The Alt-Hist File: Prototype World of Tomorrow: The Infinite Journey

I’ve been on a roll reviewing the latest seasons of several audio dramas. We find ourselves once again at Prototype World of Tomorrow, a show I utterly adore. Not much more to add, so let get on to the main event. We’ve taking a look at season three of Prototype World of Tomorrow: The Infinite Journey. 

Just to recap, Prototype World of Tomorrow is set in a world where Walt Disney’s dream to build an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow became a reality. Everyone in Progress City is gearing up for the Eleusinian Tournament. It is a competitive video game tournament, and Tim E. Less is determined to win with a little help from his friends. This year, the players will be dematerialized, and reassembled within the game itself. It might seem like fun and games, but lurks around every corner within the digital world. Tim’s fellow private investigator, Eve R. Moore, wants him to help her investigate the companies behind the Eleusinian Tournament from within. Hold on tight, Tim and the gang are about to take a journey beyond their wildest imagination.

I think by know that it should be obvious that I absolutely adore Prototype World of Tomorrow. It started off strong with season one, and continued the momentum with season two. So, how does season three do? Quite well indeed. As usual, there are numerous references to Disney Park attractions. Specifically, there are numerous references to all three incarnations of Journey into Imagination. Contestants exit the game through a rainbow tunnel, as a nod to how Journey into Imagination featured a rainbow tunnel. Fun fact, the Journey into Imagination tunnel also appears in one of Michael Jackson’s music videos. At one point, Tim and company meet a computer program that takes the form of a purple dragon. Obviously, this is meant to be Figment, and I shall refer to him as such from here on out. Figment mentions that he used to have a friend, but hasn’t seen said friend in a while. This is a reference to Dreamfinder, and how he was absent from both the Journey into Your Imagination and Journey into Imagination with Figment incarnations of the ride. Speaking of which, Ron Schneider, who played Dreamfinder, once again returns as one of the computer voices.

This segue’s nice into my next point. The game for this years tournament is partially powered by the players’ own imaginations. Oh, there are servers, very powerful ones, but part of the computing power is offset by utilizing the players’ own minds. For example, when Tim and his teammates look at a berry, it looks different to all of them, because everyone has their own mental image of how a berry should look. Though as mentioned, the servers do play some role. For example, all of the trees share the exact same four designs. Honestly, using the contestants’ own minds to generate the game was actually kind of brilliant. I haven’t really seen anything quite like that in fiction about virtual reality. I especially liked some aspects of the game being subjective based on the players’ own imaginations. Let it never be said that Ben Lancaster is lacking in creativity and imagination. Also, the part where the announcer says “right now there’s not a whole lot going on in your imaginations” was a nod to Journey Into Your Imagination, when Eric Idle says the same thing.

Oh, and one more reference. In the first episode, Tim is excited that his friends got handwiches. Handwitches were a short lived Disney food item. They were billed as the sandwiches of the future by then Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Handwiches were bread cones which held a variety of both sweet and savory fillings. Unfortunately, pretty much only Michael Eisner thought they were a good idea. Even the people working the handwich stands were skeptical of them, and handwiches died a swift death. Still, handwiches developed a minor cult following. In fact, they became a minor meme after Defunctland made a video about them. It also occurs to me that Bonnie, the waitress at Tim’s favorite greasy spoon, might possibly be a reference to Bonnie Appetite from Kitchen Kabaret.

Now, lets talk about the new characters. Tim’s team is down a player, so they take on Pauline, who works at the same company as Tim’s girlfriend Annie. At first, Tim doesn’t want Pauline on the team, and it was at this point I worried that this season was going to become one of those preachy “gamers are sexists” stories. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case. Tim just wants to have a chance to play alongside his buddies, and proudly admits to having lost to numerous all-female teams in the past. Pauline has a true passion for retrogames, but Tim and his team initially dismiss her because of this. And yet, not too long after this, they mention that past Eleusinian Tournaments have incorporated elements of retrogames. So, one would think that they wouldn’t be so quick to brush her off. Initially, Pauline comes across as introverted, shy, and slightly dorky. In fact, at first I wondered if perhaps she might have autism. You don’t often see women with autism depicted in fiction. However, once everyone gets into the game, she becomes far more confident and in her element.

I also really liked Tim’s friend Morris. He’s a huge paleontology nerd, and is very excited that this year’s game has a dinosaur theme. He can name all of the dinosaurs, and other prehistoric animals, and rattles of a list of facts about each of them. He must be really good at the game right? Yeah, no. He get’s killed in the tutorial of the game, but he emerges from the game with little more than a bruised ego. Yeah, that would be me in that scenario. I also have a deep love of prehistoric animals, and with my luck, I’d probably get killed in the tutorial as well.

There is an obvious comparison to TRON with this season taking place in the digital world. However, while the programs interact with humans, their appearance isn’t as anthropomorphized as programs are in TRON. It is explain that the processing power of the severs is far faster than that of a human mind. I looked it up, and that does check out. As such, a human mind can’t be plugged directly into the computer mainframe. Thus, programs are rendered as series of geometric shapes.

Well, mostly. We do meet a program who looks suspiciously similar to Eve’s supposedly dead fiancé. We don’t get confirmation as to whether or not it really was him. That having been said, many strange things have been shown to happen in Progress. Personally, if I was the gambling sort, I’d put money on it actually being him. I’ll be genuinely surprised if it turns out it wasn’t actually him. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see what future seasons have in store for us.

The virtual world setting does provide some humorous moments as well. At one point, Eve hacks into the game, and enters via the microphone she gave Tim. However, because Tim swallowed the mic, Tim winds-up vomiting Eve into the game. This is one of those time that it is good that Prototype World of Tomorrow has no visual component. That scene would probably be pretty terrifying in a visual medium. There were points were it seemed that something would go wrong, and the characters might get mutated or glitched somehow. My personal speculations was that somehow everyone would switch bodies. It would be interesting to see the actors portray each other’s characters. But it would seem that I was wrong.

I liked the part where Tim and company muse on the fact that the game contains temple ruins. Does this mean that humans and dinosaurs coexist in the game? Or did the dinosaurs develop their own religion? My take? Probably a nod to how early video games often featured ruins that often seemed to have no function beyond being ruins. There’s also a scene at a digital circus where Pauline eats some peanuts, and notes that she’s a allergic to peanuts in the real world. She finds them to be okay. 

Series creator Benjamin Lancaster has a deep love for the original EPCOT theme park. That loves really shines through in this season, even more so than usual. 

And so there you have it. The Infinite Journey, season three of Prototype World of Tomorrow, keeps up the momentum of its predecessors. Prototype World of Tomorrow has bowled a turkey; three-for-three for great seasons of alternate history science fiction goodness. I can’t wait to see what surprise season four will have for us. From the looks of it, some exciting stuff is on the way.

Speaking of exciting stuff, I’d like to take a moment to talk about one of the projects Brian Ballance, the voice of Tim, is up to. He has recently started a podcast called The Interesting Podcast. As the title says, he interviews people he thinks are interesting. For example, he interviewed, Callie Wills, the voice of Eve. I would encourage everyone to go checkout Brain’s podcast.

Well, I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.