Today we tackle and solve one of the eternal questions of humanity: what is truth? And what do we mean when we talk about truth and story? We have all the answers here for you guys. Seriously, we worked it out. You’re welcome.

So who is Doctor Who, anyway? It’s a fair question, and one that we have to travel 50 years into the past in order to answer fully. This week we pick up with the very first Doctor, mention very briefly “Dr. Who”, and blow through the Second Doctor–essentially all the black and white (and missing)episodes. Join us on a journey through space and time as we ask… who is Doctor Who?

Are you ready player one? Ross has read the book, Colin has seen the movie–can one convince the other to do the other? It’s a roundabout discussion that drifts into deeper waters as we question the value of nostalgia in the pursuit of truth.

We all think we know what we mean when we talk about protagonists and antagonists, but do we actually? Let’s dive deeper into the words’ origins…

What is the problem with Die Hard? It’s just a fun movie right? I mean, Bruce Willis is really good in it, Alan Rickman gives a career-making performance, and there are a couple cool explosions. What’s not to like? What’s the problem with Die Hard? Well…

Fiction Hack: Episode 009

This week we are remembering Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, The Question, Rorshach, and much, much more. Just like the heroes he created and helped develop, Ditko was a mysterious, complex, and principled individual. Today we try to open a little of that up for you.

Full Show notes available on our website:

Fiction Hack: Episode 008

What’s this? Ross is the layman and Colin is the expert? Have we entered a mirrorverse? That would explain why both Colin and Ross are wearing dark goatees (Ross has a darker goatee on top of his beard–it’s weird). This week we talk Star Trek!

Marvel Studios is about to release its 20th movie, Ant-Man and The Wasp! As a long-time comic nerd, that blows my mind. Ant-Man is a very unlikely hero who has been around since the beginning and has a hard time keeping his own series. The Wasp has generally been a tag-along character to him. Along with Guardians of the Galaxy, he’s been one of the most obscure characters picked to headline his own movie. So who is Ant-Man and/or The Wasp? Who are they in the comics, and who are they in the movies?

As Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said: “I’ve got a gun!” Why is this an important statement in the history of fictional narrative? And how does it relate to some sort of box that J. J. Abrams once got as a kid? (Hint: Alfred Hitchcock)

The answers are inside…

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889.

“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” From Gurlyand’s Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.

“There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise,” and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

“[If I tell people who Cumberbatch plays, they know that they] would have a five-second rush of exhilaration followed by four months of being completely and totally bummed out that they can’t tell anybody else and that when it gets revealed in the movie, it will have been spoiled for them. That’s why they’re called ‘spoilers,’ they’re not called ‘awesomes.’”

This this episode Colin talks about why he does not have much time for Charles Dickens. Ross makes the case that while there is much to dislike about Dickens, there is also much to love.