Star Wars – In the Shadows | 2010 | Dany Pépin, Creative Audioscape Productions

Six fortyish-minute episodes.

The acting is mostly subpar. The dialogue recording is nothing special. And the characters come across as two dimensional – at least to me.
The many and various rip offs from the films are egregious. Like someone rewriting their favorite moments, quotes, character elements, etc..
And I was repeatedly annoyed by how many sound effects from the films were used but in the wrong places. Whirrs, chirps, beeps that I immediately identify with certain devices, machines, control panels and the like yet used for something else. The interrogation machine from the first film that Vader brings into Leia’s cell, for instance. It makes a very unique whirring sound never repeated in the series, as far as I recall, yet this production uses it several times, in several settings. That’s distracting. Sure, this sort of thing ensures an aural consistency with a well-known universe (that was presumably their intention, anyway) BUT that intention fails when even a casual fan like myself identifies all these sounds, yet is expected to not notice the reassignment of them.

Halfway through the third episode, I became certain that this story wasn’t gonna grab me.

All that being said, this is well made. The mixing, editing, and other sound design choices really work, aside from what I’ve said above. For instance, the barroom brawl broken up in episode four, the protagonists flying away toward the end of the first episode, the aerial battles in episode six. I’d like to hear more stuff by Dany Pépin. Maybe as director but not writer. Maybe as writer using his own ideas – not playing in someone else’s universe.

This production wasn’t torture but I had more than a few “does this show ever end?!” moments.
I’m giving it a D+ because it was mostly well made but the rest was pretty bad and have no intention of ever listening through it again.

BTW, I love promos for other shows tacked onto stuff I’m listening to. This has that, so, yay.

Star Wars: In The Shadows

Born and raised in a military family, Emma Wermis will slowly discover that the Empire is not what she always been taught it was. Her allegiance to the Empire will be tested and she will, during her adventures, uncover something about her family and a secret weapon kept hidden even within the Empire.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.