Tales from the Moosiverse

Tales from the Moosiverse is a continuing fantasy adventure in which the thing missing from the universe is chocolate. Montgomery the Moose and friends have set out through time to find out when it was erased and to bring it back. Along for the ride are Montgomery the Mouse, small enough to be overlooked and a little hurt when he is; Ringo the Unpredictable Horse, who would happily teleport everyone rather than walk; and Montgomery the Moose's mother, Ruth. Time travel here is far from tidy. One jump overshoots into prehistory, where the group meets a character called Kanga Rex and, without realizing it, strands an octopus named El Ocho Loco millions of years before his time. Another lands them among the Olmec civilization in 642 BCE, where magic already has protectors of its own: dragons. That is where T'oka comes in, a young orange dragon who is a guardian of magic in her era but has little experience of what the role asks of her. Watching a messy band of creatures get praised by their leader, she says softly that she wishes someone would tell her she was doing a good job. She is also the story's conscience, warning the others that they are meddling with magic and carrying things into eras where they will not exist for thousands of years. Then she accidentally erases pizza herself. A run of episode titles, 'The Choice T'oka Made', 'The Choice Montgomery Made' and 'The Choice Ringo Made', names one character at a time. T'oka's hearing before the Council of Dragons is a genuinely serious scene: Opal the Magical presses the case, her aunt, cousin, uncle and mother all nod along, and she cries with hurt and anger. It carries a quieter sorrow too, since her father passed away shortly before she hatched and she never knew him. She is stripped of her powers and her title, and she leaves to make a new life, though not before she, Montgomery and Ringo learn they share something none of them had seen before, the magic of creation. Montgomery has troubles of his own. His magic keeps slipping away and coming back, and in Naples it refuses outright to carry the group back in time, prompting Ruth to ask gently whether some part of him does not want to fix chocolate. None of this crowds out the jokes. The friends try to win T'oka over with a slice of cheese pizza while debating which styles to avoid, a place called the Sheep Meadow turns out to be just a field, and Ringo plainly enjoys it when people stare at him. Ian opens each episode with a recap of where things stand, which keeps the serialized plot easy to follow. The endings turn toward listeners, inviting them to write their own tales and send them in, with a newsletter of writing tips and Story Lab online writing classes for kids offered alongside. One episode, 'The Choice Ringo Made', is billed as a season finale and points ahead to mini-seasons and a fifth season.