As the title might suggest, our girl is in space. Specifically, drifting through it on a derelict spaceship, powered by a miniature sun, (the "Ra" project), and trying to keep it and herself alive. She's been alone a very long time, since the rest of the crew disappeared, and so she has a tendency to talk to both herself and the ship AI, Charlotte.
Alone, that is, until a fleet turns up to take over the ship and take her in for piracy, since it happens to be one of their ships and they're not entirely sure what she's doing with it.
The first episode doesn't really hint at this, since it's all girl and AI rambling on about not very much, and trying to work out what to do with the mysterious button they've found. The plot only really gets cracking once the fleet turns up.
However, it doesn't seem to get cracking all that much. I don't know if it's the style that annoys me about this (it's set up as her narrating her thoughts into an audio recorder, picking up anyone that happens to be around her), or the lack of any major action, but I found myself drifting away from it fairly frequently and having to go back a minute and re-listen.
We've had a bit of torture, interrogation, explosions and I just don't care about them. The girl (eventually named X)'s style is weirdly low energy, and doesn't give significant power to any of the things going on. It feels like she should be doing a Radio 1 show instead. As a double act with Charlotte, she might be quite good, as the AI is mostly entertaining, though doesn't really get enough lines.
I'm about five episodes in, and not very likely to go back for more.
Tagged: Audio fiction Drama Cast Personal recording Science fiction Serial