BBC 6’s Peter Serafinowicz created the Dalek Relaxation Tape for Humans (see below) as a bit of a joke, but somehow it fits. For most of my life I’ve seen the new-agey meditation and relaxation tapes and CDs. Things like “Songs up the Humpback Whale”, “Mountain Stream”, “Bird Songs”, “Thunderstorm” etc.
At one point in the 1980s, someone came out with a relaxation tape for yuppies who moved to the country from New York. It included sirens, traffic noises, people talking/shouting etc.
Now that the nerds have taken over the world, there are relaxation tapes for us too. I have nothing against a good thunderstorm, but the recorded versions just don’t seem to mellow me out as much as the Tardis interior sound. Whatever your poison is, it is probably somewhere on YouTube.
So far I’ve found ambient sounds for a Borg Cube, as well as ambient sounds from the bridge, engine, warp core and crew quarters from Star Trek TNG, DS9, TOS and Voyager. Star Wars ambient sounds from the Death Star, an Imperial Star Destroyer, the Millennium Falcon, a variety of fighters including X-Wing and Tie Fighter (but sadly no swamps of Dagobah). There are sounds from the Nostromo (Alien), Discovery One (2001), Battlestar Galactica and, for the realists out there, the International Space Station.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I find white noise from spacecraft I’ve never been on more relaxing than white noise from nature – though, truth be told, I’ve never spent much time listening to mountain streams either and none-at-all listening to actual humpback whales sing.