The Green Ring Conspiracy VS Novacom

Grab your AIO albums, and find a table! What makes your favorite episode the best? Have an episode you really dislike? This is the place to review and discuss AIO episodes and albums.

GRC or Novacom

GRC
8
27%
Novacom
22
73%
 
Total votes: 30

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SirWhit
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Why was Green Ring Conspiracy not a good idea?
Mickey
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Okay so I'm not saying I didn't like Green Ring I loved it I just liked Novacom better, because it's longer, but I didn't like the extra stories added in Novacom.
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SirWhit
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I like them both equally. But you have to admit that Novacom's music was awesometastic.
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky
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GRC always felt more focused to me. Whereas Novacom took two albums to get going and meandered quite a bit, GRC plunged us right into the story from the beginning. Sometimes in Novacom it felt like they were making up the story as they made each album, which, according to the Official Guide, is actually what they did. In contrast, you could tell GRC was planned intricately from the very beginning.

Also, I couldn't always tell what "qualified" as a Novacom episode. Is "Nova Rising" actually necessary to the story? What about "Shining Armour?" Do episodes like "The W.E.", "Chains", "Fifteen Minutes", or "Under the Influence" actually qualify as Novacom episodes just because they mention Novacom? When a saga has that many ambigious episodes, it's clear the creators lost focus along the way. The Green Ring Conspiracy, of course, doesn't suffer at all from this problem at all. The only scenes in it that could ever be described as "filler" are some geniunely funny scenes added for comic relief.

And while Novacom would devote, say, one episode to Connie and Mitch and another episode to Whit's End Connellsville and still another episode about AREM, GRC (like the far inferior Ties That Bind) had an element of all the storylines in each part, which heightened the suspense, because we only got a little taste of each storyline for each part. It also made it easier to keep track of all the storylines if you were listening to it all at once. Also, while this has little to do with the actual Novacom saga, when they mixed entertaining yet lighthearted episodes like "Snow Day" and "The Great Wishy Woz" amongst Novacom, it felt awkward and it made those albums suffer a bit.

I guess I also feel that Novacom was almost a little too big, too global. Of course, it's stupid to complain that mind control is unrealistic, because the creators knew that, and it's just a fictional radio drama anyway. So it's not the mind control concept that bothers me, it's just how everything had to be on such a wide scale. It was reiterated constantly throughout the last few episodes of the saga that Andromeda were out to take over the world, and the FBI, for some reason, had no way to stop them. That's all fine and good, I guess, but it just strikes me as odd that the saga had such an urgent tone throughout the last few episodes ("If we don't stop Andromeda NOW, they'll enslave the human race."), and then Tom Riley, who was barely involved in the saga (at least on a crimefighting level) at all up to this point, waltzes into the action and saves the world from eternal slavery (with one second to go, I might add) with one click of a button. GRC wisely played out on a much smaller scale, and though it may not seem as "epic" to fans, it feels a lot more satisfying to people like me when there's no feeling of anticlimax when the ending finally comes.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few Novacom episodes I feel are worthy to attain classic status (namely Red Herring, Breaking Point, Plan B, Sheep's Clothing, and Exit), but the rest sometimes suffer from drawn-out or ill-plotted storylines. GRC felt fluid and complete: you knew who to root for and who to root against early on. I felt with Novacom that we didn't really find out much about what was actually going on until the last 5 or 6 episodes of Battle Lines, which made those episodes seem rushed and anticlimatic at times.

Overall, though I'm obviously in the minority, I believe that GRC is superior in nearly every way, and probably the greatest action-adventure episode AIO has ever done. It shows how professional AIO has become, even since Novacom. I also believe that the only thing that prevented The Ties That Bind from being a complete flop was that it followed a similar format to GRC. I'd like to see AIO try again with their 14-part continuation of GRC for album 63 or something in that range, maybe this time making the story a little more ambitious.
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connie13
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Novacom was 100% better than the GRC! I like it better cause it has Mitch in it and I love the shows with him in it. But it was totally better! From the "Green Eyes Yellow Tulips" to the end Novacom is better.
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TigerShadow
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I'm going to have to disagree with you, CT. I prefer Novacom because it didn't charge right in. It gave us a gradual buildup and subtler clues throughout the storyline. And I don't think interspersing the episodes with slice-of-life episodes hurt the albums any; I think it actually helped, to show that Novacom was gaining their way through subterfuge rather than through direct and overt methods of attack, and it fits in with the idea of Novacom attempting to integrate themselves into the town.
CreativeThinker101 wrote:When a saga has that many ambigious episodes, it's clear the creators lost focus along the way.
Is it? I think it's more clear that the creators are attempting to show how Novacom's presence is affecting the everyday lives of important characters and how far-reaching they really are in terms of influence. Simply because the episodes are not all packaged perfectly and organized into a clear label does not mean that the creators hadn't the foggiest idea what they were doing; it simply means that they didn't choose to rush and make everything happen all at once.
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The Old Judge
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In response to that, Tiger, may I say that the GRC "jumps right in" at a point where things came to a head. You are correct, Novacom and the GRC have two completely different perspectives. We must consider, though, that doesn't make one or the other better. Whereas Novacom shows the evil gradually creeping in, GRC starts on the day everything broke out in the open. This operation had been planned long before, and the public only knew about in its climax. Like 9/11.
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ArnoldtheRubberDucky
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TigerShadow wrote:I'm going to have to disagree with you, CT. I prefer Novacom because it didn't charge right in. It gave us a gradual buildup and subtler clues throughout the storyline. And I don't think interspersing the episodes with slice-of-life episodes hurt the albums any; I think it actually helped, to show that Novacom was gaining their way through subterfuge rather than through direct and overt methods of attack, and it fits in with the idea of Novacom attempting to integrate themselves into the town.
CreativeThinker101 wrote:When a saga has that many ambigious episodes, it's clear the creators lost focus along the way.
Is it? I think it's more clear that the creators are attempting to show how Novacom's presence is affecting the everyday lives of important characters and how far-reaching they really are in terms of influence. Simply because the episodes are not all packaged perfectly and organized into a clear label does not mean that the creators hadn't the foggiest idea what they were doing; it simply means that they didn't choose to rush and make everything happen all at once.
Your arguments are well thought out, and you may actually be right and (gasp!) I may be wrong, but I thought I'd take a stab at a counterargument anyway, just to continue the debate.

I'd like to look at this from a different perspective, that is, the perspective of a new AIO fan. He hears about how "cool" the Novacom saga is from his AIO-savvy friends, and decides to purchase The Novacom Saga Box Set. At first he's excited, especially after reading the description, which promises sinister villains and mind control plots. His excitement continues for the first few episodes, as he learns a bit about Odyssey and it's characters as he awaits the next big reveal about Novacom. But gradually, as the episodes wear on and on and little is actually revealed about what Novacom is trying to achieve, he feels disappointed. Still, he perseveres, waiting for the big reveal. As he begins Battle Lines, here's what he knows so far:

1. Novacom is bad.

2. Whit and his friends are good.

3. Mitch, otherwise known as AREM, is dead, and he has a picture of Monica Stone in his briefcase.

4. There's a villain called "Mr. Charles".

5. Andromeda's plan has something to do with Eugene and his project of converting brain waves to radio waves.

6. Eugene and Katrina have eloped; her father is dead and Arthur Dent has gone crazy.

7. Whit is getting in Andromeda's way.

You could add tons of minor details, but those are the main things you would take away. The fact that all of those but the first two were revealed in the Plan B episodes is even more disappointing. Why must AIO move at such a slow pace for such a long time, and then suddenly go into hyperdrive for the last four episodes?

You see, I have always held the belief that entertainment should be made as concise as possible. I can see this line being misinterpreted, so I'd like to clarify that I do not think entertainment should always be as short as humanly possible. For instance, I don't believe that the first 3 albums of Novacom should be reduced to a three-second sound byte. I believe that entertainment should be edited to as short as possible, as long as the message and the story stay in tact. I mean, do action or suspense movies and TV shows meander on for hours before finally revealing a bit of information about the conflict? Of course not. And they're all the better for it. So why does AIO feel it should be given special rules just because its fans will tolerate meandering for a few hours? Those are just my thoughts, and iI realize they're flawed.
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John Henry
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You like GRC more than Novacom, Mr. Thinker? Novacom has your favorite charater: Alex Jefferson while GRC has your least favorite character: Emily Jones.
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Bananareader
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I voted Novacom, because it's my second favorite saga, possibly because it's longer, however The Green Ring Conspiracy is my third favorite.
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Shadow
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To be honest, this isn't a fair comparison because these are basically completely different types of sagas - Novacom's a slow burn sci-fi story with some mystery elements while GRC is a quickly-paced mystery about deception. They're very differently structured and organized. A fairer comparison would be GRC and Ties that Bind. .but Ties that Bind sucks, so GRC would easily win.
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I'd have to go Green Ring Over Novacom for a couple of reasons. don't get me wrong, I love the Novacom saga, but as stated by other comments it's too unrealistic in places (with most of the deaths more for dramatic effect than anything else), there's too many unanswered questions and things that later don't add up which have never been resolved or long since 'shrugged off' by the team behind it. one thing that always confused and bugged me was if Eugene (and initially Richard) had such key roles, why didn't the team check that the actors were available. finally, for such a long (and drawn out) saga, there have only been 2 or 3 references since "Eugene Returns" (some of which are fairly vague at points), which leads me to believe that that this saga might not even be canon to the series, more of a 'what if'. I believe that if redone and shortened by a few episodes, (maybe taking out some of the side plots) then Novacom would have been a lot better. (imagine it with just 4 or 5 short 'post credits' scenes with Eugene at the end of an episode, similar to Leonard's in "dead ends". instead we just hear about them through Whit, Connie and the Allen's being told about them).

Green Ring is still a complex story, like Novacom, to the point of key events starting before the events in the album. All the key characters get good, er, screen time, and are not wasted or forced in to parts, they appear instead of being constantly referenced and never seen, and all the remaining plot points are resolved in the next two albums (rather than 2 years later). some of the biggest problems I have with Novacom are fixed in this (key scenes are 'shown' rather than referenced or cut to a few lines). it's also fairly fast paced but slows down in a few scenes to help you catch up. parts of this saga are also referenced or continued, rather than 'dropped' or never finished like Novacom. all this makes me feel like the events are nearly as important as the Blackguaard saga.

I think Novacom would have been a great idea for the AIO Club. 12-24 episodes total, with a couple released each month, depending on how much time has passed between each one. Green ring also explored some of its characters, rather than just just having them appear once or twice before being forgotten. I wished that they do what they did with Penny and Buck with Monica Stone or Richard Maxwell.

I think I've made a fair point as to why Green ring is better (though again, I do still enjoy listening to Novacom), but let me know what you guys think.
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