The Future of RoD 💜💚

Howdy gang!

Time to talk shop.

Obviously, the elephant in the room (or should that be Kiwi Bird…na, you wouldn’t see that amongst the crap in on our set. What would be totally out of place in the studio, is obnoxiously large and intrinsically linked with New Zealand?).

Okay, the Taika Waititi in the room is Billy’s imminent move to Aotearoa, which is going well - thanks for asking. Billy went over some FAQs around how RoD will adapt to the change, but we thought it was best to share some of the grizzly details with our Patreon RoDers. And there’s one thing that really needs to be said first and foremost.

Without a shadow of a doubt, there is zero-chance that the podcast would continue without your support. That goes for the last 18 months as well. But key to our ability to keep the show going is this Patreon. The Patreon will allow us to maintain our high levels of production by investing in equipment that will make the podcast as listenable as it is already. Our main idea going forward is, “If you’re listening on Spotify/Apple/Google Podcasts (🤭 …as if!), you won’t be able to tell we’re 20,000 miles away from each other.” Well, that’s our hope anyway.

On our shopping list at the moment is a Shure SM7B (y’know, *that* microphone you see on every sod’s podcast…like for the first dozen episodes of our podcast, for example!), plus all the audio equipment that comes with getting the best out of the mic itself (like an amplifier, a desk mounted mic arm, acoustic foam, etc). We also want the podcast to still look nice, so that will *hopefully* mean you won’t be watching the direct output of our Zoom call. We’ll shoot our video separately, record our audio separately and lay everything out all nice like in the edit.

Same goes for the set dressing, at home and abroad. Matt is likely to stay in the relative safety of the plush, nicely decorated studio, while Billy will likely be in a literal shed…so we’ll get some lights and sort out some set dressing to turn that eyesore into…an…eye’COR BLIMEY GET A LOAD OF THAT (read that in Sid James’ voice letching after Barbara Windsor and it’ll hopefully make sense).

We’ll get a recording schedule sorted so we’ve always got stuff to share. The move does not affect Patreon content. In fact, with a regular schedule and the incentive to plan ahead, we’re hoping you’ll get even more and varied content than ever before! This includes, but is not limited to…

• Reviews of Doctor Who spin-offs like Torchwood and The Sarah-Jane Adventures.
• Critiques of Big Finish audios (certainly their 60th Anniversary output).
• Affectionate chats about the Bond films, Star Wars, Red Dwarf and more.
• More written content, like reviews and thoughts on things a bit more off the beaten path and we’ll finally have time to compile our notes into something half legible…maybe even into something you can hold?!

As well as customary Patreon Q&As and commentaries! All of that will still happen, but it might be a case of some other bits being done separately rather than together, to maximise our ability to share things with you, our dear RoDers.

What we might lose in terms of instant reactions to news and rumours, we’ll hopefully gain with a wider variety of content! Having said that, you can use our spell at the start of 2021 to see how quickly we were able to get something together on opposite sides of the world, like Ncuti Gatwa’s casting! So it’s not impossible to be quick on the jump when it comes to instant reactions. It might be that the production quality has to be sacrificed in those moments but swings and roundabouts, eh?

Something that is likely to suffer is our ability to interview people, as it might be a bit weird to have Matt in the studio asking a guest to direct their answer towards him and a floating head on a big plasma screen off-camera. Zoom interview aren’t out of the question (as evidenced by our chats with Al Dewar and Matthew Jacobs & Vanessa Yuille) but again, it’s a give-and-take situation, as Billy is already drawing up plans to speak face-to-face with one or two Who related folk based on “the other side of the world”.

First and foremost however is the dynamic between the Bois, and if you’ll allow me to shatter the very thin illusion that there’s a “third person” at play in our conversations…*ahem…narrator suddenly becomes Billy*…Matt and I are best friends. Our closeness isn’t maintained exclusively through this podcast, neither is it defined by it. But it’s our baby, and we want it to succeed. So we’ll make it work.

God, that sounded like two parents splitting up and having to explain it to their kids. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.

RoD is here to stay, whether you like it or not.

- RoD 💜💚