Director's Notes: 167 - Echo (Patreon)

(as always Directors Notes may contain spoilers)

I wrote this 5-episode series back in January and February, wanting to get it all wrapped up before our live show tours began in early March. Obviously that fell apart, because of [waves hands about to indicate ALL THE THINGS]… well, you know.

Our tour was to begin on March 11 and then go through April 3. Both Cecil Baldwin and Jon Bernstein (Night Vale’s composer and producer) were on this tour, so I didn’t want to run into any conflicts with getting these episodes recorded and mixed. But then Cecil let me know that on April 6, he was leaving for a vacation and then would head straight from vacation to our next live show tour in Europe on April 30. So I had a 3-day window at the beginning of April to get this May 1 episode done. 

Instead I just plowed though to finish all episodes through May 15 before March 1. And then the tour got rescheduled. So did Cecil’s vacation. And suddenly we’re all at home with plenty of time to write, record, and mix podcast episodes. But in one rare bit of good news, all our episodes through May 15 were already written and recorded. So that’s been a nice luxury.

But as we’ve released these episodes, I can’t help but feel some COVID-19 parallels: a deadly, difficult-to-comprehend force invading town, yet they are only able to influence some people. Plus there’s a pretty squirmy reference to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven in episode 166. I honestly wrote that months ago, just trying to be like “Hey let’s drop St. John Mandel’s name in here. She seems cool!” Yeek.

To be fair, while Station Eleven might not be the most comfortable read during coronavirus times, but it’s an incredible book with some actual sense of hope about it. I only say “yeek” because in general, we try not to be on-the-nose with politics or current events in Night Vale. Our show is entertainment. It’s a place to escape normal life. It’s full of horror, yes, but it’s also full of humor and a sense of community and acceptance. It’s anathema for us to take Trump or COVID or whatever head on. We are political to be sure (see Ep 1 – Pilot where we dunk all over the NRA), but rarely directly satirical. 

As this 5-episode series concludes, I can safely say it doesn’t feel like a metaphor for quarantine, as a whole. Maybe we just spend so much time thinking about quarantine, worrying about the virus, wincing at our dystopia, that everything feels related to it somehow. When pain is pervasive, then anything is its cause.

But hopefully what resulted is a harrowing, creepy and fun series about the missing passengers from Delta Flight 18713, who disappeared all the way back in Episode 1, on June 15, 2012.*

-Jeffrey Cranor
May 1, 2020

* Almost 8 years, y’all. Unbelievable!)