The City park radio programming guidelines are strictly G so we had to invent an expletive Terry could say on air – he is after all a male 20 something bogan and aliens are shooting at him, so our actor Michael came up with flip! for our f word. The sound editor shall fire a handy blaster shot any time he tries that s word.
Testing the Translation Circuit
It’s science fiction so there are long technical explains and worse – alien words. The Questr is equipped with a handy translation device that magically works at a distance. So we can stick with english as the truly universal language, and use fake alien accents – the radio equivalent of a Dalek costume 🙂
However it’s always a surprise to a script writer as to which innocuous little words trip the tongues of the voice actors. Star shines will become shar stines, capacitors morph into capacitators, and time saving efforts turn into marathon recording sessions. After handling the periodic table with ease Rowena created the Thornhill capacitator, our take on a flux capacitor. So now its super special. “fruity tropical lime with a hint of hazlenut character” that was a little line i got off a bottle of Josef Chromy chardonnay and seriously regretted. Took a dozen takes and script writer was about to be strangled since the bottle was empty and we couldn’t just drown our woes.
Our script writers actually dodge creating alien names. just alien 1 alien 2 etc… They have no problems creating characters and convoluted plots but were so pleased I found this handy thing online fantasynamegenerators.com I haven’t yet tried hustling them into making up a language as involved as say Dothraki. Maybe season 3.
Doctor Audio Adventures 