Final Transmission was an unscripted play set on a blue-collar spaceship, along the lines of Alien's "Nostromo". Like Alien, it aimed for sci-fi horror. Part of my job as prop designer was to recognize when key moments from the movies defining that genre were blocked for want of a toy. Those movies deal with humans encountering the unknown, which they try to understand through technology. Knowing the unknown though sci-fi tech means scanning, which meant that I needed a scanner.
I could have built something small, but that wasn't the visual style of the show. More important, if the scanner took two hands to use, anyone who learned something vital from a scan could do nothing about it. Figured out where the alien is hiding? Great. Your hands are busy. Either you're part of a team, or you're about to feel the consequences of being alone in a horror story.
That sent me off to build a scanner unit that took one hand to operate, and a reader unit that would occupy the player's other hand.
I could have built something small, but that wasn't the visual style of the show. More important, if the scanner took two hands to use, anyone who learned something vital from a scan could do nothing about it. Figured out where the alien is hiding? Great. Your hands are busy. Either you're part of a team, or you're about to feel the consequences of being alone in a horror story.
That sent me off to build a scanner unit that took one hand to operate, and a reader unit that would occupy the player's other hand.
It worked, though not quite as expected. The first time it came onstage, it did create very literal teamwork, with one player wearing the reader and another carrying the scanner end. More often, players used the scanner to create competence or incompetence. Most people who picked it up found themselves using it as a badge of technical skill. After all, if you're carrying a scanner, and people ask you to scan things, clearly you're a decent technician.
That could also work backwards. One night, a woman who'd never lifted the scanner before brought it onstage. She fumbled it. Another character heard her drop it, and established that the fumble-fingered character was a screw-up, down to her last chance with the ship. That character was left alone in a cargo hold, thumping the scanner on the floor in despair, when she heard something moving. The one character nobody listened to was the one character who knew there was an alien aboard.
The actors found that moment, but it's the toy that sparked it.
That could also work backwards. One night, a woman who'd never lifted the scanner before brought it onstage. She fumbled it. Another character heard her drop it, and established that the fumble-fingered character was a screw-up, down to her last chance with the ship. That character was left alone in a cargo hold, thumping the scanner on the floor in despair, when she heard something moving. The one character nobody listened to was the one character who knew there was an alien aboard.
The actors found that moment, but it's the toy that sparked it.
This one reinforced that a good toy, meant to inspire play within a setting, needs to be simple. If you can see at least two uses for it at design time, but avoid choices which would confine it to those uses, your odds of inspiring great play shoot up. Here, I built a prop to scan, to serve as a backup to the ship's computer, or to light dark places. I built it open enough to be a tool for anything that needed a technological tool. That allowed it to inspire a wider range of play than I'd thought it could manage.
It offered a chance to scan, to show competence, or to show incompetence. By giving players a simple, visual building block for conveying those things, it reduced exposition and incited depth of play.
It offered a chance to scan, to show competence, or to show incompetence. By giving players a simple, visual building block for conveying those things, it reduced exposition and incited depth of play.
Show photos courtesy of Todd Gardiner at Hieroglyph Photography.
