Solar is a science fiction Audio Play-styled podcast created by Chris Porter, who also co-directs alongside Jenny Curtis, and produced by Curtco Media. The podcast stars Stephanie Beatriz, Johnathan Bangs, Helen Hunt, and Alan Cumming.
In the year 2045, the Aethon, a research vessel manned by a crew consisting of members of both the North American Space Coalition (NASC) and powerful corporation Cimmerian Technologies (often abbreviated as CimmTech), is traversing a course around the Sun when a solar flare hits the ship, severely damaging the ship and trapping it within the sun's orbit. Though the crew survive, they are left stranded and with rescue thousands of miles away, leaving them struggling to survive and escape the ship.
The podcast consists primarily of recordings of the crew, which are shown in Anachronic Order, and recordings of the media as they report on the Aethon's predicament and the solar flare's effect on Earth.
This podcast contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Jamal mentions his mother was extremely opposed to his dreams of becoming an astronaut, and raged a campaign of psychological abuse against him to prevent him from doing so. She forced him to listen to the audio of a Russian cosmonaut slowly dying in space and look at the same cosmonaut's corpse for hours on end, and flat-out disowned him when he still decided to pursue a career as an astronaut.
- Anachronic Order: The recordings of the events aboard the Aethon are not shown in chronological order, with episodes often containing tapes from both the beginning and end of the disaster.
- Artificial Stupidity: ALI is prone to this, which mainly comes from being Sarcasm-Blind.
- Bait-and-Switch: The first episode initially implies that Wren and Jamal are on extremely bad terms, which motivates Jamal's refusal to contact her. The ending reveals that he is actually attempting a Heroic Sacrifice to save her and has cut Wren off to keep her from trying to talk him out of it. Fortunately, an attack by the "ghosts" prevents him from going through with it.
- Benevolent A.I.: ALI, the Aethon's AI system, is always concerned with the well-being of the crew and does her best to aid them. Unfortunately, she's very prone to Artificial Stupidity and glitches that generally hinder her efforts, but she still tries her best.
- Brutally Honest: Patel, who bluntly admits during a press conference that SimTech has refused to respond to NASC, that the Aethon detected various anomalies before the surge, and that he's very sure that SimTech doesn't give a damn about the fate of the crew.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
- Jamal Davis is a Motor Mouth prone to going on philosophical tangents, yet he's a very competent pilot.
- Commander Alex Tawley. He's a goofy, eccentric Wide-Eyed Idealist who is nonetheless a very caring and responsible leader who cares deeply for his crew.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Jamal's love of going on random philosophical tangents definitely colors him as somewhat eccentric. It becomes increasingly played for drama as the trauma he endures and the stress of the situation causes him to undergo Sanity Slippage.
- Alex is a fairly goofy and eccentric man, though it by no means makes him a less competent leader.
- Deadpan Snarker: Wren Guerrero, as expected from a character voiced by Stephanie Beatriz.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Gender-flipped with Jamal's mother, who resorted to outright psychological abuse to prevent him from becoming an astronaut and disowned him when he did.
- Foregone Conclusion: The segments with Wren and Jamal that take place at the later stages of the disaster reveal that the rest of the crew dies over the course of the disaster.
- Insistent Terminology: When Wren notes he seems to take a glass half full perspective, Alex insists to Wren that he is instead a "half glass kind of guy".Wren: Um, what is a… half glass guy?
Alex: I call it like it is. It doesn't matter if you see it as empty or full, it's a half glass.
Wren: Seems pedantic.
Alex: We're scientists. We have to be pedantic. - Jerkass: Christian Yancy is a confrontational reporter who callously insinuates that the crew of the Aethon are already dead and that saving them would be a waste of time without any evidence, before aggressively questioning and insulting Patel and Bryant when they answer.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Flight Director Aarav Patel. He's a temperamental, Brutally Honest Insufferable Genius who clearly cares deeply about the fate of the crew of the Aethon and refuses to allow anything to get in the way of saving them.
- Mission Control: Flight Director Aarav Patel serves as mission control for the crew of the Aethon, though the solar flare leaves him unable to contact them further.
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Wren Guerrero is prone to isolating herself from the crew at first and is rather snarky, but she's a fairly nice person when it comes down to it.
- The Mole: Wren was placed aboard the Aethon by Patel as part of a plan to out-compete CimmTech by figuring out how to create a Dyson Sphere before CimmTech could beat NASC to it, as they had assumed that was CimmTech's goal. However, Wren discovers that CimmTech is actually planning something else that is clearly far more sinister, and begins spying on them in earnest to figure out what they're planning.
- Motor Mouth: Jamal is prone to rambling at length about philosophy, to the point that Patel notes that his messages to NASC go on for way longer than the established time limit.
- Nice Guy: Commander Alex Tawley is a kind, responsible leader who cares deeply for the men and women under his command, and does his best to bridge the gap between the NASC and CimmTech employees aboard the Aethon.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Jamal begins seeing strange light-based entities that he refers to as ghosts for lack of anything better to call them. It's left ambiguous if they're real or simply hallucinations caused by his fractured mental state.
- Sarcasm-Blind: ALI is totally blind to sarcasm, though she is able to understand the concept of Irony.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Wren is an introvert who prefers to keep her own company, and clams up when talking to strangers and compensates by acting overly stoic. She's also prone to accidentally insulting people at times.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist:
- Alex, who strives to see the best in everything and everyone around him.
- Wren. She willingly serves as a spy against CimmTech because she feels that by helping NASC out-compete them, it could stop NASC from being privatized and help kickstart de-corporatization. Jamal even compares her to John Henry.
