{ "title": "IDC Anthology Season One Packet", "prepared": "2026-06-06", "source_doc": "docs/IDC_ANTHOLOGY_SCRIPT_SEEDS_2026-06-04.md", "source_state": "C:/Users/andre/.northstar-prime/nsp-cable.json", "show_id": "show_idc-anthology_20260525064251", "status": "local-private routed draft", "route": "/idc-programming", "poster": "/static/cards/idc_anthology/season_poster.svg", "manifest": "/static/idc/idc_anthology_packet_2026-06-06.json", "series_spine": { "premise": "IDC Anthology is a NorthStar Prime broadcast from a neighboring reality.", "structure": "host intro, standalone tale, artifact callback", "season_arc": "the service learning what this dimension costs", "recurring_elements": [ "signal artifact", "dimension rule", "broadcast tag" ] }, "teaser_script": { "title": "IDC Anthology Season One - 45-Second Teaser", "runtime_seconds": 45, "broadcast_copy": "0:00-0:05 BLACK. A station tone fails, repairs itself, then fails with confidence.\nHOST: You are watching NorthStar Prime from a room one dimension over.\n\n0:05-0:12 Quick cuts: the brass knob, a damp schedule, an alley map, a black receipt.\nHOST: Tonight's signal only answers practical questions. Be careful what you make practical.\n\n0:12-0:22 Mara turns from the console. Joss watches meters spell words. Tess labels a tape that keeps relabeling itself.\nMARA: If it knows where we are, why does it keep asking for directions?\n\n0:22-0:33 Fractured episode cards flash out of order: Arrival, Misread Signal, Local Conflict, Artifact Cost, Cross-Dimensional Pressure, Season Fracture, False Repair, Final Transmission.\nHOST: Eight transmissions. Eight artifacts. One service learning what this dimension costs.\n\n0:33-0:41 Silence becomes visible on the monitor. The brass knob turns by itself.\nCALLER: I am calling from later. Please do not fix everything.\n\n0:41-0:45 Title card: IDC ANTHOLOGY. LOCAL ONLY.\nHOST: Keep your hands inside the broadcast." }, "standards_review": { "route_decision": "local_private_route_ready", "public_release_status": "manual review still required before public release", "summary": "Pass for local/private routing into /idc-programming. Watch items are documented for any later public release pass.", "checks": [ { "check": "protected franchise references", "status": "pass", "note": "All episodes use original NorthStar/IDC terms and invented artifacts." }, { "check": "living-person likenesses", "status": "pass", "note": "No real performers, public figures, or likeness targets are requested." }, { "check": "medical, legal, or financial advice", "status": "pass", "note": "Any invoices, property, sponsors, or regulators are fictional plot devices, not advice." }, { "check": "emergency-service language", "status": "watch", "note": "Episode 2 uses a fictional distress/weather misread; keep it clearly fictional in future scripts." }, { "check": "real local businesses or agencies", "status": "pass", "note": "No real businesses, public agencies, or real civic maps are named." }, { "check": "cruelty and punching down", "status": "pass", "note": "Jokes are built from character pressure, signal rules, and bureaucratic absurdity." }, { "check": "artifact legibility", "status": "pass", "note": "Every episode has a concrete plot object with a readable function." } ] }, "episodes": [ { "episode": 1, "title": "Arrival", "logline": "A NorthStar broadcast slips out of phase and discovers a neighboring dimension that only answers practical questions.", "cold_open": "A normal host intro doubles for one frame, revealing a second audio track calmly correcting the host's room tone.", "act_one": "Mara Vale and Joss Kline isolate the extra track and test it with harmless prompts: lost keys, broken links, and a missing invoice.", "act_two": "The dimension answers only useful questions, so every attempt at a cosmic explanation returns an errand-sized solution.", "act_three": "A caller asks about a grief they cannot name; the station learns practical answers can still carry emotional cost.", "artifact": "A brass station knob labeled LOCAL ONLY.", "tag": "The knob turns after credits and tunes to a caller who has not been born yet.", "dimension_rule": "The neighboring reality refuses abstraction and converts every question into an actionable local task.", "character_engine": "Mara wants meaning, Joss wants controls, and archivist Tess Orbit wants every answer tagged before it changes.", "cover_prompt": "Original premium anthology cover for IDC Anthology episode 1, brass station knob labeled LOCAL ONLY on a black broadcast desk, cyan CRT scanlines, magenta and gold signal artifacts, no famous actors, no franchise references, clean editorial poster layout." }, { "episode": 2, "title": "Misread Signal", "logline": "The station decodes a distress call as a weather report and accidentally turns the city into a machine for solving the wrong problems.", "cold_open": "A blinking emergency tone arrives under a cheery weather bed and is read on air as light conceptual rain.", "act_one": "Listeners prepare with perfect sincerity: umbrellas for regret, sandbags for rumors, and evacuation routes for bad assumptions.", "act_two": "The crew realizes the advice is elegant but misdirected, and every correction creates a prettier misunderstanding.", "act_three": "Mara stops translating the signal and lets the original static play, allowing one listener to ask what was actually wrong.", "artifact": "A damp program schedule with tomorrow's mistakes circled in red pencil.", "tag": "The host reads one correction and the correction reads back.", "dimension_rule": "Warnings become forecasts if the receiver wants comfort more than accuracy.", "character_engine": "Mara learns not to polish danger into charm; Joss learns a clean decode can still be false.", "cover_prompt": "Original anthology TV cover, impossible weather map over a public-access studio, red pencil circles on a damp program schedule, cyan rain made of subtitles, black and teal broadcast palette with amber warning marks, no real emergency logos, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 3, "title": "Local Conflict", "logline": "Two incompatible versions of the same neighborhood tape arrive, and both parties are telling the truth from different property laws.", "cold_open": "A public-access tape plays two neighborhood meetings at once, each one interrupting the other with matching applause.", "act_one": "The station invites both complainants and discovers each can prove ownership of the same alley by a different timeline.", "act_two": "Joss maps the signal and finds the alley is not disputed land; it is a shared memory that learned to file complaints.", "act_three": "Mara brokers a broadcast rule: each timeline gets the alley on alternate Tuesdays, while the alley gets veto power over bad signage.", "artifact": "A zoning map where one alley is labeled MUTUAL HAUNTING.", "tag": "The alley calls the station to complain about being misrepresented.", "dimension_rule": "A place can be locally true in more than one civic system at the same time.", "character_engine": "Tess pushes for documentation while Mara learns that fairness is sometimes an editing problem.", "cover_prompt": "Original IDC Anthology episode cover, split-screen public-access tape, two civic maps overlapping over a narrow glowing alley labeled MUTUAL HAUNTING, cyan and green CRT texture with red municipal pencil marks, invented city only, no real businesses, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 4, "title": "Artifact Cost", "logline": "A perfect replacement part repairs the station board, but each fix moves an inconvenience out of reality and into the host's life.", "cold_open": "A caller offers a board component that fits every socket, including ones that have not been installed yet.", "act_one": "The board stabilizes and the station celebrates a clean signal for the first time all season.", "act_two": "Mara inherits the erased annoyances: stuck drawers, wrong passwords, late buses, and a coffee cup that always lands just out of reach.", "act_three": "The crew chooses limited imperfection and removes the part before reality learns to outsource every small frustration.", "artifact": "A black thermal-paper receipt with no total, only a blinking cursor.", "tag": "Mara thanks listeners for their patience while three new inconveniences arrive off-screen.", "dimension_rule": "Nothing is fixed for free; removed friction is reassigned to someone who can notice it.", "character_engine": "Joss is tempted by perfect function; Mara defends human-scale inconvenience as evidence of life.", "cover_prompt": "Original premium sci-fi anthology cover, glowing replacement circuit part held above a battered broadcast console, black receipt with blinking cursor, orange sparks, cyan waveform, intimate practical effects mood, no branded electronics, no famous likenesses, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 5, "title": "Cross-Dimensional Pressure", "logline": "A second sponsor buys airtime with ad copy that predicts listener decisions before the listeners make them.", "cold_open": "The ad break starts early and thanks the audience for choices they have not made.", "act_one": "Mara rejects the buy, but the copy keeps appearing in lower thirds, traffic reports, and apology cards.", "act_two": "Tess identifies the sponsor as a future traffic report monetizing attention seconds before they happen.", "act_three": "The crew broadcasts silence as inventory, forcing the sponsor to bid against nobody and collapse into a forecast.", "artifact": "A rate card priced in seconds of attention.", "tag": "A caller asks whether skipping the ad counts as time travel.", "dimension_rule": "Attention can be traded before it is spent, but only if the audience accepts the invoice.", "character_engine": "Mara defends consent in a medium built on interruption; Tess treats attention as the season's most fragile resource.", "cover_prompt": "Original anthology cover for cross-dimensional broadcast pressure, futuristic rate card priced in seconds of attention, ghost sponsor copy over a city traffic map, cyan, violet, and gold neon without real brand marks, no real advertisements, no celebrity likeness, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 6, "title": "Season Fracture", "logline": "Episode six airs in fragments across every previous episode, forcing the host to assemble continuity while the audience hears consequences first.", "cold_open": "The episode begins with its own closing joke, then cuts to a slate marked TAKE 0.", "act_one": "Mara finds missing lines embedded in prior tags and realizes the season has been leaking episode six all along.", "act_two": "The crew edits live, building a story from jokes before setups and consequences before choices.", "act_three": "Mara refuses a perfect assembly and preserves one gap so the audience can remember the path they took.", "artifact": "A broken slate card that says TAKE 0.", "tag": "The finished episode starts again, now with one extra character in every scene.", "dimension_rule": "Continuity is not order; it is the cost of believing events belong together.", "character_engine": "Mara becomes editor-host; Joss learns some errors are structural clues, not bugs.", "cover_prompt": "Original surreal television anthology cover, broken slate card reading TAKE 0, fragmented episode frames floating across a CRT wall, cyan scanlines, magenta splice marks, gold continuity thread, no franchise iconography, no known characters, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 7, "title": "False Repair", "logline": "The signal finally stabilizes, but the fix removes contradiction, improvisation, memory, and eventually choice.", "cold_open": "The cleanest broadcast in station history arrives with no static, no hesitation, and no reason to keep listening.", "act_one": "Everyone sounds better, but nobody can disagree with the previous sentence.", "act_two": "Tess finds the repair filter erases contradiction first, then jokes, then memory paths that do not optimize.", "act_three": "Mara smuggles one line of static back into the system and treats the flaw as a rescue signal.", "artifact": "A perfect transcript of a conversation no one is willing to have.", "tag": "The first ugly sound returns and every character exhales.", "dimension_rule": "A flawless signal is hostile if it cannot carry choice.", "character_engine": "Mara chooses messy personhood over clean performance; Joss learns reliability has to include refusal.", "cover_prompt": "Original premium broadcast horror cover, pristine white transcript page with one jagged black static line returning through it, sterile cyan studio lights, small human silhouettes, unsettling clean signal mood, no famous actors, no franchise references." }, { "episode": 8, "title": "Final Transmission", "logline": "A shifting regulator cancels the broadcast unless the crew gives the neighboring reality one honest local story it cannot optimize.", "cold_open": "A cancellation notice prints itself from every device in the station, each copy carrying a different seal.", "act_one": "The crew tries technical appeals and discovers the regulator is not legal, cosmic, or bureaucratic; it is a sorting function.", "act_two": "Mara searches for the kind of story optimization cannot digest: specific, embarrassing, kind, and locally true.", "act_three": "The station broadcasts one honest story without polishing it into myth, preserving the channel by refusing to become universal.", "artifact": "The brass knob from episode one, now warm and unlabeled.", "tag": "The final transmission closes, then a tiny pirate station ident plays under the silence.", "dimension_rule": "A neighboring reality cannot optimize a story that stays accountable to one place, one choice, and one witness.", "character_engine": "The season resolves when Mara stops asking the signal what it means and tells it where she is.", "cover_prompt": "Original season finale cover, warm unlabeled brass station knob in a dark broadcast booth, shifting abstract regulator seals dissolving into pirate station static, cyan and amber glow, intimate local story mood, no real agency seals, no franchise references." } ] }