Real talk. Before 1UP Pod was shuttered, I had plans to remove VGDM from the line up and go solo with it – thus reducing my hosting duties on 1UP Pod – although I was still going to serve as the editor until someone else could step up. Obviously, that didn’t pan out, but this was intended to be the last episode produced for 1UP Pod before I spun it off. The cancellation of 1UP Pod threw things up in the air. I decided to put this one on the back burner once I decided to keep the show alive. Logistically, it felt like a big job and I would probably need time to settle into an edit that substantial.
The episode was supposed to have a 1980s vibe to it, a lot of the gags fell into place easily. Heavily borrowing from RoboCop with a smattering of Terminator thrown in there, with the Tech Noir stand-in. Slapped on a bit of RoboCop 2 for good measure because, while I don’t think it’s a good movie, it was a mainstay of my childhood.
I was struggling with part of the episode’s writing, namely the exposition side of things. The first draft featured Milton Gregg (the villain of the episode) from the jump, but I couldn’t see that character carrying all that exposition. I knew I was going to be doing his voice and it would be a strain for short bursts, let alone substantial dialogue. I try to minimise how much dialogue I have against myself, so this would be an issue for such a story heavy section. So I needed a second character in the scene, that much was clear. I’d already got my eldest kid to play a role in the Witcher/FF episode, and really wanted them to do more characters. At that point, it came to me, one of the most ’80s things I could ever recall: Doogie Howser, MD.
For those not old enough to remember, or those old enough to drink to forget, Neil Patrick Harris played a teenager who was already a second-year resident surgeon. It inexplicably ran for four seasons off this concept.
I wanted to get my fiancee to voice the ghostly widow but she has been busy with work, and hesitant to do any voice work and I didn’t want to pressure someone into doing anything, so I used a text to voice generator to bring my dialogue to life and processed/edited the shit out of it to make it sound halfway convincing.
I based my Milton Gregg voice on Arthur Knight Brown, the ridiculous man who faked his death and fled the US to avoid rape charges, pretending to be a British man on a respirator. He has since copped to the lie but is now pretending he fled the country because his life was in danger and he’s being set up by his local government. Sure thing, buddy.
Our eldest was great as Dooby Howser. I’d already made use of their talents in the Witcher episode as Barnabus, so I decided to give them a more substantial part. As you may know already, Dooby Howser is going to be a recurring character in the bigger story going on.
I had a lot of fun writing this one, with the set ups and pay offs. I’m not going to suck myself off publicly but I do have a sense that I’m getting better as a storyteller in these episodes in the way the stories build rather than feeling like a series of disconnected skits. I was particularly happy with how I set up the means of beating Robo Milton. Everything just clicked into place on this one.