It was a reference to a character in Pacific Rim. It's a polarizing movie and I would have done the story a disservice by specifically naming it. That would have triggered the knee jerk 'but Pacific Rim was crap' reaponse I've seen on multiple times and in multiple places. I took the decision to discuss the character because he has resonance with the piece for me, but not to name the movie in an attempt to sidestep that knee jerk reaction.
Ha! That's actually kind of hilarious, because I just realized I made these two statements in that original comment:
I'm working my way through the Bradbury Award nominees for movies this year and just watched Pacific Rim, which got tons of hype--but similar thing there.
Alasdair, on the outro I was a little lost when you launched into talking about some guy named Pentecost that I'm not at all familiar with.
I had literally seen Pacific Rim for the first time within 48 hours before listening to the episode. I am terrible with names in real life, and that extends to movies. I would've thought I'd've remembered that one, but I have no recollection of it. I recalled Raleigh's name, and Mako's, the mech name Gipsy. If I'd gotten into a discussion about the movie and wanted to refer to the character, I might have said something like "wossname, the dude with the awesome mustache". And people would probably know about whom I was talking.
So while the outro was going on and the discussion of Stacker Pentecost, I was contemplating the name and what kind of genre it sounds like to me. Without any other information i would've guessed that he is a detective in a speculative noir universe, I'm guessing he has ram's horns, and professes to be an atheist even though people assume he is a demon of the religious variety.
So, while I was picturing all of that, and assuming that I would probably never actually read/see whatever Stacker Pentecost originated in, I missed pretty much all of the discussion of how Pentecost actually related to the story. So even though I just saw the movie, I have no idea if I agree with that you said about Stacker.
Maybe I'll go back and listen, but I'd still like to suggest that it would be helpful if you mention the source material at the beginning of a talk of that sort? Otherwise if I don't recognize the character name immediately, it's easy to think it's one of the endless list of media that I won't have time to experience, even if I already have.