First Impressions: Passage
Hello once again, my fellow “Pod-heads”! Hehehe, see what I did there? PODheads, it’s like POTheads….and….yes, well.
I thought I would get a regular thing going here, where I give first impressions on podcasts and Audio Drama that are under five episodes at the time. It’s a great way to support new and on the rise creators, and give them the exposure they need!
So, without further “POD-nce” (like PONCE, yeah??......yeah, it was a stretch, I know), Passage Podcast!
In these short segments, I’m only going to review the first episode, then let you decide if you’d like to subscribe to the show for more. After all, First Impressions are important!
Right off the bat, you get a very TANIS or Black Tapes Podcast feel about this one. Checklist, please!
Documentary style presentation
Pacific Northwest setting (Having lived out there myself, I wonder what makes it so spooky???)
Story propagates that the events that take place are 100% real
That last one seems general, I know. I just calls them as I sees them. Also, do not let this list fool you into thinking that this means Passage is not original in any way. Moving further into the episode will show you what I mean.
This podcast is hosted by Daisy Bonham, a hopeful and enthusiastic amatuer reporter. She is travelling to a place called Port Possession. Several Days ago, a lifeboat was discovered by two crabbers in Port Possession. Inside the boat, they found four skeletons, scraps of clothing, and a pistol (a Colt Root Revolver to be precise). The media explodes with questions as to what happened to the people inside the lifeboat, where this boat came from, and which meme to make using leaked photos of the discovery online.
Along the side of the boat, there is writing:
S.S.Cumberland
This apparently causes a new media storm, as this particular ship disappeared while on its way to Port Possession 150 years ago to the day of the lifeboats discovery.
Daisy gets caught up in the hype and, after getting permission from Buzz Rocks to produce a podcast, sets off for Port Possession to follow the trail wherever it leads.
Yikes, I said this would be short. Oh, well. I will say that I am definitely hooked from the word go. The production of this podcast seems very on the fly, which I feel is very different from TANIS or TBTP. With the latter, you can tell that a lot of editing went into producing the episode. With Passage, it’s more journalistic, more rugged. You can hear background noise from other people around Daisy, which adds to the natural sounding “on location reporting” that I find fun and engaging.
Daisy herself is a very likable character. She's easy to listen to and eager to dive in to whatever may be happening/happened/have happened/will happen.....*sigh* this is hard, haha! She sounds young and intelligent, determined and excited. All this comes together to create a very interesting and relatable narrator right off the cuff.
I will definitely be tuning in as the drama unfolds (there are three episodes currently at time of writing), and I cannot wait to see how far down the rabbit hole this mystery goes! Search for Passage on whichever podcast app you use, and get ready for some fun!
Till next time,
That Daft Punk you know