Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: “The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas”

Posted by Maximum Fun on 1st March 2009


Yes, your Podthinker sees that title. We all see that title. Clearly, it’s going to be the chief task of this particular Podthought to assure the reader that, while the podcast in question is indeed titled The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas [iTunes link], it nonetheless merits reading a few hundred words about, or, if one swings its way, a listen.

It comes as a relief to find that the program contains no ninjas, no mysticism, and not much ass at all. (There are two kinds of people: those amused by the very concept of ninjas, and those not.) It is, in fact, a rolling cultural group discussion, one that — here comes another relief — focuses in on a single cultural entity per episode rather than meandering every which way. But another danger zone rises in the show’s very subtitle: “Talking Old-School Sci-Fi and Fantasy”. Your Podthinker’s intensive podcast experience has prepared him to recoil at all podcasting instances of the term “old school” that do not refer to soul and/or funk, because they’re often red flags signaling that one’s about to stumble into a couple basement-dwellers’ heated exchange about Gobots. Fortunately, the Mystic Ninjas are not children of the early 1980s but members of that odd demographic subgroup which cares deeply about pulpy sci-fi but is somehow also like 42 years old. Their “old school” is more likely 1970 than 1989.

Not that Summer, Dave, Brian and Jen shy away from the modern-ish: their podcast’s official “old school” labeling cutoff only appears to be fifteen years or so. Hence the appearance of recent-seeming stuff like Robocop [MP3] and Quantum Leap [MP3] on their roundtable. But make no mistake, their reach extends pretty far backward, all the way to to the likes of Robert Heinlein’s martian-Jesus allegory Stranger in a Strange Land [MP3] and Larry Niven’s Ringworld [MP3], the only quadrilogy exhaustively described solely by its one-word title. These weren’t the main attractions for your Podthinker, though; that the Ninjas discuss such relative obscurities as Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat [MP3] (a goofy James-Bond-in-space-y series that your Podthinker admits sucks but is inexplicably drawn toward nonetheless) and W.D. Richter’s immortal The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension [MP3]. Your Podthinker is all about the Buckaroo Banzai.

Though the selections deliver a little something for everybody, one can’t help but wish for a touch more meat on the bones of the discussions themselves. They’re on the short side, about 45 minutes on average, and though the Ninjas seem perfectly capable of really delving into the mechanics of the novel, film or television series at hand, they tend to stop just short. They never fail to set up the premise, retell a few of the narrative’s events and express their own opinions on the quality of the work as a whole, but most every episode ends with a great deal of rich analytic soil left to plow. And if that was the effect of some strict technical length restriction, fine, but more often than not the conversation simply peters out: “Welp, we got anything more to say about this epic saga?” “Nope, don’t think so. You got anything to add?” “Nope.” “Okay then.” The official Podthoughts Rules of Podcasting pamphlet has yet to be written, but if the project gets off the ground, the first commandment is obvious: “Thou shalt not end thy podcasts by petering out. End in a structured and decisive fashion, yea. Peter, nay.”

Despite that, The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas isn’t a bad little venue for sci-fi and fantasy chat. And that means something coming from your Podthinker, a man who finds 90 percent of science fiction (and something like 115% of fantasy) crippled to unenjoyability by a lack of consistent rules and even semi-engaging characters. But then again, he’s read The Stainless Steel Rat, so…

Vital stats:
Format: group sci-fi/fantasy discussion
Running since: September 2005
Duration: 35m-1h15m
Frequency: weekly
Archive available on iTunes: last 20

[Shame Podthinker Colin Marshall for his enjoyment of The Stainless Steel Rat at colinjmarshall at gmail. Discuss Podthoughts on the forum here or submit your own podcast for the next by-Max-Funsters column here.]