If you haven’t heard of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, you may want to reacquaint yourself. With the bombshell news of Netflix producing a 10 episode prequel series ‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ all things Dark Crystal are about to become new again.
Released in 1982, The Dark Crystal reached cult status over the intervening years, gaining in popularity. Jim Henson, the father of the Muppets, considered The Dark Crystal his masterpiece, a work of art. It would indeed be his magnum opus. The film wasn’t wildly successful at the box office, released into a market where most audiences and critics, at that time weren’t sure what they were watching.
With the film now back in the spotlight, as the world awaits Age of Resistance, I decided to catch up with Philip Mitchell, founder and host of Trial by Stone: The Dark Crystal Podcast. Trial by Stone is the only Dark Crystal podcast out there.
Full disclosure, I co-host The Dark Crystal Minute with Philip. It hasn’t been released yet, but we continue to record a bevy of episodes, awaiting its release.
Frame Rate: Philip, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Frame Rate. Can you describe what led you to begin what is the only podcast that surrounds The Dark Crystal?
Philip Mitchell: No worries, glad to be here. The future is bright for The Dark Crystal.
In 2014, I would always think now and then about hosting a podcast, whether it was going to be Star Wars or just a general pop culture show, though I knew breaking into those genres of podcast would be hard to get into, there’s literally hundreds if not thousands of Star Wars podcasts that exists today, so I thought about all the other things that I love and enjoy as much if not more than Star Wars, the answer of course was The Dark Crystal.
FR: What topics do you explore when talking about the film?
PM: The podcast has gone through many forms over the years, from interviewing many of the guests who worked on The Dark Crystal, to guests who are actively working on new Dark Crystal stories such as J.M. Lee, as well as fans with variety of backgrounds from writers, artists, filmmakers, and cosplayers to name a few.
The other form its been taking has been the discussion roundtable episodes, and they’re fun to do, and is great to just have a groups of fans talking Dark Crystal, we’ve covered The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths and Shadows of The Dark Crystal, and now with so much content coming out now and into the future, there’s certainly going to be a lot more roundtable discussions, possible to even be its own show, we’ll see…
FR: Have you been able to interview people who worked on the film on the show?
PM: Oh yes absolutely, in the earlier episodes I had the opportunity to chat to Timothy Clarke and Toby Philpott. Both of them had a lot of stories to tell about their work on The Dark Crystal and I certainly hope that in future shows that I’ll interview more of the crew from The Dark Crystal and possible with Age of Resistance happening as well.
FR: When did you first discover The Dark Crystal?
PM: I would’ve been around 5 years old more or less, I recall watching the film on VHS, which was recorded off the TV. The film was unlike anything I’ve seen before and recall watching the film many times over, just being so amazed at the world of the film, it felt real to me.
FR: What is it about the film that stays with you?
PM: As a child, I think it was being able to relate to the character of Jen. In the film he’s very quiet, unsure of himself and is very much alone and speaks basic English.
That really describes what I was like as a child, I lived in a rural suburb, went to a small school of 20 students, so I didn’t have any real friends, my only friends were computers, video games and movies.
I was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, having autism and the main problems that I would have is communication, and would only speak in very basic English much like the character of Jen in The Dark Crystal and the film was in a way one of my first movies that I could follow along from start to finish. That I could understand the world and the characters and there being able to relate to it.
That’s one of the many things that the film has really stayed with me profoundly and I believe is an important aspect with telling stories, to be able to find some connection to a character that you can relate to in some way, whether its within yourself or even if a character reminds you of something or someone.
FR: Where were you when you heard about the new Netflix show, Age of Resistance?
PM: I was asleep lol… the announcement happened at around 1am Friday morning my time in Melbourne, Australia, so I didn’t knew about it until I woke up first thing in the morning at around 7:30am, and my fiancé was telling me about some Dark Crystal show was happening, which I wasn’t sure being half awake, so I had to check on Facebook and realised that the feed was going crazy about the announcement of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, after 30 minutes later reading as much as I could, I immediately did a Facebook live video to chat about the big announcement, which then led to arranging an episode of Trial By Stone: The Dark Crystal Podcast to chat about the recent news and release the show a couple of days later.
FR: How has the fandom for Dark Crystal reacted to the news of the new show?
PM: I was blown away by the announcement and it really surprised a lot of fans including myself in a positive way, we’re always excited for more Dark Crystal stories, from comics to books, but the fact that we’re going back to the more visual medium of storytelling with television is a big icing on the cake and we can’t wait for its eventual release whenever it may be.
Its really re-energised my fandom for The Dark Crystal so much more, that I’ve been actively working on the podcast on a daily basis, whether its editing future episodes, posting news on social media platforms or arranging interviews to record via email and so much more.
PM: I’m currently working on having couple of Dark Crystal podcasts per month that will begin later this year, one of which is The Dark Crystal Minute.
FR: What is The Dark Crystal Minute?
PM: The Dark Crystal is a minute by minute discussion on The Dark Crystal, hosted by myself as well as the writer of this article, JM Prater.
Right now there is a lot of Movies By Minutes podcast shows out there, from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien and even Return to Oz just to name a few. I thought that The Dark Crystal Minute would be a perfect addition to the genre as so much happens within each minute of The Dark Crystal thats worth discussing about, whether its story, dialogue, characters and even just being amazed at the amount of work the filmmakers went through to make The Dark Crystal what it is today.
FR: What are your hopes for the future of the podcast?
PM: My hopes is to expand Trial By Stone: The Dark Crystal Podcast into its own network that would host multiple Dark Crystal podcasts every month. There is a lot of potential now with the announcement on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance that its going to introduce a new generation of fans as well as bringing people who grew up with the film but didn’t realise that there’s new material out there and even a podcast about The Dark Crystal to discover themselves.
It’s a great time to be a Dark Crystal fan!
You can hear Philip hosting on his podcast every month. His podcast is available through iTunes and Apple Podcasts. His Facebook page is available here, Trial By Stone. We would like to thank Philip for taking the time to answer our questions and participate with this interview.
The Dark Crystal is a film like none other before it. It’s wizardry of practical effects, state-of-the- art puppetry and in-camera sorcery still holds up today, next to the computer generated imagery. If you haven’t seen it, you should. You’re missing out on a film that will change your life. It changed mine. With The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance on its way to Netflix in the next year and a half, there is no better time to acquaint yourself with a world of wonder.
Frame Rate 