Disclaimer: I’m not completely sure I remember everything correctly (it’s been two days since I listened to the episode). As I have no intention of listening again, I’ll just add this observation—which may, in itself, say something about the impression the episode left on me.

While Sabbath Dei has flashes of the atmospheric weirdness that makes Faction Paradox so compelling, it’s hard to overlook just how muddled the execution is.

In true Faction Paradox fashion, let us begin with the end. In the last ten, maybe fifteen minutes, the story suddenly tries to cram in all the plot that should have been built up over the entire runtime of this episode of Faction Paradox Protocols. After hearing the whole audio drama, I see the function of this episode as the introduction of some interesting characters, settings, and ideas—to set up at least the next story, if not more. And it’s intriguing material we get—just not told very well in terms of pacing. The material in those last ten minutes could very well have been a shorter episode itself. And while, in its compressed form, it just droned on and on, I caught myself thinking, “When does this finally stop?”

Switch to the beginning. After a short "What happened so far" recap, the episode itself starts with one character’s monologue. This audio is drenched in reverberation, making it genuinely difficult to follow what’s being said. I assume this was meant to generate atmosphere, but as it dragged on for way too long, it just irritated me immensely. Instead of drawing me in, it left me straining and properly annoyed. I can respect the way the sound was distorted as a creative choice, but at the same time it not only didn’t work for me—it actually made me take a one-day break and even consider not listening to any more of the episode at all.

Next up is a storyline about Cousin Eliza.
This storyline is, for one, confusing in terms of what it makes you think Eliza knows and doesn’t know about her hosts. Thinking about it, it’s not necessarily as implausible as I initially thought while listening. At first, I was confused because it seemed to me that Eliza’s investigations indicated she did not know that Justine had moved their timeship into the cave. Later, when reflecting for this review, I thought her probing could very well be interpreted as simply inquiring about the mysterious Mary Culver. And that would be plausible. So, it didn’t work for me personally, but it might for others.

Much more irritating was the characterization of Eliza. Wasn’t she the more or less—for lack of a better word—“normal” one, surrounded by eccentric figures in the last two episodes? Now she’s a more or less stupid/mad woman who gets to say the line, “If I haven't been biologically modified, it probably would be my time of the month” to explain why she’s acting as she is. Ah, not my kind of humour, added to a characterization that irritated me.

After that storyline, the story actually got kinda good. But as I mentioned at the beginning, then the audio drama closed the way it did and lost me again.

There are glimpses of what could have been a strong episode of the Faction Paradox Protocols, but the missteps in structure, character work, and sound design are hard to ignore.