Among the Stars and Bones · Ungodly Hour Productions

"God Help Us All"

May 8, 2024·55 min·3 clips

Captain Francis realizes he is no longer in control of his body and says, 'I am a nanite sample.'

The episode opens as the mid-season finale and notes that the season will pause after this entry. A content warning follows for hostile-environment material, including a drug-induced break from reality and PTSD. Comptroller Barnes reports on day 14, March 29th, 2211. He says that after the last report he thought a breakthrough was close. The Nabonidus crew might soon have been safely treated and transported, with a Medivac request ready to go. That plan falls apart fast. At about 1:30 a.m. Central Time, two days earlier, the crew escapes after planetary sunset. The first alarm sounds only once they are already running through the hangars and grabbing people. Garbled messages reach Barnes as the situation turns into a breach. The report keeps its formal frame, but the strain starts to show. Cathy Winters signs off while saying she will check for nabonitis entries about the containers that may have been missed. Another voice cuts in with a dry line about being under siege from a hostile force controlled by something else. Someone answers that it is Sunday, not Tuesday, and the joke lands because nobody sounds rested. The banter slips into a mock complaint about workaholics and whether the bad guys ever take the day off. The scene then shifts to Lab B in the Arthropod, where the door is sealed and the code has been changed. Four people are visible in the corridor, with more likely out of sight. The trapped group includes Remy Sang, Hudson D. Shea, Anatoly Andrejevich Klebenko, and the speaker. Their voices make the room feel like a band introduction staged inside a siege. They have been combing through the symbols on the walls and had only just settled into food and a wider conference with Hollister before the hammer came down. The pounding at the door keeps going, and the episode leaves procedure, humor, and fear pressed so tightly together that none of them can stay separate.

As heard by us

A siege report that keeps slipping from procedure into panic.

Among the Stars and Bones delivers a mid-season finale that plays like a sealed-room emergency log, with procedure fraying under pressure. The episode threads together a comptroller's report, a locked-in group, and a hostile force, and the dry banter keeps the tension from…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a siege report that keeps cracking into gallows humor.

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