Episode Transcript (By @EyelessIris)
GABE: Hey guys, before we get into it, I need to tell you about this episode's sponsor, Anchor FM. As many of you know, I personally distribute Into Final Space through Anchor. It's incredibly amazing, I actually switched over from a different podcast distributer, just because they were overpriced, there wasn't a lot of features, and I came over to Anchor. If you haven't heard about Anchor, it's the easiest way to make a podcast, it's completely free, there's creation tools to allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or your computer, and Anchor will distribute your podcast for you. So it's for Spotify, Apple Podcast, and pretty much wherever you want it. You can make money from your podcast with no minimum listenership at all, and it's everything you need to make a podcast all in one place. To download just head over to Anchor FM or download the app from your app store. And that's all you need to get started.
Now, let's dive Into Final Space!
[music]
GABE: Good day my fellow internet friends! Before we get into episode one, I'd like to introduce myself and the show. I'm Gabe Jones, I'll be your host for Into Final Space. I'm an avid science fiction reader, watcher, etcetera. I also love cartoons! So when Final Space flashed across my gelatinous marbles for the very first time, my my, I was intrigued!
Now I'd like to give my two cents on this incredible show. Before we get a taste of what the glorious second season has to offer, why don't we step back and appreciate the beauty of season one? I'll be throwing out some of my own theories, some fan theories, as well as going over what happened in each of the episodes. But to truly appreciate the beauty of what we got in the first season, let's take a step back to before Final Space.
[music]
GABE: So, welcome to the very first episode of this brand new show, Into Final Space! Buckle up your buttcheeks 'cause we're lightfolding right into episode one! This is: An Origin Story.
Where best to start on this journey, but the man who birthed this beautiful show from his mind fortress? I'm talking about the Tennessee Wonder Child, Olan Rogers.
Olan Rogers is a Nashville native. He got his start on YouTube, that glorious site where you plunge yourself into hours and hours of cat videos and tv news bloopers. He became one of the comedy trio BalloonShop. Soon after we find Rogers hitting the road for his million-dollar solo career. [beat] (Who are we kidding, this is YouTube we're talking about.)
But he did find success as he stopped the waters of YouTube comedy. Over the years, his fanbase grew. He spins comedic stories about his life, short films, and small animated projects. This is where I found him in 2014. A good friend of mine turned on The Snack Thief at a birthday party sleepover. Oh, that was a bad idea. I had been hooked ever since. I kept up with Olan as times progressed, and I was beamed up out of that awkward time of (pause) middle school. As I solidified my interests through high school, Olan Rogers and his projects fell onto my top list. The man has climbed to over nine hundred and ninety-six thousand subscribers on YouTube.
The first taste of Final Space came in the form of a conceptual cartoon that was first released before my time when I was following Olan. But when that pilot came out-- Great Gandor's glove. My first taste of Final Space--(*laugh*) hey, that rhymes!--was the pilot. But six years before, Olan was creating the world we now know as Final Space.
Gary Space, on the other hand, hit the internet on May 4th, 2010. This was Rogers' first cartoon, and was animated by himself and Dan Brown, who would later go on to help him with the pilot. Rogers said in his description, "Just like with every cartoon, they get better over time. This is purely for fun, nothing more." If only he would have known, right?
The first episode gave us early concepts of Final Space's title characters, Gary and Mooncake. Rogers planned nine more episodes, but only three total episodes were published, as he pretty much hated the project as he said in Final Space Origins: Behind the Scenes. Instead we got something even better than those seven episodes: a pilot. For fans of Gary Space, I believe the product was very much worth the wait. Olan dropped the Final Space cartoon pilot to YouTube April 5th, 2016.
Now, warning: this will contain spoilers for the pilot, so if you've never had the chance to check it out, I highly recommend pausing the show. Go watch it for yourself, get your own background, and come back. Now let's get into it some. I'll do some quick highlights of plot points and my own little thoughts here and there. Rogers released the seven-minute pilot with the help of Newform Digital and Studio Joho, (which would also go on to help him on a pilot) with original music from Jake Sidwell. We'll see him later by the way. Jake is an incredible composer who helped with the entire series.
The Final Space pilot opens with a monologue from Gary talking about Final Space. It follows very similarly to the episode openers in season one with Gary floating through space with his oxygen leaking out. So, then we pan into a wrecked early concept of what will end up being the Galaxy One. Honestly, I really like the original design for the ship way better than the serialized version, but I think the Galaxy One of the tv show more reflects the prison ship, as compared to the more battle-ready cruiser the pilot introduces.
The ship is moving into a self-destruct in less than five minutes, and we finally come to Gary, who looks very much like his tv counterpart, holding a presumably dead Avocato. Another personal opinion-- I also really like Avocato's design in the pilot. Not to say I don't love it in the serialized version, I just like pilot Avocato.
So then we move into Gary asking HUE about a temporal worm, which, of all creatures in this universe is probably one of my favorite things. The creativity of pairing the wormhole with an actual creature is jsut super cool and kudos to Olan for doing that.
Then we're on the Lord Commander's ship. Once again, creativity points to Olan, this ship is beautiful, I love the pink crystalized...-it's really fun to look at.
One note to the character designers on the show: Bring! Back! The monocle! Lord Commander needs the monocle. I freaking love the mechanical elecrtono-monocle, it's really awesome. Otherwise, Lord Commander has pretty much kept his design through both the pilot and the tv show.
One thing that I'm absolutely fine with that they did was Lord Commander is much less comedic in the show, and his minions are way cooler, and, you know, it's just an interesting shift from the comedic character that we get in the pilot, as opposed to the completely evil, sadistic, crazy Lord Commander that we get in the actual show.
So, here's where we get a totally different Gary from the actual television show. In the pilot, Gary is part of the Infinity Guard. This is entirely different than the tv show, which is based around the fact that Gary is a prisoner of the Infinity Guard. The pilot also seems to show Quinn as higher in the Infinity Guard than she is in the show. She seems to be more of a pilot as opposed to the higher ranks that we see in some of the episodes, as opposed to here she seems pretty high up, if not the top.
Also, note: Gary's last name in the show is way cooler--"Gary Goodspeed" kind of rolls off the tongue, and definitely beats out Gary Bisby in my book any day.
Then we're flashing into Avocato, Gary, Mooncake, and KVN on a mission. KVN and Gary relationship here is the absolute same as the show, and I love it. KVN will always be such an easily hated character, and just--"I'm gonna find a way to get my foot dislodged and relodged in your fart sandwich"--just...comedy. We love comedy.
Also, we move back into the room that Gary's in, and find KVN is dead. Once again, a-okay with me.
Now we get another flashback of Gary and Mooncake on a mission, absolutely love these two together, they are one of the best duos on tv. Mooncake is just so dangerous and adorable, and Gary is just--a perfect match between this strange alien creature and his comedic, adventurous but leader role, it's just-ah! I absolutely love Mooncake, and he really does not change his design from the pilot to the show, which is great. Just a slightly darker shade of green, I think? But otherwise he's the absolute same which is, once again, fine with me.
One thing I'm glad they did change is Gary's heads up display, in the pilot it was just too much for me, the bouncing and flashing about--it's much more subdued, and that may be the color use as well, but I like the heads up display from the show.
I do love Olan's use of HUE more than just an expositional AI, but rather a character, in both the pilot and the show. It's often we find these computers that are just kind of moving plot around, and HUE and Gary have this really great relationship, and HUE and the rest of the crew do, and it's just really fun to watch.
Okay, I still have absolutely no clue what happened to Quinn during the pilot. Olan mentioned that this is somewhere near the end, wanting to bounce back to the beginning, Newform told him to start in the middle, and he got really upset about it so he said "no," which made Newform really upset, so he said he pondered it and jumped to the end. But when we find Quinn in the pilot, HUE doesn't know who she is, and so, some theories from me, I personally have no clue, but I'll just throw some stuff out there. She was killed, and erased from the Infinity Guard data banks, I don't know. She may have disappeared into Final Space, or maybe she was eaten by a temporal worm, and now she doesn't exist in that timeline. Unfortunately the only semi-answer we get is a small flashback to Lord Commander blowing up a planet using a laser powered by Mooncake, and a little flash of Quinn in a window and Gary kinda looking out sad at a...-I don't know. So, did she die? Maybe, who knows?
So then we end off the pilot with Gary flying out to space, with Lord Commander realizing he's lost, and he's finally eaten by the temporal worm, and he tells himself to remember everything, even though HUE says that he's only going to remember like these fragments or pieces of what happened.
So yeah, the pilot was really incredible, it had me pumped! I wanted this to be a show so badly when I saw it for the first time, and it turns out, my dreams were about to come true.
[music]
December 2nd, 2016. Just a normal day when I got a hit by a notification that Olan Rogers had posted a video. Olan had been off the net for a little bit now, so when I opened it up, I almost screamed. The video was titled "FINAL SPACE IS A TV SHOW!!!!!!!!!!", all caps, ten exclamation points! I had NEVER seen one man so happy. Olan's excitement still warms my heart. What was also very exciting is that the show was going straight to series in just two years. Even better, it was Conan O'Brian's company that had picked it up. Olan announced Conan would be coming on as a producer, and Newform, who you remember worked on the pilot, was joining the team. Keep in mind, the pilot had JUST dropped in April, and in nine months, the show got picked up. That is incredible in the world of cartoons. Olan starts crying when he talks about how Conan said he had this unique voice, and it's just a really sweet moment in the video. Even crazier, for his first cartoon, Final Space ended up in a bidding war between six HUGE networks, from FX to Fox to YouTube Red. Rogers and TBS came to a deal to make Final Space an original series. He announced the availability on air, online, and on the TBS app, providing multiple avenues to watch. He also hoped that at some point it would come to Netflix, and just recently, it's dropped internationally on a few Netflix platforms, hopefully coming the the US very soon.
Final Space was going to be a HIT and it was about to get even better. Now we're in 2017. October 6th comes around, and TBS drops the first sneak peek. Oh my gosh, I didn't think it could get any better than the pilot, but boy was I wrong! It was beautiful, the scenes of action were intense, the settings were incredible, the new character designs were stunning, but what was probably the most exciting thing was the cast list. Olan Rogers, Fred Armisen, Tom Kenny, David Tennant, Tika Sumpter, Steven Yeun, Coty Galloway, John DiMaggio, Keith David, Ron Pearlman, Caleb McLaughlin, Gina Torres, Shannon Purser, Andy Richter and Conan O'Brian! Then we get these beautiful shots of the Galaxy One lightfolding.
Then, January 11th, 2018 rolls around and we get an official trailer drop, WITH a release date of February 26th. It opens with HUE speaking to a stranded Gary in space before flashing through some action sequences. Then we find that Gary is NOT the captain but instead a prisoner! A definite shift from the pilot. We get to find out that Gary is oblivious to the fact that Mooncake has this apparently INTENSE power, and he has a conversation with Avocato that's hilarious. Then we get Quinn and Tribore. Both of these characters are so good in the show, Tribore is hilarious and Quinn makes for a great female protagonist. It turns out that in the show, Final Space would be a breach in space that must be closed in order to keep Earth from being sucked in. More action, Gary is missing an arm, which explains the metal arm he has throughout the trailer. Lord Commander is SUPER not cool--scary, evil, and I love it. Big man in ice cube with emotional dialogue. I guess we'll figure out what THAT is later. Avocato and a new small cat man, and they share a very emotional moment. More action, more lasers, more swelling music, my GOSH do I love the colors of this show. It is so beautiful.
And now, we're about to get our taste--into episode one. But, you'll have to wait until next time! Thanks for joining me on this episode of Into Final Space, I can't wait to see where this show goes. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter, @IntoFinalSpace, and I'll see you next time for a recap of episode one of Final Space!
[music]