Up for preorder on Downpour, finally. Among the DRM-free vendors it looks like they've got the best price (subscribe for a month's membership for $12.99, get one credit that you can use on it), and in my experience the best bitrate.
Interview: Kirsten Beyer And Mike Johnson Talk Canon And Inspiration For ‘Star Trek: Picard: No Man’s Land’ TrekMovie’s All Access Star Trek podcast had the opportunity to interview writers Kirsten Beyer (Star Trek: Picard co-creator, Discovery consultant, and novel writer) and Mike Johnson (writer of comics, games, and animation, who started his Trek career with the Star Trek: Countdown movie tie-in comics in 2009) to talk about how they put the story together, whether it’s considered canon, and how to make new characters pop in an audio-only format. Below are excerpts from our talk with Kirsten and Mike and the podcast with the full interview. In this All Access Star Trek supplemental, Tony and Laurie begin with their review of Star Trek: Picard: No Man’s Land and at the 17:24 mark they bring in the authors to discuss the audio drama and more. You can listen to the whole thing here or wherever you get the All Access Star Trek podcast.
Just got it as it released on Apple Books.......about halfway through and I am enjoying the story and the production values.
Started it and, while I'm enjoying the opportunity to experience a new story about the characters I liked, and listen to the familiar voices, the writing seems to be a bit off style-wise. The exchanges between the two main ladies sound as if it was a single snarky character talking to herself. (Also, I think I became allergic to the phrase 'I don't do +adjective'. Raffi says 'I don't do clean' at the beginning and variants of this phrase have been used at least 3 times so far, if my ears don't deceive me.)
I'm wondering how it would be possible to add character names, ship names, species names and planet names to a wiki if we don't know how the words are spelled.
I could have sworn a script release or something like that being discussed, but can't find anything in this thread. Until then, probably best to ask the writers directly? Kirsten Beyer is on this forum and Mike Johnson is on Twitter.
Just about finished it and I really quite enjoyed it. It isn't as action-focused as I speculated and has some good character stuff for both Raffi and Seven of Nine (primarily Seven of Nine.) One thing to note is a lot of the music sounds like cheap throw-in royalty-free stuff they got from a pre-existing music library, some of it is really quite nice though. Interestingly I think the ending is supposed to lead-in to Picard S2 with Spoiler: Spoilers for the final scene Raffi saying that she has a mission from Starfleet and Seven being given a ship "Not from Picard but sort of by way of him."
Looking for a place to buy this that (a) doesn't require a subscription (b) allows downloads without DRM (c) has decent sound quality. Like, at least 256kbps mp3 or equivalent. Anybody know one? I got a copy from Google Play, which meets (a) and (b) but not (c).
Alright, so this was actually a very nice story. It's like a piece of chamber music next to Last Best Hope's symphony. Ultimately, the only thing I didn't appreciate was the overly cartoonish villain. But he's not the most important thing here, fortunately. The acting was great; also, I never felt I was missing anything from the action. Sound effects and music are good fits for the rest. It's really a wholesome package and I wish more were to come. I have to say that Spoiler the direction the connection between Rafi and Seven took took me by surprise.
https://twitter.com/mikecomix/status/1496196359900254217?t=Zb6VVAjkW_x5QsMZggjl2w&s=19 Mike Johnson has mentioned they're still in the process of editing the script before release.
Did you not hear Commodore Oh in the Picard season one finale chew the everloving hell out of the scenery with her over the top delivery?
Oh, it's out already, is it? I guess I have to start thinking about what ecosystem I'm going to tie myself down to. Like @Steve Roby , I don't really want to get involved with a subscription. It looks like Kobo has it for $11.99, and Amazon has it for $20.71, so I guess Audible is out of the running. (Why such a large price difference?) I don't have one of the fancy Kobo readers that also handles audiobooks. I'm sort of looking for somewhere to buy from where I can listen both on my laptop, and on my MP3 player. Kobo doesn't look like they support this. Are there any possibilities out there that would allow this? (I guess this is sort of the same as @Steve Roby 's condition (b).) How bad is the Google Play audio? It sounds like it might handle both things I'm looking for, so if the sound quality isn't outright terrible, that might be good enough?
Yes, I did! However, should I expect on that basis that all Picard villains will follow in style? ;-)
Here's the audio properties of the Google Play version. This is listenable, but it's far from CD quality. Big Finish's Doctor Who audio drama downloads are 256 kbps, which is still lossy but much, much better. And you can choose between mp3 or m4b audiobook format at Big Finish. Size 46.22 MB (94% Compressed) Original Size 728.07 MB Length 1 hour 39 minutes Channels 2 (stereo) Sample Rate 32 kHz; Bit Rate 64 kbps Encoder AAC (LC) Encoder Settings Audio Quality Low (Lossy) Contains ID Tag [Apple iTunes] Channel Mapping File Star_Trek_Picard_No_Man_s_Land Type M4A Audio File (VLC) [.m4a]
You can choose the 32 kbs option if you prefer. Seriously. People buy and download HD movies from iTunes and other sources, with downloads well over a gig in size, but because Audible standardized on low quality audio and DRM early on, it seems we can't hope for anything better.
I'm starting to think that the Storytel app is one of the very few perks of being a non-US, non-UK-based Star Trek fan. Based in Poland, I can't take advantage of the monthly $1 ebook sales. However, the cheap Storytel subscription gives me access to all the Petkoff audiobooks (in fact, all Simon & Schuster audiobooks I searched for), and I was able to listen to No Man's Land on release day. The audio quality is very good. Somehow it seems few people know about Storytel; I recommend checking it out!
I got my copy from iBooks (still haven't listened to it, because I'm thinking I might actually watch Picard at some point in the relatively near future, so I may as well save it). It is DRM'd (which surprised me, songs are DRM-free when purchased on Apple's store, I expected audiobooks to be treated that way rather than like movies or, well, books). Format is 131.56 kbit/s MPEG-4 AAC, 44100 Hz (which I'm guessing is 160 or 192 kbit/s with a variable bit rate). File size is only 101 MB.
That was a lot of fun. A bit shorter than I was expecting - that's on me for not noticing beforehand - but lavish the whole way through.