Review: Buffy Between the Lines is a must listen for Buffy fans
Although I am a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly/Serenity, I have never really gotten into fan fiction, but I am making an exception for the new audio drama, Buffy Between the Lines, which debuted earlier this month. The story is set between the end of season 5 and the beginning of season 6, which every Buffy fan knows is the period when Buffy was dead (and fans didn’t know if there would be a season 6).
This show is being produced as a twice a month podcast and I think the first episode showed lots of potential. The storyline is clever (what fan doesn’t want to know what happened that summer) and Tabitha Smith captured the dialog of each character perfectly. The voice acting is surprisingly good although I found some of the female voices hard to tell apart. The voice of Xander (Chris O) sounded just like Nicholas Brendon and the voice of Spike (Nick Edwards/lemming) also stood out.
I have three suggestions, which I hope will be taken as constructive criticism.
First, the story begins with Giles writing in his Watcher’s Journal. This is a great touch since he and Buffy had had a conversation about why Watchers never recorded the deaths of their slayers. However, I did not like the scratching sound in the background. This was apparently supposed to be the sound of him writing in the journal, but I thought this sound effect was both superfluous and annoying. Otherwise, the sound effects were very good.
Second, and this is my biggest complaint: there is a need for a bit more narration. I don’t want to give anything away for new listeners, but I found several scenes a little confusing. Use of sound effects is good, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an occasional description of the scene, especially when they change locations.
Finally, I thought there were too many promos breaking up the show. The producers were trying to emulate the show (TV commercials) but I think they should cut back on the frequency of promos. I did enjoy learning about how many different sites and podcasts are devoted to the Buffy Verse, but by the end I was going, “shut up and finish the story!”
Despite these criticisms I recommend that all Buffy fans check out Buffy Between the Lines. The crew has a long track record in podcasting, so you can count on them to improve the show and to bring out something really great by the end of the season.
Filed under: Favorite Podcasts, reviews
Hey Ginger!
Thanks for the review. I’m glad you enjoyed the show. I think the idea of frequency is good - actually episode 2 has less simply because there is more story. I do have to chuckle though since it seems everyone’s problem with the promos isn’t the fact they’re there, it’s the fact people are so engrossed in the story that they get upset when they have to wait for it!
As far as narration, we’ve played around with it, but never got it to work pass being extremely cheesy. That’s probably just on us as writers, but it really didn’t fit unless we had one of the characters telling the story themselves (which would mean massive rewrite of all the scripts).
As for the noise with Giles writing… ah the joys of SFX, not all of them are perfect. Some people loved it… other people didn’t.
Thanks for taking the time to come to my blog.
I found your comments about the difficulty of incorporating narration into the story interesting. Since I have never written fiction of any type I didn’t appreciate that such a request might be difficult to accomplish. I guess part of the problem is that you are so great at capturing Josh-speak in your dialog, but that doesn’t really translate well into narration.
How is this handled in other fan fiction? Perhaps you could look at something like the books by Christopher Golden for ideas?
As a person who has watched the show through from beginning to end at least 10 times (we are currently re-watching season 6) I really appreciate how you weave so many tiny details into your writing, but I hate being confused when you get to the original parts of your plot. I didn’t put this in my blog, but I was very confused about what was happening in the grave yard scene with Doc.
Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns. I look forward to seeing what is going to happen next.