The Vienna Experience

"I'm not for sale."

Writer: Jonathan Morris

Format: Audio

Released: February 2015

Series: Vienna 2.03

Featuring: Vienna

Synopsis

Ever wanted to experience the life of an assassin? Longed to feel the thrill of the hunt? Now is your chance to get beneath the skin of Vienna Salvatori. See what she sees. Hear what she hears. 

And pray she never finds out.

Verdict

The Vienna Experience was a tremendous episode to conclude the second series of Vienna! It turns out I was completely wrong in yesterday's blog entry of Underworld in stating that it appeared there was no story arc running through the series as within the first ten minutes of this episode, everything had been leading to this point! It all went back as far as Tabula Rasa with Vienna in the previous story not actually being herself but the Psycho Morph! That was a really fun twist and the moment where she revealed her true self as the assassin that was in her own home and had killed Kelsey was excellent. Who else would it be? The assassin for hire of course. Having two versions of Vienna is really fun to play around with and Chase Masterson absolutely revels in the role. She's magnificent and has that appeal of being flirtatious whilst downright serious. There's just something about her that draws you in and makes me want to move right onto the next series! Unfortunately, that won't be happening just yet as I don't own Series 3 just yet and it seems a physical copy is quite rare to come by! I'll no doubt listen to it at some point soon though and it appears that old Jexie is here to stay. I like the prospect of Vienna essentially having a companion figure and the fact she's a copper provides a fun dynamic. Someone who enforces the law travelling with a hired assassin? That's a really fun dynamic. I thought Carlos Van Mayer was a superb villain and his position as the owner of Crime Corp was fascinating. It turned out the Psycho Morph was a failed experiment in a bid to create super humans as police officers. That was intriguing and I liked how everything, even at this point in the future, all came down to money. Imagine Crime Corp having the potential to sell off officers that would absolutely enforce the law and couldn't be overpowered? It was definitely something that would be the envy of numerous societies. The means to get there were something Vienna was working against though and it's fun looking back at the episode to consider that the implant placed within her arm in the previous episode was actually in the Psycho Morph! That's quite funny and it's amusing that all of Van Mayer's instructions to Vienna were not to the true article. Hearing him try and sell his titular Vienna experience was a lot of fun though and it was also nice to hark back to the early days of Vienna where she prided herself on nobody knowing her name. We seem to have gotten away from that recently which is no problem but it was nice to have it mentioned. It was also a sense of pride for Van Mayer to claim knowledge and even control over the assassin. Of course, when she got into an accident and knocked out the link was lost and any buyers had grown tired. The Psycho Morph ending up killing him was a little ironic and a fitting fate really, before it had an existential breakdown when it didn't know who it was anymore to see that out. Everything was tied up very nicely in the end! I like the way things are set up moving forward with a new pairing for the next series, but for now this was a thrilling finale! Vienna at the double is all good with me. A fun twist and it was nice to know she'd been working on a plan all along showing full control. I look forward to the next one! Overall, a terrific episode. 

Rating: 9/10