ROGUEMAKER is a science fiction audio drama about escape pods, catchy ads, and things that should never be found. The series follows the passengers and crew of a doomed spaceflight as they flee their exploding ship in escape pods. Largely cut off from each other over the radio but subjected to an unhelpful barrage of advertisements, they must put aside their differences to figure out who sabotaged their flight...and ultimately make a discovery that might alter the fate of their civilisation forever.
The series came out in 2022, and was created by Emma Johanna Puranen (a Real Life astronomer).
This show provides examples of:
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Alien Automony Act, which prohibits commercial exploitation of any planet with life on it (besides, of course, Earth and Tand).
- Artificial Intelligence: Ship, the Siri-like cheerful corporate AI onboard Plutonic Flight 999.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The ǵnonw have double-chambered larynxes and can therefore harmonize with themselves while singing, something Woh́́ uses to hauntingly beautiful effect.
- Bottle Episode: From episode 2 to episode 4, the characters are quite literally stuck in escape pods. This is part of the reason the show works in an audio format.
- Casual Interplanetary Travel: There are budget spaceflights from Epsilon Eridani to Sirius.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Humans and ǵnonw use iridium to get around.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Once you realize what the show's title is referring to...
- Higher-Tech Species: Despite how ridiculously advanced the Tracers are, their tech is largely still recognizable and usable to our characters.
- Planetary Relocation: The titular roguemaker itself is a planetary relocator, and the effects are terrifying.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Alyss giving one of these to Sandrine is pretty much our introduction to her character.
- Rogue Planet: The Tracer homeworld. This is Hidden in Plain Sight in the show's title.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Subverted. Pascal even goes on a whole rant about how big space is an how impossible it is that the pods could be found without working comms.
- Space Pirates: Alyss used to be one, and calls in a favor from her old Captain.
- Tidally Locked Planet: Tand, the homeworld of the ǵnonw, is tidally locked. As Woh́́ explains, Day and Night are places to them, not times.
- Translator Microbes: Ling-chips.
- Two of Your Earth Minutes: The ǵnonw sure do this a lot. Justified Trope in that their planet is tidally locked, and, as Kuzha explains, they don't have much of a sense of scientific time.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Subverted. The opening scene contains accurate astronomical coordinates, and the show continues to display an awareness of math throughout (the FTL travel notwithstanding).
