I’ve started getting back in to listening to podcast recently so I thought I’d bring this feature back and give myself a place to talk about what I’ve been listening to.

This week, I’ve been listening through the first season of Red Valley which explores the concept of hypersleep, specifically, what it takes to achieve that kind of technology and the experiments that need to take place before it’s perfected.. The show follows Warren Godby, who works in the Accounts department of a tech conglomerate. He’s been tasked with finding out about the Red Valley project, which appears to be a seed vault of sorts. But after meeting Gordon Porlock, in the Archives department, Warren quickly learns it’s not seeds Red Valley has been freezing.

It’s a solid near future, corporate, scifi mystery that can get a little dark but is punctuated with a small dose of humor. The cast is small, but the acting and sound design are top notch.

The first season was short, only 6 episodes, but kept me hooked the whole time. I felt like it could have benefited from an extra episode or two to explore the Red Valley project some more as well as Warren’s past. I think it would have made the big reveal at the end hit a bit harder. However, I felt the four episode mini series “While You Were Hypersleeping” explores both of these nicely.

Overall, I’m loving this show. The ending of season 1 has me clambering to start listening to the next season. Season 2 looks like it’s longer, 8 episodes in total, and Season 3 is incoming later this year!

SPOILERS AHEAD

If you haven’t listened to the first season of Red Valley and you’re interested in listening, I recommend not reading ahead.

There was one thing that confused me about the show. At the end of Episode 3 Warren Godby is checking in to a hotel in his hometown. The woman at the front desk, Laura Hambling recognizes him as an old school mate but Warren doesn’t seem to remember her. Then we hear Warren entering his room. Except when he enters we hear Clive’s voice saying “Evening Gordon.” Here I though we might be dealing with Warren having two personalities. Maybe Gordon doesn’t exist at all and he’s Warren’s subconscious giving him clues and leading him to Red Valley. As the show continues, this is further supported because we don’t really hear Gordon and Warren interacting with other people at the same time. Warren even leaves in Episode 6 to go off to Red Valley by himself and Gordon is trying to find him in the woods. He asks Warren how he knew how to get to Red Valley and Warren says he doesn’t know.

It isn’t until the end of Episode 6 when Clive is prepping Warren for hypersleep and Gordon is talking to Bryony Halbech that I realized they are, if fact, two separate people.

Red Valley has the transcripts of every episode in a script format, which I must add, is extremely helpful for reference. So while I was writing this I went back and read the last scene of episode 3 to see if I missed something. There’s the exchange with warren and the woman at the front desk and then there’s this: “Cut. Gordon’s Flat. A knock at the door. Footsteps down the hall. Gordon unlocks the door.” Ah ha! This would explain things. It seems my confusion was spawned from a limitation of the format. I didn’t catch the transition in scene’s because the knock at the door, footsteps down the hall, and a door unlocking sounded just like Warren walking down the hall to his hotel room he just checked in for.

After listening to the final episode of the season it makes sense why Warren doesn’t know who the woman at the front desk is even though they went to school together. Warren doesn’t remember much about his past life so it makes sense he can’t remember Laura Hambling.