(Note: this post contains spoilers for the finale of Second Star to the Left. This post deals with isolation, romantic relationships, and the pandemic.)

Envisioning new futures is a big theme in indie audio fiction; and especially more recently, more shows have appeared which imagine a future after humans have left Earth. Second Star to the Left, which isco-written by Aysha U. Farah and E. Jade Lomax, is one of these; but one of the reasons why I fell in love with it right from episode one was how it approaches the exploration and colonisation of new worlds – specifically, how only one person is sent to each new planet to prepare and map it, one person who will live on this planet on their own for years.

In episode one, we meet Scout Gwen Hartley (played by Ishani Kanetkar, of The Strange Case of Starship Iris fame…