspeople (slaves) is such a good parallel to Leela’s role in Gallifrey. she is tied to this planet forever whether she wants to or not and when she leaves, she will be condemned to death.

also. thinky thoughts on why the Warpsmiths changed to Warpwrights and why the element of their being non-corporeal was almost entirely dropped. i mean. i think the human slavery thing was maybe not the right tone for future Gallifrey releases & i think there were copyright issues with the term “Warpsmiths” but i like to imagine that sometime in the gap between season 6 & Enemy Lines, there was some sort of civil conflict that led to two factions – Warpsmiths vs Warpwrights. maybe the Warpwrights advocated an end to the bondspeople/slavery aspect of their existence and advocated for a permanent corporeal existence (maybe through synthetic bodies or something?) rather than temporarily inhabiting various humans for 80 years at a time. idk. i’m desperate for more worldbuilding around the temporal powers.

forever really want to study Andred’s weird political opinions. he obviously isn’t as xenophobic as other Time Lords (not a high bar to clear btw) and he does genuinely see aliens as people but the weird pretense of xenophobia he’s had to maintain in his disguise as Torvald (if it was ever a pretense) has just warped his view & moral compass so much… he’s fascinating to me.

i'll never love anyone as much as I love the s1-3 theme song.

NARVIN. BRAX. I MISSED THEM SO MUCH.

i genuinely don’t think I’ve listened to any Brax audios since I finished my novel-length character study about him so uh. this will be interesting.

i love Narvin & Brax’s shitty workplace relationship so much. they are such good foils to each other (i’ll expand on this in a future post i’m sure)

ROMANA. MY WIFE. I’VE MISSED HER.

Seán Carlsen is simply so good at playing Narvin. he’s always so earnest when he could have just portrayed Narvin as another sleazy Time Lord. but Narvin cares so much! even if before his character development it's for the wrong things!

Narvin saying that Project Alpha is “hardly relevant” after knowing the events of The Inquiry is SO FUCKING FUNNY. man really lost a version of the device they’re looking for, literally saw it vanish in front of him, and then thought this has absolutely no bearing on the fact that someone now claiming to have this device. i know you were trying to cover your ass here but... c'mon.

WHAT DOES BRAX MEAN WHEN HE SAYS THAT NARVIN & HIM ARE THE LAST SURVIVING TIME LORDS TO KNOW ABOUT PROJECT ALPHA??? like Time Lords live for thousands of years and Narvin & Brax are both implied to be pretty young during Project Alpha and were the most junior members involved. like did the CIA really kill everyone else associated with the project? why spare Brax? why was no one else recruited to the CIA like Narvin? (it is a recurring minor problem i have with the show that the entire span of events from here to the Time War could only cover a couple of hundred years which. is not that long for Time Lords. and yet anyone else who worked in the government or CIA before Romana’s presidency is entirely gone after s3. sure a lot of them probably died in the Civil War but all of them? did they all see the mess that was happening and just nope out? i mean i know in a novel i think it was stated that there was a big overhaul of the government after Trial of a Time Lord due to general corruption (which is how Romana got so high up in politics so quickly) but… i need more answers y’all)

LEELA.

i really wish we got to see her and the Outsiders together more (on Gallifrey Prime at least). like she ostensibly had contact with them since before the series (and i headcanon that she often went to stay with them on trips away from the Capitol) so she never really talks about them. could she feel herself growing more distant from them over time as she became more engrained in the fabric of Gallifreyan politics? as she became more and more of a Time Lord without her even noticing?

still so fucked up that we never actually get to see Andred & Leela happy (in the audios at least, they are in Lungbarrow together!)

lots of feelings about how the Outsiders are so removed from Time Lord society that they can’t tell the difference between a Cardinal & a Guard because presumably they associate any uniformed Time Lord with the Chancellery Guard as that’s the only body of Time Lord society they have contact with

"Many of these arrivals claim they cannot return to their own time. Apparently. Oh you wouldn’t believe the excuses. ‘Oh the Daleks will get us!’" Obviously Narvin at this point is just hideously xenophobic but god the fact that he’s making fun of refugees from the Dalek wars when that will eventually become himself is so wonderfully prophetic. Especially as when this was written, the Dalek version of the Time War didn’t exist yet.

obsessed with how Narvin rolls the r in Gryben in this scene. hello? i don’t remember him every rolling his rs again.

it’s been said a million times but Romana’s hypocrisy in being extremely moderate in her compassion for refugees as a whole but entirely compassionate to Leela (albeit in a patronizing way) is so delicious and is never really something that she makes an effort to fix over the course of the series. like. again she’s less xenophobic than other Time Lords but the amount she cares and is willing to make exceptions is so deeply attached to her personal feelings. (which is perhaps the reason why she’s always making exceptions for herself both out of egotism & self-hatred)

again it’s been said before but Narvin’s character development from here to being the leader of a resistance movement against Gallifrey is so fucking delicious

“If I knew anymore, I would tell you.” says the woman who allegedly has access to all of the information recorded in the universe

my Andred/Leela & Romana thoughts deserve a separate post. stay tuned.

i don’t normally outright headcanon a lot of characters with specific disabilities/neurodivergencies but Leela is autistic and i will die on this hill

i’ll never be over how absolutely horrible all of these characters are at intelligence work despite all of them, at one point or another, working for supposedly the most powerful intelligence organization in the universe

“Lapdog of Rassilon” is such a loaded insult considering the future of this show

Leela’s monologue about how she hates the Time Lords will never not be so good. and her criticisms of them are so well followed through the rest of the show

Leela threatening to kill “Torvald” from Andred’s perspective is so wonderfully fucked up and tragic

“That’s so CIA. All intervention, no intelligence.” has to be one of the funniest lines in the show tbh.

the true eventual role reversal in this show is that in ep 1, Braxiatel is the only character talking sense and being reasonable and by the end of the show he’ll be threatening to destroy most of the universe to save a single planet (i have complicated feelings about Beyond but. i love that he got so much Worse)

“Torvald” insulting Andred to Leela’s face by calling him liberal will never not be funny

“We are all of us willing to die to defend our beliefs.” GOD THIS LINE!!!!! it’s really one of my favorites in the whole series because it’s such wonderful foreshadowing because 1) as we’ve all pointed out numerous times, Romana reallllly can’t stop martyring herself. as in. she tries to kill herself “for the greater good” at least 20 times in this series (literally in half of the episodes she appears in). 2) though her self sacrificing nature remains consistent, over time and especially in the Time War series, she tries to self sacrifice more and more for her friends, not for Gallifrey or for lofty ideals (this can probably best be seen in Unity where Romana’s supposed last words to a Dalek she knows will kill her is “I will never betray those I love”). 3) aside from Romana specifically, it’s also just kind of the main thesis of the show. Wynter dies in an effort to stop Pandora/save Gallifrey. Andred dies because he finally decided his loyalties to genuine compassion for people means more than politics. Braxiatel sacrifices himself to Pandora to save Romana. even villains like Darkel die because she so adamantly won’t budge from her traditionalist/conservative views. as the Doctor would say – "Who I am is where I stand and where I stand is where I fall."

THAT’S THE TROUBLE WITH BEING A MARTYR. WE DON’T BACK DOWN, DO WE?

the mention that one day Braxiatel will own a K9 is one of the things that I was never quite able to fit into atbm

“I only go forward.” ironic statement from a woman who was literally created to bring back an ancient line of dictators

the fact that Arkadian is only in three episodes is such a travesty. he’s the only character aware that of the genre that he’s in and he’s having a blast with that self-awareness

Romana’s last line here being “I’m planning on keeping this job for a very, very long time.” ends up being so sinister knowing what she does to keep her position, how she eventually keeps trying to escape the Presidency & Gallifrey and yet it always draws her back in…

hey

did you know that i really love this series?

[theconservativebrief]

They all start the same way: a few minor chords from a pipe organ, maybe a quick plug for Bromo-Seltzer or some other apothecary’s helper no longer in circulation — and then the creak.

It is the creakiest creak to have ever creaked, so drawn-out and borderline polyphonic that it could be mapped on a musical staff. Doors, even those leading to dank candlelit basements in which creepy bards wait with tales of the macabre, do not make this much noise in real life. (And that’s true; the creaking sound effect was achieved with a rusty swiveling chair. Pity the poor self-starting staffer who once oiled the makeshift instrument under the impression that he was helping out.)

But that’s just the order of the day on The Inner Sanctum Mystery, where there’s always a chill in the air, black cats yowl at the full moon, and no hinge keeps quiet.

Spun out from Simon & Schuster’s series of cheap paperbacks and then spun out once more into a six-picture series of feature films in the ’40s, the title gained the most prominence as a radio serial running 526 episodes from 1941 to 1952. Creator Himan Brown struck the same chord with audiences that Rod Serling would continue to clang all throughout the 1960s on The Twilight Zone, attaining impressive longevity through an infinitely renewable formula and the public’s unslakable thirst for fear.

Brown cohesively bound the many installments of this radio anthology by sticking with a consistent structure and tone befitting the morbid subject matter. A vampy host brought over from the Broadway stage (Raymond Edward Johnson, at first, then Paul McGrath from 1945 onward following Johnson’s enlistment in the war effort) would ham it up as he introduced the night’s diversion with florid language that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud.

Then followed an account of danger and suspense, playing up atmosphere and tension over gutbucket descriptions of gore, erring on the side of “spooky” rather than “horrifying.” These punctuated by occasional appearances from the schoolmarmish Lipton Lady, come to shill for sponsored tea and tut-tut the twisted little deviants who tuned in.

The narrator’s raconteurish presence set the scene as an act of yarn-spinning, a framing device harkening back to the scary-story form’s beginnings in the oral tradition. By creating this familiar cast of characters and an accompanying sense of communal gather-round-children experience, the Sanctum established itself as a place anyone could go to get scared out of their wits in the comfort of their own home.

While some episodes dove into the supernatural (to wit: “The Horla,” in which Paul Lukas contends with an invisible demon borrowed from an old French novella), they more frequently landed in an earthbound, Hitchcockian register. With all the gravitas that the sonorous cast could muster, they emphasized a human element among the violence, illustrating the ease with which jealousy, arrogance, or anger can drive a person to homicidal extremes.

All that each half-hour segment needed was a sturdy hook on which it could hang puns, pulpy pleasures, and purple prose; hubristic would-be masterminds plotting their perfect crime, average Joes stalked by unseen predators, lovers losing their senses in fits of feverish passion.

The dark side of the FM dial provided a playground for some of the era’s most lauded talent to cut loose, and launched careers for a handful of future stars. Because the Sanctum’s signature fusion of lurid content and arch humor toeing the line of camp offered many thespians a reprieve from a diet of soft-focus melodramas and dignified theatre work — not to mention a quick check — it attracted the cream of the day’s crop.

Silver screen monster-men such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were regular fixtures on the airwaves, the invisible man Claude Rains showed up for “The Haunting Face” (an episode now preserved by the Library of Congress) and two years out from Citizen Kane, Orson Welles dropped in to provide vocals for “Death Strikes the Keys.” Helen Hayes and Mary Astor set a course for the scream queens of the ’70s with their earsplitting terror, and even Frank Sinatra lent his velvety baritone to “The Enchanted Ghost.” For audiences in the ’40s, listening felt like attending a swinging costume party with all their favorite celebrities.

For listeners in 2018, however, the Sanctum and its library of nightmares live on as a totem of nostalgia for a bygone era, both of horror and audio media.

The Inner Sanctum Mystery took me unawares on — when else? — a dark and chilly night. During the final hours of an October day’s road trip with a friend, we were scanning the FM dial when an eerie shriek burst onto the radio and caught our attention. After about 20 rapt minutes, we learned that a local affiliate liked to treat Long Islanders to some vintage frights when the according season rolls around.

Though many episodes have been lost to the sands of time, a healthy portion remain available to stream online, and revisiting this curious chapter of horror has become my favorite Halloween ritual. There’s a hokey appeal to the conspicuous old-fashioned-ness of the crackly broadcasts, all corn-syrup blood and rubber bats. Brown pushed the horror envelope by taking advantage of radio’s inability to graphically represent grisly material, allowing the suggestion of depravity and letting the listener’s mind fill in the rest.

Inner Sanctum Mystery host Raymond Edward Johnson poses with a presumably creaky door. CBS via Getty Images

Moreover, Sanctum hails from a time when consumers had a more formal relationship with what they listen to. In a pre-TV America, the radio was appointment entertainment, commanding rooms where sitting families would place the sum total of their attention on a narrative that leaves you behind if you zone out. There’s something meditative about doing nothing but sitting and focusing, eyes closed, imagination firing on all cylinders; it raises the zen state of lower wakefulness achieved by moviegoers to the Nth degree. While you listen, everything else stops.

As the popularity of long-form radio storytelling has declined, podcasts have moved in to fill the vacuum, but some of the jerry-rigged charm has been lost along the way. Freed from dependence on a gatekeeping broadcast station, independent outfits everywhere have flooded the internet with anthologies and long-form series updating Sanctum’s template. The White Vault is one such program, following a perilous expedition to a research facility tucked away in a frost-choked wasteland. Producer Travis Vengroff and creator/host Kaitlin Statz agree that the content and the platform housing it have both changed since Brown’s day.

“Older radio teleplays generally emphasized stage acting and live audio design,” they explained via email. “As many of the shows were performed live for radio, they created soundscapes on the fly using whatever objects or tools they could fit in a soundstage… From a production perspective, audiences now expect more.”

Attaining a standard of professionalism is more doable than ever, but that polish has widely supplanted techniques with their own time and place. As Vengroff and Statz put it, “Stories are now pre-recorded, edited, and mastered prior to being released. So instead of shaking heavy paper, actual sounds of thunder might be used, and the sounds of wind and rain might be used in place of a dramatic organ performance.”

That technological evolution is reflective of a wider shift away from the stylized pre-packaged irony embodied by Inner Sanctum Mystery and towards an approximation of real life. “Over-the-top acting was also desirable because shows during that era emphasized excitement,” the White Vault team said, “often taking listeners to distant locales to tell grandiose stories. While a podcasting sub-genre still exists to cater to the fans of the old radio plays, modern audio drama has since shifted its style.”

While the audio drama medium’s evolution clearly points forward, employing more sophisticated equipment and techniques, the limitations of Sanctum’s era forced personal touches that are now easily automated. Statz and Vengroff aren’t bothered by these sea changes, or by the notion that consumers might be taking in their handiwork while cooking, driving, cleaning, working out, or “powering through any mind-numbing tasks.” The listener has claimed dominion over the shape of their entertainment, pausing and playing as they please, streaming and downloading at their own pace.

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die, and accept that Inner Sanctum Mystery’s specific register of mannered, corn-adjacent horror lives on solely as a novelty in a modern radio landscape. But what is Halloween if not the season of novelty, an occasion for goofy artifice, for plastic and foam?

Inner Sanctum Mysteries host Raymond Edward Johnson and actress Virginia Owen demonstrate the old head-in-a-hatbox gag. CBS via Getty Images

Excluding only sci-fi, horror attracts more purists than any single genre, and that diehard fanbase can be a double-edged sword. Slasher flicks remain the one trend-impervious box-office bet, as recently proven by the umpteenth Halloween’s resounding success, yet this comes at the cost of some measure of homogenization.

Plenty of people equate horror with straight-faced scares, as if its inherent value can be measured in ounces of cold sweat. Those in search of something a bit kookier can perhaps have a detached chuckle at kiddie-demo Halloween specials, but otherwise, they’ve got to search a little harder.

The Inner Sanctum Mystery, then, serves as an alternative to all things sleek and serious, occupying a universe where the words “gritty reboot” have yet to be uttered. This facsimile of time travel transports listeners to a horror paradigm governed by the notion that being scared should be kind of fun and kind of silly.

Brown preferred to emulate the feel of a fairgrounds haunted house rather than a house actually haunted, with the added benefit that most of his tricks had yet to calcify into cliché. Conceived with a wink and performed with absolute conviction, his work aptly embodies the spirit of Halloween as a jovial celebration of all things frightful. Every day was October 31 in the Sanctum, all the nights stormy, all the screams shrill, all the doors creaky.

Episodes of The Inner Sanctum Mystery are available to stream via archive.org,

Original Source -> Why the vintage terrors of The Inner Sanctum Mystery make for great modern Halloween fare

via The Conservative Brief