Hi, guys,
To the new "Robot Lady" voice... I had to lol a little that the first two comments were on the change. I had actually wondered whether anyone would notice the switch or not. I clearly should I have known that it would be.
A bit of a "peek behind the kimono" here at Escape Pod, for the curious.
The change is as a result of the finalization of me (Adam) taking over the reins as full producer at Escape Pod rather than co-producer with Mat Weller. (Nothing nefarious here, folks. This is actually a handoff Mat wanted/needed and that we've been working toward for a while).
As a part of the handoff, one of the logistical bits was that I needed to find out: Just where does the Robot Lady text to speech come from anyway.
Turns out it's one of the text to speech options available on Mac computers.
Which just led to one teensy little problem - I don't have a Mac, nor do I have ready access to one on a weekly basis.
Fortunately, there are a lot of other good apps and programs out there for text to speech simulation, and this voice is certainly my favorite and seemed a natural "evolution" from the previous voice.
(Also, fun fact: This is the same voice I've been using for more than a year as my "first screen" of a story when trying to decide which narrator I should send it to).
As for why Alasdair didn't comment... well, it's because he didn't actually know it had changed yet.
That is to say, he didn't necessarily know that it was going to be changing on this particular episode.
The hosts typically record several "endcaps" for multiple episodes at one go at a time and send them to me as the producer.
It's my job to combine those host spots with the story, music, feedback segment and any other promos that might be happening.
So... at the time Alasdair recorded this and sent this along, we still didn't know exactly what day the official handover would be. As a result, he wouldn't have known when to mention the Robot Lady switch for the correct episode.
As for the comments on the story itself, I took it that our protagonist was proficient on how to get out of the sort of potential murder situations she'd run into previously, but this timeline is running differently that any of the others have - namely, the device rigged to shoot her with a chunk of metal.
In any case, she shows us here that her intelligence and ability to think on her feet gets her out of sticky situations. It doesn't surprise me much that she is able to successfully navigate a difficult and novel situation.
Enjoy!
-Adam
EP Producer