Episode 517 - money in Scifi Utopia
Feb 8, 2021
Weird one this week! A monneyless system in a working Scifi utopia. This was based on an idea Banes came up with talking about Star Trek and how the federation has “evolved beyond money”, We discuss if this is possible, why it is and how it is. That means no need for money substitutes like credit or barter either. It's a really interesting topic and a brave choice for a world setting. The most common type of scifi world by FAR is a dystopia so the fact that Star Trek is a working utopia (at least in the original and 1990s series) is a very brave and unique choice and the idea that it functions without money is even more clever and interesting.
Topics and Show Notes
In this Quackcast we talk about how that's possible. And for those that want to do world building and SciFi futurism it's good to remember that dystopia isn't the only choice! It's quite possible to create a utopia for your action to happen in and for it not to be boring because conflict doesn't have to be based on the world falling apart, which is one of my pet peeves with modern Scifi: it's ALWAYS a dystopia with a messed up world or a spaceship where a mission has gone horribly wrong and the crew are fighting for their lives. There's more to SciFi than that and good old 90s Trek shows us how.
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to The Next Town Over - The train’s a’commin’! Hop on and go fer a ride. Get off at the next town over if you like, it’ll be rollin’ on though soon… Just like this energetic, highly rhythmic track that pounds and thumbs along with great energy and momentum, with all the power of a fully laden steam strain!
Topics and shownotes
Links
Banes' newspost on Treckenomics! - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/feb/03/star-trek-economics/
Featured comic:
The Sparrow - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2021/feb/02/featured-comic-the-sparrow/
Featured music:
Next Town Over - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Next_Town_Over/, by Emehlos, rated M.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 515 - Mental Health
Jan 25, 2021
This Quackcast was inspired by Pitface, who is concerned out the mental health of her fellow webcomicers. She even started a thread about it in the forums. The cover image is a reference to the cover of “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot. Tantz is a qualified psychologist, so she's uniquely qualified to talk about this subject! People are having difficult times coping in this time of isolation and global pandemic so we thought we'd address that and mental health in general. Tantz is extremely wise on this subject! So, how're YOU coping?
Episode 514 - how fiction gets your job wrong
Jan 18, 2021
When our jobs are shown in fiction they usually get it wrong. We talk about HOW they get it wrong here… Pit tells us all how she's basically Indiana Jones and Lara Croft rolled into one LOL! …or the opposite of that, I can't remember. How does YOUR job differ from what they show in movies and TV? Special… -SEE the led Zeppelin shirt Pit harangues me for in our Patreon vid
Episode 511 - TENSION
Dec 28, 2020
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! Blame Mr Banes for this one, he's also the man responsible for the great cover art! Haha, he originally came up with the Quackcast topic: How do you build tension in a scene? There are a lot of ways! We talk about some of them here… Time limits on a scene, impending deadlines, a character dying but they can still be saved, misunderstandings, something the audience knows but the characters don't, decompressed scenes, closeups of faces, weird angles…
Episode 509 - Saltcast
Dec 13, 2020
Escapist fiction Vs Gritty and real style fiction… Furwerk-Studio made an interesting post about this subject. They were annoyed at people who dismiss escapism as something lessor or inferior to more gritty and realistic work, so we decided to tackle both sides and take some extreme views on the subject, both for and against! A few years ago Simon Peg made some comments related to this very subject and got a bit of backlash (links in the notes). The idea is that escapist stuff keeps us infantile and malleable… It's actually a really old idea anything that isn't realistic is childish and bad for you while things that are heavier and more adult in tone (whether escapist or not), are far more worthy.
Episode 508 - Fan Service
Dec 6, 2020
The Mandalorian on Disney Plus is a very popular series, it's particularly known at the moment because of the “fanservice”, i.e. fan rewards in the second series. a couple of Clone Wars characters are in it now… but we won't spoil that. Tantz, Banes and I chat Fan Service! What IS Fan Service and why is it a thing? When did we first learn about it?
Episode 500 - Celebration!
Oct 12, 2020
Finally we got to the five hundredth Quackcast! Wow! That's so many. We've been doing these for 10 years now. That's a long running podcast! To celebrate we invited our DD members aboard. We had a great fun time, lots of laughs and a really good chat. We even had time to introduce special cotributions from the people who couldn't be live with us. I'm making our exclusive patreon video of this week's cast free for all to view! Just click on the youtube link bellow.
Episode 470 - What stirred your creative juices?
Mar 15, 2020
For this cast I'd thought we'd go through with our promise of last week and talk about things that have made us have a reaction as a creator. This expands on “The Cartoons that Date us” from last week. So today we're talking the creative media that gave you a reaction: Books, movies, comics, TV shows… Not what specifically inspired the comics you do now, but what drove you to create and why.