Starship Podcast Warlock

It's our most embarrassing podcast yet! Jeff and Drew, groping desperately for a topic to waste your time with before we dive into this rather terrific episode, find out that not only do we know very little about silent film but we also are very bad at vocal impressions under pressure. Apart from Jeff's fairly successful Kermit the Frog and perhaps his Donald Duck saying "your mama," they're all pretty awful. You probably should just skip ahead to the actual Blackadder episode, in which Fry and Laurie nearly get married, Baldrick nearly rises up to throw off his chains and unite with workers worldwide, and someone nearly eats a dead slug being used as a moustache.

We tackle the topic of fourth seasons: good, bad, ugly? and talk about where Blackadder Goes Forth might fall along that spectrum. Meanwhile Blackadder ends up in another prison, and yet somehow it's still funny! This episode of the podcast also contains a very brief sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it outtake from the stupid voices we do while quoting in the parts of these recording sessions you don't hear. Stay for the end theme, is all I'm saying.

We kick off the fourth and final series of Blackadder, and talk about how the show takes a bit of a turn into "dramedy" territory. We discuss some other shows that fall into that category, comedies with serious and/or moving moments or themes. And then of course we watch "Captain Cook." Warning: Baldrick comes up with some pretty gross recipes, so don't watch this one while you're eating!

With our special guest Jeremy, we tackle the problem of evil...in video games, RPGs, onstage, and other fictional scenarios. In games, making the evil choice or playing the evil character is harmless to the real world, but can we bring ourselves to do it for "fun," and under what circumstances? This philosophical conundrum is paired up with the thematically related "Blackadder's Christmas Carol," in which yet another Edmund in the Blackadder family line is visited by...well, just one ghost, but with three or four visions...and his outlook on the world is decisively changed by what he sees in his past and future.

The first of three Blackadder specials we'll be watching, and because "The Cavalier Years" is short and brutal, we're making it a double feature with another Rowan Atkinson one-off: Doctor Who parody "The Curse of Fatal Death," written by a guy named Steven Moffat who would go on to use all the same jokes in the real show, but in earnest (not that we're complaining!). The opening ramble-logue this time covers more of the media we're currently consuming, and takes an unexpected detour into the children's books we loved, including the best YA science fiction writer you've never heard of.

Want to watch Curse of Fatal Death with us? Of course you do. Here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao

Are we really wrapping up series 3 of Blackadder? How time flies! Mr. B finally tells his boss exactly where to stick it, only to find himself stepping into his boss's shoes! Can Blackadder's Scottish doppelganger Macadder save him from an untimely death? Or does it even matter since he died at the end of each of the last two series anyway? As always, Jeff and Drew look back on Blackadder 3 as a whole and rank their favorite episodes from "funny" all the way up to "extremely funny."

If you love reminiscing about video games from 1987, is this the episode for you! We continue last week's nostalgia-fest from the year Blackadder 3 was born, focusing this time on a form of entertainment that was just starting to become interesting. Some things also happen on the show: the Prince decides he wants to get married, and Edmund plays his Cyrano de Bergerac. Meanwhile Baldrick is a highwayman fanboy, an obsession which dovetails with the rest of the plot in a way that's deeply unfortunate for the squirrel population of Regency England.

Edmund and two pretentious capital-A Actors match wits in a battle of...well, wit. Meanwhile Jeff and Drew cast our capital-A Aging minds back to 1987, when so much film, TV, and music that we like was released that we spend entirely too long reminiscing about it. Jeff discovers a surprising brief musical obsession of Drew's, and which film full of sex references we both, embarrassingly, saw in the theater with our parents. We're so caught up in nostalgia that we forget to put a clean break between parts 2 and 3, so you get the retro-fest in part 1 and the episode plus commentary in part 2. If you've made it this far you probably don't care, but it's the principle, isn't it?  

Edmund and Baldrick try to find a way to look heroic by smuggling nobles out of Revolutionary France without actually going to France, while we stretch the laws of time and space by recording parts 2 and 3 of this episode before part 1. This is so we can talk about the guest stars without Drew knowing who they are ahead of time. If you want to do the same, all you have to do is skip to part 2, listen through part 3, then go back to 1. Bonus! See if you can spot the point in part 2 where Jeff cleverly slips some balderdash about French history by Drew, which is frankly like shooting fish in a barrel for all Drew knows about post-Revolutionary France. Drew still has no idea which part was the lie and probably never will.

It's a rousing history lesson as Drew recounts the 12 Things He Learned About Prince Regent George IV From Wikipedia! No, really, there was some pretty interesting stuff, which will make you see Hugh Laurie's character in a whole new light. Meanwhile Edmund's literary hopes are dashed when his would-be publisher, Samuel Johnson, happens to misplace his only copy of his famous dictionary at the same time that Baldrick tosses a stack of old used paper onto the fire.