MR 064: The Next Life

Yay, I did it. I'm freeeee!!!!

No more Divergent Universe. Was it a fun time? Not really, but it sure was a time. This story in particular is basically just delaying for two hours and then a rushed one hour of exposition to explain everything that happened and that's it. I definitely feel like it was pushed out rather quickly to end this arc because it feels like a few stories worth of reveals jammed into one. Some of the exposition/reveals are interesting, sure, but for the most part it's just "ok let me rewind every five seconds to relisten to that thing because my eyes just glazed over and I completely forgot what they said."

The first couple parts are mostly nothing. Rassilon has infiltrated the Doctor's TARDIS along with Kro'ka who works for him apparently. They've made it look like the TARDIS has crashed and put Charley and C'Rizz into dream machines. There they wander around in a Zagreus dream like state for an hour and I'm already tuning out. Charley is with her mother and C'Rizz with Lyda. The idea is to tempt them with people they miss or something. It doesn't really matter. I listened to it awhile ago so I don't really remember it. Something about C'Rizz being pulled out of the Church of the Foundation by marrying Lyda. We also learn that C'Rizz has murdered quite a few people as part of his duties in the Church because this is a rather murderous Church apparently.

Meanwhile the Doctor is marooned on a planet where he hangs out with the most important people in this universe. A guy named Keep. Another guy named Guidance. And a woman named Perfection. All of them are super important, but we won't learn why for another two hours. First we go through the rather laborious plot where they're hanging out with the natives of this planet, Perfection lies and says the Doctor killed someone, Keep chases him down to kill him along with Perfection after she kills someone too, Guidance looks for C'Rizz, Charley falls in with Keep while he's chasing the Doctor, ect ect.

They all three tell their respective character the exposition. There are several galaxies in this universe and they all started dying because a planet came into their galaxy and everyone died. C'Rizz's species, the Eutermesans, founded the church of the foundation in response. They believed that everything dying was part of the natural order of life and all things must die. The planet is where all things originate and all things must return there.

The Doctor concludes that this planet was put there by Rassilon because after it kills everything, time resets and begins again, thus trapping the Divergence in a time loop. All of the characters converge at the foundation, but it turns out the foundation was really the "foundry." It was a corruption of the word. Yes, the planet contains Rassilon's foundry, where he plans to escape this universe.

We then learn more exposition that Keep is... an amalgamation of Charley and the Doctor from Scherzo. Presumably in a different loop, the Doctor and Charley decided to stay fused together at the end of Scherzo instead of seperating, resulting in Keep. He went to find the Divergence, but they were already dead from the constant time loop, so he absorbed them and took their power, becoming a shape shifter. He worked with Guidance, who is C'Rizz's father and a major priest in the church of the foundation, to find the original foundation. Keep's plan was to escape the universe and absorb all life in every universe everywhere. Which is... a little ambitious, but sure.

C'Rizz and Guidance both have the key to the foundry. Keep kills Guidance, C'Rizz is secretly working for Rassilon because he's super suggestible, and then Keep beats Rassilon and keeps him from leaving this universe. Rassilon and Kro'ka get sent back to the beginning of the loop with their memories intact this time. Perfection turns out to be Zagreus who stabs Keep. And then Keep turns into a TARDIS to trick Zagreus, holding her off until the Doctor can leave. Apparently going into this universe cast Zagreus off of the Doctor into a new form entirely.

And then there's a really weird part where Charley and C'Rizz argue like crazy and the Doctor gets mad that they're arguing. It was like when Charley just instantly started arguing with Perfection. She says she was jealous of Perfection, sure, but she's been with C'Rizz for a while. I don't know why her jealousy is only now showing itself. Not sure what C'Rizz has against Charley either. It was just a strange moment. Like C'Rizz said, now they're going to have to watch what they say around him. Or at least for a week. I did like the ending where Davros and the Daleks were waiting to welcome him back. That was cute.

And that's it! I didn't care all that much to be fair. It was just a laborous, tedious process to sit through all the exposition. Too much exposition can kill a story as we've seen before in the main range, but it absolutely does kill this story. The vibes of the first hour were fine with Charley and C'Rizz hanging out with their family, if forgettable, but then after that it was just too much. This needed to be cut down to two hours, or even less honestly. Three hours is just ridiculous for this story, although, not as ridiculous as Zagreus's four hours. I was a little more forgiving of Zagreus at the time, but not so much on the second go round. I do find it funny that Rassilon is trapped forever in the universe he's running on his desk. I also find it funny that he and Kro'ka are trapped in the Scherzo tunnel.

A decent ish end to the Divergent Universe arc. I agree with others that it's an hour too long. Looking forward to getting back to the normal universe next.

Oh divergent universe. You strange, misanthropic little story arc you. The Next Life sums up everything this stretch of audios was - an experimental Gary Russell lore dump with some neat character moments and concepts that ultimately does *not* need to be three hours long. You can absolutely tell that they did not intended to be leaving as soon as they did. It was neat seeing Rassilon and Kro'ka exiled to the Scherzo hell tube at the end and the return of Zagreus was a cool twist, but frankly I've tuned a lot of this story out even after just listening to it. Something about a Foundry? Either way it's a relief to be back in the main universe now.