Station Blue is a isolation horror audio drama written, directed, and principally performed by Chad Ellis, launched in late December of 2017. Station Blue tells the story of Matthew Leads (Ellis): an aimless young drifter who has just taken a job that he feels sure will finally be what helps him get his life together. A loner by nature, Leads thinks that his new job as caretaker of a scientific research facility deep in Antarctica will be the perfect occupation for him. But almost as soon as he settles in, Leads can tell that there's something off about the empty base. And that feeling only deepens as he discovers an ominous looking door deep in the heart of the base that has a security camera focused on it at all times despite Leads supposedly being there all alone...
This work contains examples of the following:
- Abusive Parents: Leads' relationship with his dad is strained at best, and violent at worst.
- The Ace: Subverted with Sarah. With her endless activities and meticulously planned and scheduled life, Leads at first thinks she must be this. He eventually realizes that she's so driven and pushes herself so hard because she simply doesn't cope well with inactivity. Once they're in college, he starts to fear that all her overachieving is actually going to land her in a perfectly ordinary and mundane life.
- Animal Motifs: Frequently mentioned and encountered during the series are seals who have become disoriented and wandered inland from the Antarctic coast to face certain death in the interior. They have much in common with Matthew Leads who runs from the happiness and safety he had with Sarah and into the deadly environs of Station Blue.
- Book Ends: Episodes 1 and 9 both end with the base sirens wailing as someone meets a violent, bloody fate.
- Body Horror: An attack by some kind of monstrous creature leaves Leads with what is apparently some kind of bottomless mouth in the center of his forehead.
- Break the Cutie: Matthew Leads is a genuinely sweet guy that it's very easy to empathize with and feel sorry for, and the tale of his courtship with Sarah is a heartbreakingly beautiful love story all on its own. All of these things get played for anguish, bitterness, and irony as the base slowly crushes his sanity.
- Breather Episode: After a particularly intense struggle with his mental illness in episodes 5 & 6, Matthew gives us the particularly beautiful backstory of his relationship with Sarah in episodes 7 & 8.
- Butt-Monkey: Sarah, Beanie, and Glasses are the only characters who don't treat Leads with unwarranted disdain or hostility. He also gets into an impressive array of mishaps just going about his everyday duties at the base.
- Cosmic Horror Story: The title of Eclipse refers to something that's apparently shaped like a human body in the sky and blocking out the sun. Although given the mental state of the only witness to this event, it perhaps cannot be taken at face value.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The April Fool's Day episode is a hilarious shout-out to the trope namer: specifically the dog ending.
- Door of Doom: It looks like just an ordinary door. But it's not on the blueprints, is under constant surveillance, and Leads can't stand to be around it or even look at it for very long.
- Eerie Arctic Research Station: Station Blue, with its bizarre door and seemingly inhuman entities that may or may not be wandering its corridors, is even eerier than most.
- Evil Elevator: It doesn't seem to matter who you are, anyone who enters the base's freight elevator does so at their peril.
- Evil, Inc.: The series implies that the Flower Company are this, with their enigmatic behavior, the ominous nature of the base, and their cold and indifferent attitude toward Leads and his concerns.
- Feathered Fiend: Leads won't say much about whatever came with the eclipse, but has mentioned it having a beak and feathers.
- Gollum Made Me Do It: When he experiences a psychotic episode, Leads' stable, rational side speaks as a dissociated voice in his mind, trying to talk him out of whatever destructive acts he is doing while also serving to relay the happenings to the audience. During the climax of Eclipse, however, this voice is revealed to be actively malevolent and intent upon controlling its owner.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Leads once had an epiphany about mathematics and has never been the same since. Mind you, he doesn't have any kind of exceptional understanding of or skill at mathematics. Just the very concept of it, and how literally every single thing in the world is governed by underlying mathematical equations was enough to break him, and he now suffers crippling panic attacks as a result.
- Hell Is That Noise: Often heard during scene changes is an ominous droning noise similar to an airplane engine. It is used to signal transitions in the narrative, but it is implied that Matthew can hear this sound too. In episode 10, Intruder it is confirmed that the noise is coming from the door.
- Hope Spot: Episode 11 finds a critically injured Leads trapped in the base with the power off and the temperature rapidly dropping. After a series of ordeals he manages to reach and activate the base's emergency generator. Relieved, he now thinks his problems are over and he will get to go home. The episode ends a few seconds later in a way that implies that no, none of that is going to happen.
- I Know Your True Name: An avid fan of fantasy literature, Leads speculates about this trope and wonders if he himself has a true name, and what kind of being he might manifest into if he were to learn it. He says he would be willing to sacrifice one of his limbs to find out.
- It Can Think: While trying to reach and repair the generator, Leads has a confrontation with what's been antagonizing him. He is able to talk it into backing down by explaining that if he dies, it too will die from the cold. The creature seems to understand and allows Leads to continue on his way.
- Jerkass: Gina, Leads' remote supervisor from the Flower Company. Her e-mail communication with him is cold and abrupt at best, and she deliberately avoids answering any questions that might actually help Leads.
- Mind Screw: Good luck figuring out exactly what happened to Leads or what it was he actually saw during the events of Eclipse.
- Noodle Incident: Once, a crew member at McMurdo started attacking people with a hammer... and no more information about this incident is asked for or given.
- Room Full of Crazy: Left in the form of a journal by former base inhabitant Rin Hashimoto. Leads, however, isn't quite Genre Savvy enough to understand its implications (at least not at first,) and thinks that Rin just really enjoyed making surreal poems and art.
- Shout-Out:
- Leeds and his girlfriend Sarah bond over the His Dark Materials novels and they are frequently referenced as a result.
- The April Fools Day episode references both the dog ending and the character of Dahlia Gillespie from Silent Hill.
- The Teaser: Episode 1 opens with an unnamed pilot arriving at the station to pick up Leads' predecessor, Gil. Shortly after entering the base the pilot is attacked and brutally killed by an unknown assailant.
- Through The Eyesof Madness: A constant question at least from Episode 9 onward, but Matthew openly ponders it himself in episode 11, wondering if he is hallucinating and the mouth-like orifice in his forehead is just an ordinary cut.
- Title Drop: Happens at the end of episode 11: Slip, in the most literal way possible with Leads slipping and falling off a ladder to either his death or very serious injury.
