48. 175,200 Hours
Celebrating Album 73, a gift to the AIO fandom.
By David Hilder | November 9, 2022
Celebrating Album 73, a gift to the AIO fandom.
By David Hilder | November 9, 2022
Wow. It finally happened. After 20 years of waiting, it happened. Going into Album 73, I tried not to get too excited. Having read the album summary, I thought there was a possibility that something special could happen: the return of the Chairman from Novacom. As I mentioned in Editorial 40, the album summary mentioned a possible threat against the entire world. When else has an Odyssey series had such potentially world-altering significance, other than Novacom? But I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Then, as soon as I heard the Chairman’s voice at the beginning of episode 2, Afternoon, I was over the moon. What listeners have been hoping for since the summer of 2002 has finally happened. Album 73 is nothing short of a gift to the Adventures in Odyssey fandom.
I remember first hearing the Novacom episodes on the radio week by week. It felt like AIO was breaking new ground, because it really was. The Novacom saga did build on the conflict, intensity, and scope of the Blackgaard saga that came before it, and it brought the show to another level. The Novacom episodes were intense and mysterious to a degree we hadn’t heard before. As the mystery unraveled, the biggest, most earth-shattering plot in AIO history was revealed. A plot of world domination through mind control was unlike any scheme featured on the show before. But the real villain of Novacom remained mostly a mystery. The Chairman, the mastermind behind the scenes, only appeared in the climactic episode, Exit. When his mind control scheme failed, the Chairman packed up and left, offering those four immortal words as a parting shot at the good people of Odyssey: “It’s over, for now.” Now the wait of roughly 20 years, or 175,200 hours, is over. And it feels like no time has passed.
Besides bringing back Novacom’s mastermind, Album 73: 28 Hours shines in featuring a number of callbacks to the original Novacom saga. Jason’s car getting intentionally hit and then his phone call being ominously cut off is reminiscent of what happens to Mitch’s friend Justine, who leaves a phone message as she is tragically run off the road during the Novacom saga. The inclusion of Sky Feldstein the TV station manager, and now villain, felt at little random at first. But it could be a nod to the fact that Novacom was a broadcasting corporation, which included TV. Novacom even buys B-TV, which previously was housed by station manager Guy Feldstein, Sky’s father. Later in Album 73, Sky sets “Plan B” into motion, which involves a bomb threat. This could be reference to the four-part Plan B episodes from the Novacom saga. The countdown on the bomb in the hospital, only diffused by inputting the password in the final seconds, is definitely a reference to the dramatic and explosive conclusion of Exit.
The reality of the spiritual conflict, as well as the physical, gets attention in this album as well. I was so glad to hear how the importance of prayer, which played out so powerfully in the Novacom saga, was back in this album. That sequence during Tom Riley’s trial is one of my favorite parts of Novacom. It reveals the power that prayer has to impact our world. Album 73 brings back a dramatic prayer sequence and raises the stakes with Jason’s life in the balance. As Jason enters surgery, our friends in Odyssey get together to pray for wisdom and safety and place their trust in God. And the very next scene reveals Dr. Rusk to be a bad guy, so suddenly their prayers for the surgery seem even more important.
And of course, the big callback to Novacom is the return of the Chairman’s personal obsession with brain science. The album starts out a little conventionally with a kidnapping, a rescue, and the mention of some vaguely defined high-tech weapons. Even after the Chairman is revealed in episode 2, the connection to Novacom’s Operation Think Tank is tenuous. You might have been tempted to think that perhaps the Chairman has moved on from mind control to other, more normal projects. But then Dr. Lily Graham blows that up at the end of episode 4, Dead of Night. Dr. Graham reveals the neural modulation research and brain chip technology which could, in a manner of speaking, “hack a brain”. And then Jason makes the connection: the bad guys must have implanted a chip in his brain during the kidnapping. That explains the headaches. That explains why the military submarines keep surfacing in his mind. The episode ends with Jason saying, “I’m the leak! They’re reading my brain!” I got chills at that line. Not only was it a great twist, but it brought us back to Novacom’s original masterplan. As Connie says, suddenly this adventure “sounds like Novacom”. It was a bit daring for a show like Odyssey to venture into this type of sci-fi mind control technology back in the day. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from it in 20 years. But it wouldn’t feel like Novacom without it.
In addition to paying tribute to the Novacom saga and building upon its legacy, Album 73 did something else that has to be a big fan-pleaser. They took the incompetent and annoyingly ditzy Jillian Marshall and, at the drop of a hat, transformed her into a smart, competent, courageous, and dare I say, admirable character. What a great move. It’s definitely something I didn’t see coming when she was first introduced. I thought of her as another zany character like Wooton, someone who could out-Wooton Wooton himself. Making her an undercover spy was a very welcome revelation. And I love how she proved herself by defining the word “literally” correctly. Tying her previous episodes together in this series was also a nice touch. Now that the true Jillian has been revealed, I hope we can leave the fake Jillian behind.
But this is where I was left feeling unsatisfied. Jillian is still undercover. Only a couple of people in Odyssey know her true identity. So, in order to keep up the act, she’s still going to be the same annoying airhead many of us love to hate. In fact, the writers will probably need to make her even more annoying to create a clear contrast for us listeners between the real Jillian and the fake Jillian. You might have noticed that her ditziness was turned up to 11 in this album, probably to set up the twist. But I don’t think we want to deal with that much longer in future episodes. So, here’s what I’m thinking: the sooner Jillian’s secret identity gets blown, the better. That way she wouldn’t have to put on her act anymore. Now that we know Jillian can be good as a character, I don’t want to go back.
The new Jillian is someone we can look up to. She’s someone who can rescue Jason from two nefarious thugs. She’s someone who makes a personal sacrifice when she makes the decision to break protocol and take Jason to the hospital, rather than let him be taken into custody by the authorities. She gets put on administrative leave for disobeying orders, but it was the right call. How her career might suffer from that choice remains to be seen. Without Jillian’s self-sacrifice, the Chairman might have won this time. So, whatever you think of Jillian, you have to respect her for that. Meanwhile, Jason’s sacrifice is even more obvious and dramatic than Jillian’s. He readily agrees to a surgery to help save lives, even though he knows it might kill him. And it almost does. Jason flatlines and is jolted with a defibrillator three times before he recovers. I actually feared for Jason’s life at that moment and wondered whether the AIO team would have him die on the operating table. They could have had him die and it would have still been a powerful, meaningful series, obviously with a totally different epilogue. But I’m glad he didn’t. I hope Jason can be the hero of many adventures to come.
But heroes aren’t so unusual in Odyssey, are they? I have to say, after listening to this album, I feel so proud of our friends in Odyssey. I’m proud of Jason for his great courage in putting his life on the line. I’m proud of Jillian for her steadiness in doing what was right, and for her trust in Jason’s character even as she had her doubts. I’m proud of Whit and our other friends for trying to save others rather than themselves in the midst of a bomb threat. I’m proud of Dr. Calhoun for the instinctive responsibility he showed to his patient and his refusal to abandon Jason. I’m proud of Connie for getting involved in saving the world and for providing the crucial intel to Dr. Graham about the nefarious Dr. Rusk. (You see, telling Connie what’s going on actually pays off for the better!) And speaking of Dr. Graham, I am so proud of her for her quick thinking with the syringe of anesthetic which knocks out Rusk and saves the day. That has to be a highlight that will go down in Odyssey history.
And even though the Chairman escaped justice once again, the album does seem to point to the Chairman’s future demise. While talking to one of the Chairman’s thugs in the cabin, Jason says, “You know, it’s the minions like you who get the brunt of it. Like that guy who ran into me—Oscar? Was he paid to do that? … The big guys are always asking guys like you to do the heavy lifting, while they get off scot-free and never look back.” That’s exactly what Odyssey fans have been saying for years as we’ve waited for the Chairman to get his comeuppance. Later, when discussing how the scientist Dervishi avoided conviction in the past, Jason says, “You know how it works. The mastermind at the top makes sure all the evidence points away from them.” Of course, this time Dervishi does face justice. Before he’s arrested, he pleads for help from the Chairman. But the Chairman hangs him out to dry. Dervishi mentions he could tell the police what he knows to incriminate the Chairman, but the Chairman disdainfully retorts, “But you know nothing!” (A new four-word catch phrase for him?) Ironically, our knowledge of the Chairman has only expanded in this album. We now know he is some higherup at the Pentagon, and more importantly our AIO characters know that too. Though they haven’t discovered the Novacom connection yet, they are now on the trail to catch Novacom’s mastermind, the man who thought he was untouchable.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to hear what’s in store for the future of Adventures in Odyssey. Album 73 sounds like the beginning of the final showdown between the Chairman and our friends in Odyssey. And I love how it looks back on and pays tribute to the adventures of the original Novacom saga, stuffing in more suspense and cliffhangers than I thought six episodes could hold. Redeeming Jillian’s character was the icing on the cake. After 20 years, this is a great continuation of Novacom, with the promise of more adventures to come. To the AIO team, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for remembering Novacom fans. Thank you for continuing the story in a powerful, breathtaking, and meaningful way. Thank you for giving us this gift of Album 73: 28 Hours.
I remember first hearing the Novacom episodes on the radio week by week. It felt like AIO was breaking new ground, because it really was. The Novacom saga did build on the conflict, intensity, and scope of the Blackgaard saga that came before it, and it brought the show to another level. The Novacom episodes were intense and mysterious to a degree we hadn’t heard before. As the mystery unraveled, the biggest, most earth-shattering plot in AIO history was revealed. A plot of world domination through mind control was unlike any scheme featured on the show before. But the real villain of Novacom remained mostly a mystery. The Chairman, the mastermind behind the scenes, only appeared in the climactic episode, Exit. When his mind control scheme failed, the Chairman packed up and left, offering those four immortal words as a parting shot at the good people of Odyssey: “It’s over, for now.” Now the wait of roughly 20 years, or 175,200 hours, is over. And it feels like no time has passed.
Besides bringing back Novacom’s mastermind, Album 73: 28 Hours shines in featuring a number of callbacks to the original Novacom saga. Jason’s car getting intentionally hit and then his phone call being ominously cut off is reminiscent of what happens to Mitch’s friend Justine, who leaves a phone message as she is tragically run off the road during the Novacom saga. The inclusion of Sky Feldstein the TV station manager, and now villain, felt at little random at first. But it could be a nod to the fact that Novacom was a broadcasting corporation, which included TV. Novacom even buys B-TV, which previously was housed by station manager Guy Feldstein, Sky’s father. Later in Album 73, Sky sets “Plan B” into motion, which involves a bomb threat. This could be reference to the four-part Plan B episodes from the Novacom saga. The countdown on the bomb in the hospital, only diffused by inputting the password in the final seconds, is definitely a reference to the dramatic and explosive conclusion of Exit.
The reality of the spiritual conflict, as well as the physical, gets attention in this album as well. I was so glad to hear how the importance of prayer, which played out so powerfully in the Novacom saga, was back in this album. That sequence during Tom Riley’s trial is one of my favorite parts of Novacom. It reveals the power that prayer has to impact our world. Album 73 brings back a dramatic prayer sequence and raises the stakes with Jason’s life in the balance. As Jason enters surgery, our friends in Odyssey get together to pray for wisdom and safety and place their trust in God. And the very next scene reveals Dr. Rusk to be a bad guy, so suddenly their prayers for the surgery seem even more important.
And of course, the big callback to Novacom is the return of the Chairman’s personal obsession with brain science. The album starts out a little conventionally with a kidnapping, a rescue, and the mention of some vaguely defined high-tech weapons. Even after the Chairman is revealed in episode 2, the connection to Novacom’s Operation Think Tank is tenuous. You might have been tempted to think that perhaps the Chairman has moved on from mind control to other, more normal projects. But then Dr. Lily Graham blows that up at the end of episode 4, Dead of Night. Dr. Graham reveals the neural modulation research and brain chip technology which could, in a manner of speaking, “hack a brain”. And then Jason makes the connection: the bad guys must have implanted a chip in his brain during the kidnapping. That explains the headaches. That explains why the military submarines keep surfacing in his mind. The episode ends with Jason saying, “I’m the leak! They’re reading my brain!” I got chills at that line. Not only was it a great twist, but it brought us back to Novacom’s original masterplan. As Connie says, suddenly this adventure “sounds like Novacom”. It was a bit daring for a show like Odyssey to venture into this type of sci-fi mind control technology back in the day. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard from it in 20 years. But it wouldn’t feel like Novacom without it.
In addition to paying tribute to the Novacom saga and building upon its legacy, Album 73 did something else that has to be a big fan-pleaser. They took the incompetent and annoyingly ditzy Jillian Marshall and, at the drop of a hat, transformed her into a smart, competent, courageous, and dare I say, admirable character. What a great move. It’s definitely something I didn’t see coming when she was first introduced. I thought of her as another zany character like Wooton, someone who could out-Wooton Wooton himself. Making her an undercover spy was a very welcome revelation. And I love how she proved herself by defining the word “literally” correctly. Tying her previous episodes together in this series was also a nice touch. Now that the true Jillian has been revealed, I hope we can leave the fake Jillian behind.
But this is where I was left feeling unsatisfied. Jillian is still undercover. Only a couple of people in Odyssey know her true identity. So, in order to keep up the act, she’s still going to be the same annoying airhead many of us love to hate. In fact, the writers will probably need to make her even more annoying to create a clear contrast for us listeners between the real Jillian and the fake Jillian. You might have noticed that her ditziness was turned up to 11 in this album, probably to set up the twist. But I don’t think we want to deal with that much longer in future episodes. So, here’s what I’m thinking: the sooner Jillian’s secret identity gets blown, the better. That way she wouldn’t have to put on her act anymore. Now that we know Jillian can be good as a character, I don’t want to go back.
The new Jillian is someone we can look up to. She’s someone who can rescue Jason from two nefarious thugs. She’s someone who makes a personal sacrifice when she makes the decision to break protocol and take Jason to the hospital, rather than let him be taken into custody by the authorities. She gets put on administrative leave for disobeying orders, but it was the right call. How her career might suffer from that choice remains to be seen. Without Jillian’s self-sacrifice, the Chairman might have won this time. So, whatever you think of Jillian, you have to respect her for that. Meanwhile, Jason’s sacrifice is even more obvious and dramatic than Jillian’s. He readily agrees to a surgery to help save lives, even though he knows it might kill him. And it almost does. Jason flatlines and is jolted with a defibrillator three times before he recovers. I actually feared for Jason’s life at that moment and wondered whether the AIO team would have him die on the operating table. They could have had him die and it would have still been a powerful, meaningful series, obviously with a totally different epilogue. But I’m glad he didn’t. I hope Jason can be the hero of many adventures to come.
But heroes aren’t so unusual in Odyssey, are they? I have to say, after listening to this album, I feel so proud of our friends in Odyssey. I’m proud of Jason for his great courage in putting his life on the line. I’m proud of Jillian for her steadiness in doing what was right, and for her trust in Jason’s character even as she had her doubts. I’m proud of Whit and our other friends for trying to save others rather than themselves in the midst of a bomb threat. I’m proud of Dr. Calhoun for the instinctive responsibility he showed to his patient and his refusal to abandon Jason. I’m proud of Connie for getting involved in saving the world and for providing the crucial intel to Dr. Graham about the nefarious Dr. Rusk. (You see, telling Connie what’s going on actually pays off for the better!) And speaking of Dr. Graham, I am so proud of her for her quick thinking with the syringe of anesthetic which knocks out Rusk and saves the day. That has to be a highlight that will go down in Odyssey history.
And even though the Chairman escaped justice once again, the album does seem to point to the Chairman’s future demise. While talking to one of the Chairman’s thugs in the cabin, Jason says, “You know, it’s the minions like you who get the brunt of it. Like that guy who ran into me—Oscar? Was he paid to do that? … The big guys are always asking guys like you to do the heavy lifting, while they get off scot-free and never look back.” That’s exactly what Odyssey fans have been saying for years as we’ve waited for the Chairman to get his comeuppance. Later, when discussing how the scientist Dervishi avoided conviction in the past, Jason says, “You know how it works. The mastermind at the top makes sure all the evidence points away from them.” Of course, this time Dervishi does face justice. Before he’s arrested, he pleads for help from the Chairman. But the Chairman hangs him out to dry. Dervishi mentions he could tell the police what he knows to incriminate the Chairman, but the Chairman disdainfully retorts, “But you know nothing!” (A new four-word catch phrase for him?) Ironically, our knowledge of the Chairman has only expanded in this album. We now know he is some higherup at the Pentagon, and more importantly our AIO characters know that too. Though they haven’t discovered the Novacom connection yet, they are now on the trail to catch Novacom’s mastermind, the man who thought he was untouchable.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to hear what’s in store for the future of Adventures in Odyssey. Album 73 sounds like the beginning of the final showdown between the Chairman and our friends in Odyssey. And I love how it looks back on and pays tribute to the adventures of the original Novacom saga, stuffing in more suspense and cliffhangers than I thought six episodes could hold. Redeeming Jillian’s character was the icing on the cake. After 20 years, this is a great continuation of Novacom, with the promise of more adventures to come. To the AIO team, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for remembering Novacom fans. Thank you for continuing the story in a powerful, breathtaking, and meaningful way. Thank you for giving us this gift of Album 73: 28 Hours.
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