Unabridged Audiobook
Let me just start by saying that having Alex Jennings do the narrations for Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra was INSPIRED. He brought a life to the narration that I could not have expected when I started this listening. However, the dramatization, which is usually a strength of the BBC, fell short in so many ways. While OotSP and Perelandra were EASILY 5 stars, That Hideous Strength was barely a 3 star. The music and even acting choices were brilliant. However, so many complex and narrative-driven scenes were removed, key concepts were truncated, Ransom was made to be even smaller in this telling, and the climax was rushed. The dramatization could have done with another hour alone in content, and it was there in the original material. The feelings of fear, uncertainty, what side is right, what is safe, the idea of security versus nobility, and the cosmic ideas are all shrunk down until they are hollow husks of what the original material spoke of. There is an unabridged reading by Geoffrey Howard that is absolutely worth listening to. Also, there is a lot of smaller choices that show the times of 1940s England that I think Catherine Robinson and Nigel Lewis definitely deserve credit for. However, if nothing else, the first two full readings are so good that it is ABSOLUTELY worth the credit to buy.
~~tag-text~~