Yay or Nay?: Starship Aleria (The Room of Podcasts) (Podcast)

We're going to play a game in this review. Have you heard of Tommy Wiseau's masterpiece film "The Room". If you haven't, here's a cliff notes version to watch.

The game we're going to play is called "how many similarities does this podcast have to the so-bad-it's-good-film "The Room"

I'm going to call out a friend on this, (you know who you are), who had me listen to this podcast on our bus home, with the promise that it was absolutely ridiculous, and horribly bad. 

Just wanna point out that it's so bad that the friend who introduced me to this has said, and I quote: "when I first saw it, I didn't know if it was a parody. I still don't know." Followed by: "And it's not even good porn"

And it is. Oh my god, it's a fucking trainwreck. I feel like they were going for a Battleship Galactica/ Star Trek: Next Generation podcast that meets the genre of "drama" (or soap opera), but you SHAMED AND SHIT ON ALL THOSE. 

Why is it shit? Well actors can't act, and for a sci-fi thing that takes place on a starship, why am I picturing a skeevy office porno? 

BECAUSE THAT'S LEGIT WHAT HAPPENS.

There's two types of women in this podcast. Skeevy staff women, or jealous exes (as far as I've listened)

I felt very uncomfortable listening to this to be honest. The funniest moment was when someone compared something to a sink. Also there is an obsession with "draining", um, other things. I'll point this out now, this particular show is not for all audiences. 

To be honest if you're under 18, I would not recommend. 

Which leads me to this, the first thing that this podcast has in common with "The Room", a good half if not more of the podcast is sex. So much sex. Too much, and not even good. The sound effects were really bad for it, and I felt like I was listening to a bad porno. I don't even think the "sci-fi story" if that's even there, starts until episode THREE. THREE. 

It starts off with the narration from the main (ish) character, Dirk Hardoff (Yes, yes that's his real fucking name, what the hell am I listening to). He's a walking HR nightmare (as far as I'm concerned), as he literally meets a girl, she either does him or walks off and he thinks "Hey she be hot". 

But to his defense, that's most of the other guy characters too. In episode 3 one of them makes a reference to Dr. McCoy from the OG Star Trek. 

SHAME ON YOU. YOU DON'T GET THAT PRIVILEGE. 

Same for the women, as far as I've listened. This is a walking HR nightmare. I need an HR perspective of this. Everyone almost has a porno name (case and point there's a girl named Stella Borealis, sounding like a stripper name). 

Oh and the orientation woman, who has a British accent. Ms. Kelper (If I heard that right, but I wasn't sure). Yeah, she literally has this whole "I'm the orientation leader, and I'm gonna do you" thing going on. 

I feel like the women have been degraded down to sex objects, and the men, down to sex-crazed pervs. So really, there's no win-win for anyone. 

The Voice Acting & Sound Effects

Like I said, it's not good. At times, there's a few good moments, but it's hard to point out when every other moment is glorified porn. It reminded me of a film class I took and we watched this movie based off of Raymond Carver's "Short Stories", and there were long sex scenes where everyone looked around awkwardly.

Same reaction to this. Even though I was alone.

I feel like the actresses try too hard, and the male narrators (the dude who plays Dirk), aren't confident enough at some points. It felt...disorganized, and without a script, like someone gave the actors a briefing about what the show was about and a bare script, and then told them to wing it during some scenes (especially, and ironically the sex ones). 

My friend and I had a whole debate about this, and yeah, I can tell the parts that were improvised at. Or that they seemed to be, and that just could be lack of direction and acting. 

Ah, now the sound effects. I had to laugh, and I'll tell you why. So for one particularly...explicit moment, there is the sound of a sink running, to allude to...things. It's a full-on sink though, and one can totally tell. Things like this make it incredibly hilarious alongside lines that are meant to be erotic but come off sounding either: funny, or stupid. Which summarizes the whole podcast to be perfectly honest. But, at some times enjoyably funny. 

Another point in common with "The Room", the scripts, acting, and dialogue is a mess. 

The Storyline

To be honest, other than this "takes place on a starship" there wasn't much sci-fi involved. It got more introduced in later episodes, but still, there's more of a focus on the drama, which I suppose is partially the point. 

But I didn't think it had a good story. It was mostly focusing on skeevy people doing skeevy things. What else is there to tell? There's...really not that much depth to it. Which like, if you take out all the explicitness, you could potentially have an, you know, interesting story. 

Like, I'm thinking back to exactly what was happening besides the obscure relationships in each episode, and honestly, I can't think of a thing that's noteworthy to mention. The story is almost non-existent. 

The writing and dialogue can be anywhere from mediocre to below-average, depending on the scene we're discussing. It doesn't help, as, like I said, the actors seem stiff (haha) in their delivery of certain lines. Either too much or too little and never in between. 

Again, another thing the Room and this podcast have in common. A crazy or too boring story. But this one is actually bad, and not even remotely enjoyable. 

My Rating 

I spent an afternoon listening to this, it has made me sad I spent my afternoon doing such things. "The Room" is much more enjoyable, so go watch that instead inside of this bad piece of shit.

Rating: ⭐ (where's the other stars? Like the story of this podcast, they're non-existent!)

~Meghan