Free Chelsea (The Strange Case of Starship Iris)

Commissioned by Aleph Null

"Penguins get scared too."

The question at the heart of this story about various kinds of people (including, but not limited to, queers, refugees, anarchists, and other kinds of Others) living in the outskirts of a fascist regime is simply this: Just who the hell is listening to The Strange Case of Starship Iris? To understand the implications of this, let’s back up a bit. When looking at a work, one must first ask why is it presented in this format? Indeed, as I was listening to the first episode of The Strange Case of Starship Iris, I was unsure why this was being presented as an audio drama rather than in a more visual format. There were times where Violet Liu openly describes to herself what she’s looking at. Some audio drama presenters have this issue. For example, Big Finish routinely has characters describe their surroundings in detail. For example, in the overall excellent The Chimes of Midnight, Charley Pollard announces that she’s going to write her name and then says her name as she’s writing it. There are some, such as Live 34 and …ish, where the audio drama format is used to its advantage, but typically the format is more seen as a cost saving measure. It’s cheaper to have a character describe what’s in front of them rather than create a set or pay an artist to draw it.

But at the end of the episode, the nature of the format within The Strange Case of Starship Iris becomes clear and in a way that few podcasts do. There are some podcasts that come close. One that comes to mind is Alice Isn’t Dead, where the first season finale reveals that we are, in fact, an unknown operative is listening in on the narrator talk on the radio. However, the second season muddies the waters by having us listen in on her as if she’s another voice on the radio as opposed to being us. Equally, the podcast Between the Wires has a series of found footage auto files in a fascist state. However, at the time I was finished listening to it (season 2), there was no indication that the listener was a part of the narrative. Even Welcome to Night Vale, while positioning us as part of the community, isn’t invested in who we are in the story. The Strange Case of Starship Iris, however, very much is.

Because we aren’t outside of the text. We aren’t some impartial listener without an agenda beyond a desire to be entertained by a story about a ragtag group of smugglers, killers, and dreamers. We have an agenda. We have a reason to listen in on these private conversations, these little moments of insecurity and love. We’re the enemy. We’re the baddies. We’re spying on them.

This is made apparent in the end credits of the first episode. Most shows would have an out of universe speaker list off the cast and crew of the show as well as places where the audience can support further production. However, the credits of The Strange Case of Starship Iris are in universe documents of the “Republic” being inspected by intelligence agents, among which we are. The goodies are being listened to… by us. At one point, when the characters realize we are listening to them, one of them directly address us. Not in a metafictional sense, nor even a “stop listening to us” one. Simply an explanation of her motives. But one of the lines she says hits at the core of our role: Either you hear us, or you don’t.

There is a difference between hearing someone and listening to them. To listen is a passive action. The words enter the brain, certainly, but often the meaning can be ignored. Like listening to music on the radio, focusing more on the sounds made than what is said. A sad song with a happy tune can distract people from the inherent sadness of the song. But to hear someone is to understand what they are saying. To know the sheer horror of the system they are scraping by in. A fascist government where making one wrong move, one tiny disagreement, can throw even the innocent into the pit. One that believes action for actions sake is always the right call, even if it means everyone will die with them. Where the first sign of weakness is an opportunity to destroy someone. Where people can frame the innocent just because they didn’t pay their way to the top and were a bit too yellow for their tastes. That sees torture as a good thing and all the studies against it merely anarchist propaganda. Big Brother is Always Listening. But are the people paying attention. Are we hearing.

Which is to say… what do we do with the information provided to us? What do we do with information that tells us the world is broken, cruel, and monstrous. There are two agents who listen in on the conversations along with us: Agents Park and McCabe (no doubt the latter will end up in a relationship with a woman named Miller in the second season). We don’t get much about their lives outside the recordings. They keep their personal lives outside of their work lives. Indeed, we don’t even learn McCabe’s pronouns until the final episode when they make a decision to rebel against the Regime.

Though what’s interesting is how they come about their decision. Park, for example, is a loyal member of the Regime until it’s suspected that he’s the mole leaking info out to the Regime’s enemies. He’s not, but that doesn’t matter to the Regime. In the end, Park rebels because he realized that the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party was going to eat his face. (Luckily, he only lost an eye. Other people have lost so much more than that.) McCabe, meanwhile, was ultimately press ganged into rebelling against the Regime due to being blamed for things they were not as liable to as the Regime wants people to think. These are not, in short, people who rebelled for reasons outside of their own self-interest.

That isn’t to say they aren’t sympathetic. There are, after all, ways in which they could have responded to the fascist system eating their face that aren’t rebellious in nature. After all, once the Regime realized that Park wasn’t the mole, they immediately let him resume his job within their organization as if nothing had happened. One could argue they would have done the same had they killed the goodies in a very public manner. But they chose to rebel… because they heard. They heard the various little moments of life being lived. The big moments of horror and implication. They paid attention to the story of the sole survivor of Starship Iris, Violet Liu. And like her, they rebelled.

What then do we do about information such as this, when we hear it for ourselves. The story ends with a shift in our role. From the baddies who listen in on the people just trying to live their lives in a cruel, uncaring universe to people. Any type of people really, be they straight, alien, poor, queer, black, man, woman, child, nonbinary, what have you. After all, anyone can hear a rumor out.