Audible Dredds

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've recently added Origins to my collection. Now, I have no idea how a non-2000ad reader would feel about it - I know what everyone in it looks like already- but I have another issue.

Dredd's voice was pretty good for the America and The Pit audiobooks - not quite as menacing as imagine it*, which is pretty much Dirty Harry - but I actually appreciated how understated it was compared to the old Toby Longworth version which I really wasn't into.

For Origins though, it was back to the 1940s gangster movie Dredd of the Judge Cal radio drama, if anyone remembers that.  Not my bag at all.

*Karl Urban remains my favourite Dredd voice, along with an obscure Dredd arcade game from the 80s or early 90s.

[sheridan]

I've recently added Origins to my collection. Now, I have no idea how a non-2000ad reader would feel about it - I know what everyone in it looks like already- but I have another issue.

Dredd's voice was pretty good for the America and The Pit audiobooks - not quite as menacing as imagine it*, which is pretty much Dirty Harry - but I actually appreciated how understated it was compared to the old Toby Longworth version which I really wasn't into.

For Origins though, it was back to the 1940s gangster movie Dredd of the Judge Cal radio drama, if anyone remembers that.  Not my bag at all.

*Karl Urban remains my favourite Dredd voice, along with an obscure Dredd arcade game from the 80s or early 90s.

Was that the one that was broadcast in five minutes installments on Radio One?  They did another one as well - Apocalypse War?

[norton canes]

Here's actor Gary Martin, who played Dredd in those Radio One dramas, standing in for Gary Wilmot (and singing live, which you had to do at the time) on Top of the Pops for the studio performance of UK Mixmasters' December 1991 hit 'Bare Necessities Megamix'.

Can't image why Wilmot didn't want the gig. Got a theory that fear of recognition after this debacle is what prompted Martin into focussing on voice work...

[Dash Decent]

For Origins though, it was back to the 1940s gangster movie Dredd of the Judge Cal radio drama, if anyone remembers that.  Not my bag at all.

Was that the one that was broadcast in five minutes installments on Radio One?  They did another one as well - Apocalypse War?

That's right, series 1 was "The Day the Law Died" and series 2 was "The Apocalypse War".  Dirk Maggs was in charge of these, and, while I like a couple of things he's done, these are awful.  I don't know whether it's only having five minute chunks to tell the story, or he decided that it had to be 'comic-y' and way over the top, but it almost falls into parody/Michael-taking territory.  And yes, we've had gruff Dredd voices but again, this Dredd is woeful.

I have only heard the trailers for the Audible stories, and my main impression was that they sounded too sparse.  It was all too easy to believe The Pit starts with two actors in a studio, not two ranks of Judges standing silently waiting for inspection. (Etc.)  I'm also not that fond of narrated stories, unless it is integrated really well.  When it's unimpressive (as I felt the Audible ones were - again, from very short samples, so what do I know?) I feel like we've jumped from audio drama to talking book.  The BBC dramatised all the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on radio, with Clive Merrison playing Holmes. When they began, they had Watson narrating parts, but as they went on they found their groove and became 100% radio play.  And those later episodes, to my mind, are infinitely better than the earlier ones.

I really like Toby Longsworth as Dredd.  I never had a distinct Dredd voice in my head, but when I first heard Toby (in the Dredd vs Death computer game) it just clicked with me as being 'right'.  The game lead to me discovering the Big Finish audios, which lead me back to reading 2000AD again.  I was very glad to find the same actor playing Dredd on the CDs.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'm with you all the way with the narration - The Horned God worked very well as an audiobook as it didn't need much more narration than the original story, which I suppose was fairly caption-dense already.

 One thing I thought SHOULD have been narrated in the audio was exactly how Feg met his end - the, er, shaft of the gae bolga jutting out from that particular part of his body was clearly the goddess' idea of a joke at the expense of his bedroom issues.

On the other hand, I listened to a sample of The Boys yesterday and immediately opted out - it just sounds like someone methodically describing the pictures in the comic in eye-watering detail, interspersed with an over-the-top Mixhael Caine impression.

[Dash Decent]

I hate all that in audio stories, especially one character telling another character about something they should already know about, or going into incredible descriptive detail.

"Activate the emergency transponder!"
"You mean the beacon that's part of a citywide network?"
"Yes!  It's monitored constantly by hndreds of Judges at Justice Central, 24/7.  Their response will be instantaneous, and someone will arrive to help us soon!"
"Justice Central?  You mean the massive building that acts as the headquarters for the Judges of Mega City 1, this giant mega-metropolitan conurbation here on the eastern seaboard of the former continental United States?"
"Yes, that's the one; the one built over the remnants of old New York city, and many other cities besides!"
"Okay, activating the transponder."

[Hawkmumbler]

I wish I could have got around to the Big Finish dramas at some point, may still get the chance to yet.
If ever there was a company that hasn't just consistently hit the mark on how to do science fiction as an audio drama, but largely codified in the contemporary sense, its Big Finish.

[Dash Decent]

I find them to be a mixed bag, and still do with some of their other ranges.

For my money the best of the BF 2000AD audios were written by Jonathan Clements.  He had a good knack for starting his stories out with somewhat comical elements, and then suddenly turning them into something dramatic and 'scary' (e.g. Trapped on Titan, Solo).  I read an interview with him where he explained the kinds of things that he was doing in his stories to make the talky-what's-going-on-exposition fit more naturally, and it was all sensible stuff - conversations on radio, Alpha operating in the dark with his special vision and having to guide others, etc.