The Human Division Listen-A-Long, Episode 6: The Back Channel

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The Human Division Listen-A-Long, Episode 6: The Back Channel

Posted on 2013-02-22 at 8:39 by Dave

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The Human Division, Episode 6: The Back Channel by John Scalzi, read by William Dufris Length: 47 minutes

Hello, and welcome back to the Human Division Listen-A-Long. This week, we’re covering episode 6: The Back Channel. Remember, spoilers abide, so if you haven’t given this sucker a listen already, grab a churro, and cue up the audio. We’ll be here when you’re finished!

Let’s dive into the RECAP!

Meet the Conclave! Longtime readers/listeners of the Old Man's War series will recognize General Gau and Hafte Sorvalh, of the Conclave. Gau's got it into his head to do town-hall style meetings, despite Sorvalh's warnings, and he's currently dealing with a very anti-human sentiment from some of the Conclave members, who would be happy to see humanity (and specifically: the CDF) go extinct.

After the meeting, Gau shows Sorvalh a list of wildcat colonies they’ve discovered, and also mentions that one of them had undercover CDF with functioning BrainPals on it, making it not so wildcat.

To keep it from being a very problematic diplomatic event, Gau sends Sorvalh to earth, where she meets with Colonel Rigney and they discuss removing the colonies over churros. (Couldn’t Rigney have sprung for bacon-wrapped churros? Or at least churro waffles?)

Rigney agrees to have all the colonies removed, except one, which Sorvalh agrees to help with. It’s run by a bunch of racists. Sorvalh makes short work of them, by exploding a goat as an example of her firepower. No more racist homophobic dipshit problem, I guess? Poor goat.

My thoughts:

So…aliens, churros and exploding goats. Ah, Scalzi.

It’s not exactly cactus aliens speaking in Iambic Pentameter, but I suspect Bob Reiss will be happy. (He is!)

It seems like the rhythm of this series is to do an episode with our friends on the B-Team one week, and to skip away elsewhere in the Old Man’s War universe the following week. I remain very…mixed on this aspect of the serialization.

As we got to the wildcat colony (and the exploding goats!) my enjoyment of the episode raised a few notches. Things got funny at that point, and this episode allowed William Dufris to have all kinds of fun. He got to do aliens, he got to do crazy asshole racist, he got to explode goats and demand churros. (Probably not a lot of churros on a racist wildcat colony. One more reason to despise racists.)

So, all in all, not too shabby. I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like this one, but in the end, it won me over, particularly Sorvalh.

What’d you think of this week’s episode? How is the serialization holding up?

Posted in The Human Division Listen-a-Long