Space Captain Smith

May 4, 2009
Frost's debut, a light-hearted interstellar adventure, focuses on a second-rate captain, Isambard Smith. Plucked from a desk job in the bureaucracy of the 25th century British Space Empire, Smith, whose attitudes are straight out of the original British Empire, is sent on a simple mission to escort Rhianna Mitchell from her home on the hippie planet New Francisco to the spaceport Midlight. Naturally the mission isn't as straightforward as Smith is led to believe and he finds himself making mortal enemies of the alien 462 and the evangelical Captain Gilead. Sudden scene changes leave the reader momentarily confused, and offhand references to pop science fiction culture are more clichéd than clever. An ironic sense of British rectitude nicely contrasts with the satire of 1940s space opera, but Frost never quite finds his voice or pacing.

Comic sci-fi of the joke-in-every-paragraph variety is a narrative challenge, but Clive Catterall carries it off. A courageous but clueless commander of the British Space Empire rust-bucket space ship JOHN PYM collects a motley crew. His mission to avoid galactic disaster takes listeners to distant planets that curiously resemble Earth communities of New Agers, religious fanatics, or American rednecks. Catterell's brisk delivery absorbs stereotypes, parodies of dozens of movies and books, stunning puns, and situations that flirt with farce. He doesn't need a sound track to makes an ambush by an alien warlord exciting. His perfect pacing gives listeners time enough to laugh but not enough to groan. M.C.T. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine