Dawn.
The sun’s rays have just begun to crest the horizon, illuminating a towering pyramid that looms over the desolate cityscape below. ‘Scenes from an apocalypse’ might be one way to describe the city. If it were a boxer, it would be beaten, bruised, and bloodied. The sprawling metropolis certainly had seen better days, but it was the people who still cowered in it that should be the focus. They too were broken and haunted, mere shadowy reflections of their former selves, for their eyes had seen horrors.
And yet they survived.
Atop the pyramid, a cloaked figure appears, gliding up to a stone podium that stands near the edge. Soft robes billow about her form as she lifts her hands aloft. The silence, which in reality was merely quiet, now becomes an eerie sound vacuum in anticipation of the words to follow. Breaths are held in that pause for attention, and she certainly has it. Time stretches out into a thin stream of nothing in that heartbeat before she begins to orate, leaning into the strange device that can only be a microphone sending her voice booming into the valley below:
“Is this thing on?”
The cacophony of sudden noise startles her, and the bombastic feedback of her words causes a crumbling tower to finally give up its fight against gravity and collapse to the earth.
“Right. Here we go…
BEHOLD MORTALS:
A NEW DAY DAWNS.
A NEW FORMAT BEGINS.
TRAVELING THE VORTEX RETURNS.”
She pauses, looking thoughtful.
“Really? Is that it? Isn’t this an awful lot of pomp and circumstance just to announce your silly little podcast is coming back? I mean, I get it, you’ve been doing this pretty much non-stop, week after week for YEARS.” She draws out the word, adding more syllables to it than should be phonetically possible. “And then you take a little hiatus for a breather and suddenly that turns into a long hiatus because of a pandemic and…”
The author stares hard at her, projecting his will onto the flashing words that form on the screen. The meaning is clear.
“Oh fine, I’ll get on with it,” She mutters, not at all convinced the author wouldn’t carry out his threat to feed her to some horrible abomination in his next story. She coughs, attempting to get back into character.
“JOIN THE VORTEX BOYS IN THEIR NEW BI-WEEKLY FORMAT AS THEY REVIEW WHAT MAY BE THE MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECT IN DOCTOR WHO HISTORY:
THE MULTI-PART, MULTI-FORMAT TIME LORD VICTORIOUS!”
Words appear at the bottom of the screen, spelling out the upcoming schedule dates and topics:
Aug
8/31 TTV #465 – LOCKDOWN continued…
Sep
9/21 TTV #466 – Lost in Time: The Myth Makers (Recon and Novelization)
Oct
10/5 TTV #467 – TLV: A Dalek Awakens (Escape Room), Defender of the Daleks #1 (Comic), The Guide to the Dark Times (Annual 2021)
10/19 TTV #468 – TLV: Monstrous Beauty #1 (Comic), The Knight, The Fool and The Dead (Book)
and more to come!
“AS ALWAYS,” She concludes, looking rather exasperated by the whole ordeal, “THE SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE, BUT WE’LL TRY AND LET YOU KNOW!” With that, she turns in a flutter of robes and strides from the dais, muttering something about “real authors like Andy Frankham-Allen”.
And in the ruined city below, a faint sound reaches back up to the top of the pyramid. She could not be certain, of course, but it sounds like applause.
We return with another LOST IN TIME review. This time it’s the First Doctor, Steven, and Vicki in The Myth Makers. We review both the TV episodes and the Target novelization. Find out what we thought of the story.
Traveling the Vortex - Episode 466 - A Horse With No Name [ 43:50 | 41.57 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download