St. Olaf has a brilliant little student radio station down in the basement of Buntrock Commons. KSTO 93.1, also known colloquially as “the Narwhal,” is running sixty-six shows this semester, and they are all worth listening to.
Probably. I think.
Well, to make sure, I’m taking it upon myself to review a new show each week. And where better to start than my own pride and joy, Troll Cops: The Radio Play.
This is going to be an unorthodox post for three major reasons. First, the show hasn’t actually broadcast its season premiere yet, so this is really more of a preview, although it was around last year, so I’m taking that as an indication that such a program is possible. Second, it’s my own show, so I can’t promise pure objectivity. And third, it’s unique in that it’s KSTO’s only radio drama.
A radio drama is an ambitious project with a potentially huge payoff. Unlike a music program, which just takes music that’s been recorded by someone else and plays it, I record everything myself. Troll Cops is an opportunity for students to try their hands at voice acting, a unique experience that one can’t really find elsewhere. Currently, there are thirty regular and recurring characters, each voiced by a different person.
The structure of an episode of Troll Cops consists of either several mini-episodes about various characters, or a longer story that takes up most of an episode. The stories are organized and presented as features of a fictional show called Alternia City Tonight, a fake local news show in the style of the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale. The show stars first-years Megan Bisila and Xavier Buhman as Detective Lieutenant Terezi Pyrope and Officer Sollux Captor, the best cops in the Alternia City Police Department. They’re a bit of an odd couple, with Terezi’s high eccentricity playing well off of Sollux’s deadpan sarcasm, but ultimately they manage to be a collective force to be reckoned with. Oh, and they happen to be grey-skinned, orange-horned trolls. Other subplots follow such interesting characters as: the Karkat Gang, three orphan trolls (Cameron Jackson ’17, Becca Fenton ’18 and Jack Bachmann ’17) who banded together and turned to a life of crime to survive on the streets; the Division Of Overwhelming Force (DOOF), consisting of Sergeant Equius Zahhak (Jake Caswell ’17), a classist blueblood troll with a mutation that makes him freakishly strong, and his squad partner Officer Aradia Megido (Olivia Beech ’17), a member of the lowest troll caste who was killed and whose ghost now inhabits a robot body; The Nefarious and Notorious Mr. Pupa (Liam Gibb ’17), a criminal mastermind of Lex Luthor caliber; the Society for the Elevation of Ectotechnological Research (SEER), a secret organization that seeks to keep the magical Skaian artifacts scattered around the city out of the wrong hands; and bumbling, yet lovable, private detective Eridan Ampora (Andy Thaddeus Gray ’18).
Troll Cops: The Radio Play broadcasts this semester at 4PM on Sundays here. We put a lot of work into it, and we’d love it if you’d tune in.